Paul Van Doorn’s recent statement (“Statement on Israel-Palestine at Oberlin,” The Oberlin Review, Feb. 9, 2024) opens with the complaint that “students have lost their ability to use reason and logic.” While I cannot address this opening concern, I am more chagrined at Mr. Van Doorn’s apparent failure to appreciate the importance of history. Mr. Van Doorn restates 150 years of history concerning the fate of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in this important corner of the Middle East in the most reductive of statements: “Israel in 1948 stole Palestine from Palestinians by way of victory from then-occupying power, Great Britain.” The application of reason and logic usually have a tangible substrate, and history apparently is a substrate that Mr. Van Doorn either fails to understand or chooses to ignore. 

Furthermore, Mr. Van Doorn’s statement that “‘Israel’ as a country does not have the agreement and active support of every Jew worldwide” shows a complete lack of insight or understanding of the diversity of opinion or the characteristics of Jewish thought on this matter. If such unanimity is even one of Mr. Van Doorn’s criteria for the legitimacy of the existence of Israel, he clearly fails to understand the independent nature of Jewish thought on any subject, let alone the legitimacy of Israel as a nation. Without any doubt I can say, with pride, but not fear of contradiction, there is no proposition, argument or position that has the “support of every Jew worldwide”. If this were a requirement for legitimacy, nothing could claim to be legitimate.

Despite the unpromising opening of the statement, as a fellow graduate, OC ’72, of Oberlin, I join Mr. Van Doorne’s final sentiment without disagreement or reservation: “Oberlin students … join hands against all of the killing and hatred in the Middle East.  Oberlin is a place of love, of caring, and of solutions, rather than exacerbating hatred and killing.”

Elliott Fineman