The decision made by the law student associations at Berkeley, to prohibit the invitation of lecturers identified with Israel, is explained as "protecting the safety and well-being of the Palestinian students", but it is an expression of what is known in the American discourse as the "culture of cancellation".
This is an ideological position, which calls for removing from the spaces of the discourse those who hold opinions that, according to the advocates of the cancellation culture, threaten the safety of those who are forced to hear them.
The choice of this arbitrary step hides the opposite reality.
The younger generation in the US is interested in Israel. I was exposed to this when I arrived at Berkeley University last spring, as part of the Helen Diller Institute for Israel Studies, as a guest lecturer. The course I taught followed a timeline that began with the Balfour Declaration and ended with the peace agreement with Egypt. Along with politics, diplomacy and wars, the students learned about Israeli culture in all its facets 20 students - many of them Jewish - enrolled in the course, which soon became one of my best academic teaching experiences.
There are measurable elements: meeting assignments, participating in the discussion.
It is not surprising that students at a leading university successfully meet them.
But there are the hidden undercurrents of depth: the conversations before and after class, the mentions of the grandmother who hosted Golda at her home, the grandfather who was in the Palmach, the father who served in the IDF and the Jewish neighbors and the beloved Iranian grandmother.
These are some of the stories I heard from my students at Berkeley, with whom I spent twice a week in class and once a week in the library.
There we extracted from the shelves texts that spoke for themselves and told the complex story of Israel - partition proposals;
Memoirs of diplomats and Zionist activists;
Articles about transitions, payments and austerity.
One of the texts that the students particularly liked - the translated file of "Shiach Luhomem".
At the year-end meeting, while we were biting the pepper and wiping off the tahini, I asked: "So what surprised you the most?", and they replied: "That the Israeli story has many sides";
"That this is not just a story of Jews and Arabs";
"That it is a story of immigrants, longings, disappointments and successes."
They also approached one by one and said that they wanted to come to Israel and maybe even stay there for a few months, to continue their journey into the bowels of Israel - and perhaps also into their own bowels.
When the law student associations at Berkeley announce "safe zones" - a term that refers to the right of those who feel excluded or discriminated against to be protected from the forces that frequently threaten them - they are not seeking to defend themselves against "the Zionists and the Israelis".
Pro-Israelism is no longer the dominant ideology on American campuses.
In the "safe zones" the enterprising students seek to defend themselves against the danger of complexity and depth, and even the danger of personalization.
This is similar to the decision to protect members of a cult from challenging its doctrine.
The need to build "sterile" areas is the proof that the Zionist and Israeli story has constantly cracked the defense wall of the "anti-Israel" sect.
The members of the sect seek to fill these cracks through a "cancellation culture".
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