On March 17, a student group called Facts on the Ground at the University of Michigan (FOG) hosted a talk with CNN host Van Jones and Hussain Abdul-Hussain, senior research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). The two discussed the topic of the night, “Policy for Peace in the Middle East” inside the school’s Rackham Auditorium, where students listened intently.
Jones, seated next to Abdul-Hussain on the stage, talked about how when he was younger, he was a leftist activist. Now, because of his experience, he understands what is happening on the left.
“I was woke before ya’ll had alarm clocks,” he told the audience. “I was on the left side of Pluto… any kind of -ist you could be, if it was against the system, I was that. I was a Black nationalist, and an anarchist and a Marxist and any other -ist I could find.”
Jones, who has publicly called for the release of the hostages and wore a yellow ribbon pin in support of them, continued, “It’s really wrong for [activists] to say if you believe in Black liberation, you should therefore support what Hamas did.”
Abdul-Hussain, a former reporter and managing editor at The Daily Star in Lebanon who reported from conflict zones, also touched on the left-wing activism on college campuses and around the world.
“It looks funny to people like us who grew up in that part of the world [when] you’re carrying an LGBTQ (flag) for Hamas,” he said. “Are you crazy? I have no idea how [this activism] passes in this country without being checked.”
While Abdul-Hussain grew up believing one thing about Israel, he saw the truth about the country in 2000, when Israel withdrew from Lebanon during the South Lebanon conflict. From Lebanon, he looked through a flimsy fence separating his country from Israel.
“I thought, ‘These are regular people,’” he said. “This made me curious. I spent the coming 10 to 15 years learning about Israeli society. I became fluent in Hebrew. I started listening to Hebrew debates. I wanted to understand what they were saying in their native language because somehow in the Arab world, you never get this debate. The only books about Israel you get if you grow up in Lebanon or Syria or Iraq are by [Noam] Chomsky or [Norman] Finkelstein or ‘Mein Kampf.’ You never get anything that’s close to reality.”
As an expert on Middle East relations – in particular relations with Iran and Israel, Abdul-Hussain discussed the fact that regional stability must depend on diplomacy and economic cooperation. Jones talked about Black and Jewish unity at the event, and at a roundtable prior to it, he brought together Black and Jewish students. They touched on coalition building and collaboration between the two communities.
No protestors were at the event; the campus has been a hotbed of antisemitic activity in the wake of October 7. There were flyers distributed shortly after that day that said, “Zionists f*** off,” someone crossed out a Star of David with red paint, a student leader posted on Instagram that they wanted to “utter death to every single individual who supports the Zionist state” and anti-Israel protestors dubbed themselves the “Student Intifada” and set up encampments.
Senior Sam Heller, who is director of finance at FOG, said that while antisemitism on campus was bad last year, “this year has been entirely different. The administration has been far more supportive, and pro-Hamas protests have significantly diminished. These experiences shaped me into the leader I am today. I am unapologetically Jewish and proudly pro-Israel. Unlike last year, it’s now rare to encounter students who loudly and aggressively push back against me for expressing that.”
Mia Curwin, a senior at UMich as well as the executive director at FOG at her school, said she helped create the group to “clear the fog” of misinformation she saw on campus.
“We focus on educational initiatives that promote diverse, productive and fact-based dialogue on the Middle East,” she said. “As students, educators and members of this community, we have a responsibility to engage in conversations that lead forward, but those discussions must be rooted in truth.”
Heller and Curwin believe the “Policy for Peace in the Middle East” talk, achieved its goal, which was, “to provide students with a fact-based opportunity to better understand the ongoing war in the Middle East while allowing them to form their own perspectives on the region’s dynamics,” Heller said. “By fostering discussions that acknowledge Israel’s right to self-determination and its role in regional stability, we hope to shift the conversation toward cooperation, progress and a more accurate understanding of the Middle East.”
At the end of the over 90-minute discussion, Jones left the audience with an inspirational message.
“To the young people who are here: It’s not such a bad thing to face a big challenge,” he said. “It’s not such a bad thing to have to straighten your back up and reach in your shirt and pull your star out and know someone may not like that. Breakdowns become breakthroughs when you use them right.”
“You have a strong people, a beautiful people, a generous and resourceful people.” – Van Jones
He continued, “Your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, all the way back, had to deal with people who were hateful, ignorant, mean-spirited and wrong. Thank God they didn’t back down. Because you have had to stand up to hateful people for generations, you’ve created something beautiful on this earth. You have a strong people, a beautiful people, a generous and resourceful people. No pressure, no diamonds. So now it’s your turn. That’s all. That’s all.”
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