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'Borders' Are Key to Middle East Peace, Says Israeli Activist

Michel Warschawski tells Duke audience to break down cultural boundaries while building up political ones

Israeli writer and political activist Michel Warschawski believes the way to peace in the Middle East is for Israelis and Arabs to break down cultural boundaries while building stronger political ones.

Warschawski, who lives in Jerusalem, is author of "On the Border," which describes his work in Israeli left-wing politics.  Speaking before an audience of 20 people Tuesday in the SocialSciencesBuilding, he criticized a form of Zionism that he said seeks to keep Israelis culturally and ethnically distinct from the rest of the Middle East, while allowing for geographical expansion of Israel by not fixing the country's borders.

Instead, Warschawski said the way to peace is for Israelis to cross cultural barriers to stand in solidarity with Palestinians and to give up any ambitions for territorial expansion.

"Sometimes we have to be border guards," Warschawski said about his desire for Israel to have permanent and mutually recognized borders with the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbors.

While serving in the Israeli military, Warschawski said he respected Israel's geographical boundaries by joining with soldiers who refused to cross Israel's northern border during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Military action is warranted for defense, he said, if it is proportionate to the threat and complies with international law.

"But sometimes -- I would say always -- we also have to be not border guards but border smugglers," he said about cooperating across cultures with Palestinians.

Warschawski said he supported Palestinian causes through the AlternativeInformationCenter, a publishing and research organization he co-founded. In 1990, he served an eight-month prison term for aiding the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group outlawed by the Israeli government. Warschawski believed he was helping a legal student group and pled not guilty at his trial.

During the question and answer period, Sidra Ezrahi, a visiting professor of Judaic studies at Duke, challenged Warschawski's portrayal of Israel being obsessed with ethnic purity from its inception.

"[Theodore] Herzl had a very cosmopolitan view of the Jewish State," Ezrahi said about the early Zionist leader. "It wasn't only about purity."

Warschawski agreed that visions for the state of Israel have varied over time and continue to evolve.

In response to a question by event organizer and Duke graduate student Rann Bar-On, Warschawski said he does not support boycotts of Israel because they are divisive for groups that support Palestinians and are too easily understood as anti-Semitic.

The event was sponsored by Jews for a Just Peace and the campus group Hiwar.