What once was advertised by the Cultural Awareness Center at City College as a presentation from two Israeli students recounting their experiences growing up in Israel was overshadowed by negative outbursts from four people in the crowd of around 70 attendees.
During the one-hour presentation on Feb. 20, Shai Bernstein and Hen Mazzig spoke about their current lives now, as well as their experiences growing up in Israel, and described their services in the Israeli military, sparking emotions and differences in opinion among the crowd about the on-going conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
“When we come and speak of growing up in Israel and serving in the army,” Bernstein said to the attentive audience, “ I believe that when one wants to talk about, …the conflict and ethical of living in warfare, I think that the first thing that needs to be put out, and we have to understand, is that it’s complicated.”
Bernstein, originally from New York, moved to Israel with his family when he was 2-years-old. He took the podium first and spoke about his life after the military. He showed a slideshow to the audience of several family photographs. He then proceeded to speak about his service in the Israel Defense Forces in Israel.
As he spoke about the 8,000 rocket attacks he witnessed between 2000-2008 on a southern city of Israel from the Palestine Islamic militant political party HAMAS, a woman from the audience interrupted him demanding to know the number of individuals killed during the attack.
“You don’t know the numbers?” the woman in the audience said. “There were 8,000 rockets but you don’t know how many people were killed?”
“I’m not sure exactly about the numbers, but I would appreciate it if I can just finish the story and then we can have, we will have, plenty of time for Q & A, okay?” Bernstein responded politely.
Bernstein was able to finish his story and another without further interruptions.
Mazzig’s presentation was rushed and also eventually disrupted. He started his presentation telling the audience about his experience as a homosexual openly serving in the Israeli military and about his childhood.
“When I was 18, while most of you guys thought of which college would suit you the best, which university would suit you the best, I thought of which army unit would suit me the best,” Mazzig said.
He chose the COGAT unit, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories unit.
“Its sole purpose is to take care of the Palestinian civilians that have nothing to do [or] don’t want anything to do with the war conflict,” Mazzig said.
Mazzig recounted a story in which he, along with the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli authorities, rescued a 6-year-old boy who was abandoned by his father in the Gaza strip, but Mazzig was interrupted by the same group of women who interrupted Bernstein.
“Israelis killed 14,000,” the woman screamed.
“I urge you to say and tell me anything that you want to say, but just wait a few minutes,” Mazzig calmly responded.
From this confrontation, several attendees began to scream at each other. One woman said “He was there you were not,” while another said, “Let him talk.”
Since chatter from the attendees did not seem to end, Victoria Henderson, the CAC’s coordinator, stepped to the podium to compose the attendees.
“Hello, hello? You are guests in my house today alright,” said Henderson. “I want him [Mazzig] to be able to finish and when he is finished you can say and ask as many questions as you want.”
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Henderson’s words eased the commotion for a while, but during the question and answer portion, the presentation turned into a debate between the speakers and several audience members.
As this occurred, Michael Poindexter, vice president of City College Student Services, took the microphone and demanded peace.
“This is not a war here,” said Poindexter. “Peace has to happen somewhere and when it does it starts here, right at home, right in your hearts. Whether what you know is true or whether what they know is not true, peace starts here.”
Although peace seemed hard to find at the CAC that day, Bernstein wanted students to know that “war is hell.” Bernstein and Mazzig said they wanted to help cease misinformation about Israel and its politics through their presentation; however, some people in the audience at City College felt they were being further misinformed.
For more information on the Israel-Palestine conflict visit the websites below:
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/crisis-centre/crisis/israeli-palestinian-conflict
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/israeli-palestinian-conflict/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special_reports/middle_east_crisis/
Other websites pertaining to the speaker’s presentation:
http://www.nctc.gov/site/groups/hamas.html
http://www.youtube.com/user/idfnadesk
http://www.cogat.idf.il/896-en/IDFG.aspx