(Wo rld

A student demonstration at

U-Cal Berkeley's Sproul Plaza.

At U-Cal Berkeley campus,
Jewish students from left to right
on Israel talk about their motivations.

Four Faces from page 16

Simone
Zimmerman

Simone Zimmerman, a
sophomore, spoke Feb.
28 at the J Street con-
ference in Washington
about the Boycott,
Divestment
and
Simone
Sanctions
movement
on
Zimmerman
her campus.
"I recognize that BDS seeks to address
serious human rights issues in Israel and
the territories:' says Zimmerman, 20, a
Middle East studies major. But at Berkeley,
she said, rather than creating discussion,
"it created a polarizing atmosphere where
both sides sank further into the extremes
of their positions:"
She also says, "It fostered animosity,
squashed nuance and alienated the rational
voices most essential to addressing these
complex issues:'
Zimmerman was "really nervous" about
giving her speech, she told JTA two days
later. It didn't help that minutes before her
session, BDS supporters began tweeting
each other to flood the room.
"My session was the only one with secu-
rity outside she said.
It was frustration with both pro-Israel
and pro-Palestinian groups at Berkeley that
led Zimmerman to join forces with J Street
U, the organization's campus arm. She said
it was there that she found the "rational
voices" she sought.
Zimmerman grew up in a Conservative
home in Los Angeles and is an alumna
of Jewish day school, Camp Ramah and
United Synagogue Youth, the Conservative
youth movement. She's spent a lot of time
in Israel, including a three-month exchange
program in the 10th grade.
When she arrived at Berkeley,
Zimmerman said she "fell in love with the
atmosphere, the excitement I felt on cam-
pus:' She chose the school for that diversity
and energy, but also because it was one
of the only campuses where students told

18

March 24 2011

her they loved coming to Hillel. That was
important to her.
But last year, her first on campus, ended
with a vitriolic battle over the student gov-
ernment's divestment bill. The hostility and
intolerance she witnessed on both sides of
the debate scared and saddened her.
"I saw a big hole in the conversation
the community was having on Israel:' she
says. "There's a really divided scene here,
very polarized. Students in the middle
are exhausted, and the extremes get more
extreme."
Ironically, she learned about J Street
through criticism of the group by the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee,
which portrayed it as anti-Israel.
"Then, when J Street opposed the divest-
ment bill, I thought, 'That's interesting
— that's not what I'd heard about them,"
Zimmerman says.
Zimmerman is a consensus builder, not
a placard waver. In addition to J Street U,
she is chair of her Hillel's Israel Action
Committee, which she says was drained
of its most active members when Tikvah
siphoned off the most ardent Zionists, and
Kesher Enoshi: Progressives for Activism in
Israel, grabbed from the left.
"Our main goal is to educate, not advo-
cate," she says. "We're not giving people fact
sheets or telling them how to respond in 10
steps. We're trying to teach people about a
more nuanced, complex Israel:'
Zimmerman sees J Street as provid-
ing a middle ground in that conversation,
although some of her closest friends
don't get it. When she called a friend in
Washington to say she was speaking at J
Street's conference, the friend asked, "Why
would you be there?"
"People who are in the middle and who
would appreciate what J Street is trying to do
have been scared away by the establishment'
Zimmerman says. "It's been demonized."
As for Israel Apartheid Week and its coun-
terpart, Israeli Peace and Diversity Week,
Zimmerman says, "I hate this week." I

Tom Pessah bristles
when he hears
people refer to "the
Israelis" or "the
Jewish community:'
"There's no such
thing;'
he asserts. "I
Tom Pessah
don't feel I represent
all Israelis or all Jewish students:'
Many Israelis and many Jews would
agree.
Pessah, a Tel Aviv native, Israeli
army veteran and 37-year-old doc-
toral student in sociology at Berkeley,
is active in Students for Justice
in Palestine, which advocates for
Palestinian independence and sup-
ports the BDS movement. Students
for Justice in Palestine was founded
in 2001 at Berkeley, where it is a
main organizer of Israel Apartheid
Week, and the organization has since
spread to other schools.
Like other Jewish students inter-
viewed by JTA, Pessah says his main
interest is opening the conversation
about Israel and allowing all sides to
be heard. Also, like others, he sees his
own organization as the champion
of dialogue and other groups out to
obstruct it.
Last year, he went to his first Shabbat
dinner at the Berkeley Hillel. The fol-
lowing week, he says, a pro-Israel
student asked him not to show up
anymore and to pass on the request to
his fellow activists from Students for
Justice in Palestine.
"He said, 'It makes me uncomfort-
able because the Jewish community
perceives you as anti-Semitic: He was
smiling, as if I have to accommodate
his feelings:' Pessah says.
Pessah hasn't been back to Hillel
since, and neither have his friends
from Students for Justice in Palestine.
Even so, he acknowledges that rela-

tions with Hillel, and even with the
Zionist student group Tikvah, are better
than they were two years ago. Tikvah's
founders, whom he describes as "very
aggressive have graduated, and the
directorship of Hillel has changed.
Pessah says he's proud to be Jewish.
Although he feels many Jews exaggerate
the extent of anti-Semitism, he says it's
important to speak out when it surfaces.
Three years ago, Students for Justice
in Palestine was blamed when a Star of
David on campus was defaced with a
swastika. "We did not do that," he insists.
"We would never do such a thing:
In fact, Pessah is able to use his left-
ist credentials to prevent anti-Semitic
speakers from coming to campus. On
two occasions, he says, the Muslim
Student Association asked his group
to co-sponsor speakers whom Pessah
discovered had made anti-Jewish state-
ments in the past. When his organiza-
tion communicated that to the Muslim
students, they canceled the speakers.
"They take us seriously because
they know we wouldn't use the term
`anti-Semitic' lightly:' he says.
Pessah has not turned his back on
Israel. He plans on going back after
earning his doctorate. That's why he's
active politically
"I do this to make it a better coun-
try," he says. "A comfortable life for
Jews in Israel is dependent on a com-
fortable life for Palestinians."
Once, while he was demonstrating
for Palestinian rights, an Arab student
approached him and said that seeing
Pessah standing there made him real-
ize his parents were wrong, that not all
Jews were alike.
"That's so important:' Pessah says.
"It encouraged me to go to more pro-
tests. By building up this solidarity,
we stop seeing each other in stereo-
typical terms. That's my niche. That's
what I'm about."

