When I came to Stanford as a freshman in the fall of 2007, I was shocked to see the condition of the interfaith community. Fragmented and scared, students would whisper about the events of the previous year. Divestment, Muslims against Jews, Jews against Jews. The anti-Israel divestment campaign of the previous year had rocked the Stanford community. It drove people away from wanting to learn about or discuss Israel, drove Jewish students from wanting to befriend Muslim students and even drove Jews away from the Jewish community as a whole.

I was able to witness firsthand the devastating effects of the 2006-07 divestment campaign, because I was the only freshman to join the Stanford Israel Alliance. I joined because, after facing anti-Semitic abuse during high school, I found Israel was the one place where I knew I could be safe as a Jew, and I wanted a place like that to exist for all people. That’s why I wanted to try to improve the condition between Jews and Muslims on campus. I wanted to make things friendlier, so that people did not have to be afraid to express themselves, so that the discussion could be more positive. When I discussed co-sponsoring a charity drive for children in Israel and Gaza with the Muslim Students Awareness Network my freshman year, some of the Jewish/pro-Israel students looked at me like I was crazy.

Eventually we overcame the emotional scars of divestment, and the charity drive to send gift baskets to children in Israel and Gaza went forward. It was a major success because it was a positive way to deal with the conflict. Since then, the number of Jewish and Muslim interfaith events has increased. Political disagreements surrounding Israel have been handled in a more positive light. We repeated the charity drive my sophomore year and launched an even more successful microfinance campaign the year after. The past few years have been a huge step forward, but I fear that we are on the verge of taking two steps back.

This spring saw the initiation of a renewed divestment campaign. Divestment calls to the University not to do business with companies that do business in Israel. While the campaign purports to be about a few specific companies, in reality it is a campaign to delegitimize Israel, using literature from international movements that try to convince countries to boycott and sanction the Jewish state. This campaign is divisive because it places the blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a conflict that takes into account centuries of nuance, squarely on Israel’s shoulders. That’s not fair; both sides share responsibility.

Divestment aims to injure Israel economically, without actually directly helping the Palestinians. This should be upsetting to anyone who cares about Israel and also anyone who cares about the Palestinians. We should work toward change that helps both sides of the conflict, not simply injure one side or the other.

Regardless of our politics, the campaign of divisiveness that is in the process of being put forth can only have destructive outcomes. We don’t know how our actions on campus will affect a faraway conflict in the Middle East, but we do know what our actions will do to this community. Therefore, the best solution is for the people with different political views to come together and find creative solutions to those disagreements that will help achieve a real and lasting peace for the Middle East and for all of the communities on this campus. We do not need to replicate the animosity in the Middle East in order to make productive change. I have faith that if anywhere in the world there is a place where Muslims, Jews and people of all religious and political dispositions can come together to find constructive solutions to the Middle East conflict, it is Stanford University. I implore you, Stanford University, do not let this campus go back to the way things were. We have changed, and we are so much better than divestment.

Justin Hefter ‘11