Ari Shavit, senior correspondent for the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz and author of the 2013 book “My Promised Land,” spoke to an overflowing Wilson 102 Wednesday night about Israel’s past, present and future. His wide-ranging lecture touched on Zionism, his personal experiences living in Israel, modern anti-Semitism and prospects for peace in the Middle East.
The audience comprised mostly undergrads and Providence community members. All students in attendance received a free copy of Shavit’s book.
In his opening statement, Shavit said the events in Gaza this summer raise many fundamental questions about Israel: What is Israel? Why does it exist? What is its future? He answered these questions through a combination of historical analysis and personal experiences.
Shavit traced the story of his great-grandfather, who was part of the early Zionist movement in Britain in the 19th century. “To challenge extinction, early Zionists like my great-grandfather transferred a people from one continent to another,” he said.
Shavit expressed disappointment in individuals who claim that Zionism is equivalent to colonialism. “We were not agents of empire, but rather went back to our ancient homeland because we faced death in Europe,” he said. But the one sin of Zionism is that it came a couple decades too late, he said, noting that if a Jewish state had existed in the 1920s, millions of lives would have been saved during the Holocaust.
In discussing Israel’s security, Shavit described how his two sons heard the howling sirens warning of a rocket attack for the first time this summer. “My sons are just like any typical American boys, but there is a challenge that they face that no children in any other democracy face,” he said.
Shavit commended the engineers of the Iron Dome, an Israeli air defense system, as the heroes of this summer’s Israel-Gaza conflict. The Iron Dome’s construction prevented both Israeli and Palestinian deaths during the outbreak of violence in the region this summer, he said.
The hour-long lecture was followed by a question-and-answer session in which several students took the opportunity to ask about internal and external issues that Israel faces.
In response to a student’s question about the relationship between Judaism and Jewish identity, Shavit said Zionism allows people who are not religious to be Jewish. “We need a place that will be a powerhouse for Jewish identity. We need an Israel that we can all be proud of.”
Addressing another student’s question about whether the Islamic State poses a threat to Israel, Shavit responded that it is not an immediate threat, but the right course of action is to “ally with the moderate players and stabilizing forces in the Middle East.”
Shavit stressed the importance of working to achieve a gradual peace. “We must not only demilitarize Gaza, but also be generous by giving the Palestinian people the resources and the opportunities for life.”
Shavit ended his talk on a positive note. “I am an optimist and believe that peace will come soon,” he said.
Shavit’s lecture at the University was part of a larger tour of American campuses organized by Hillel International that included a stop at Yale on Monday. Prior to the lecture on campus Wednesday evening, Shavit spent the day engaged in a series of workshops with students who were interested in journalism, students who read “My Promised Land” as part of a book group held by Brown/RISD Hillel and members of the groups Brown Students for Israel and J Street U Brown.
“The students that I have met today at Brown and … at Yale were full of great values,” Shavit said. “My dialogue with them has really inspired me.”
Sam Dunietz ’18 said he enjoyed the lecture, adding that Shavit recognized the complex nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by acknowledging how “the narrative of Israelis still carries the heavy weight of the Holocaust.”
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