“There’s not much dialogue on campus,” said Khullat Munir ’09, outgoing president of the Islamic Alliance for Justice and one of the organizers of the Arts Quad display. “We wanted to get out awareness.”

— “Protest Gone Wrong: Gaza Display Ruined,” News, The Sun, Feb. 9

I had originally intended this piece to be a point-by-point refutation of the “facts” displayed at the now-infamous “black flags” display. However, I concluded that there are larger issues at hand than Israel’s reputation.

To be sure, the display was patently egregious. The most striking aspects of the display that come to mind were the flags for the Hamas militants and the display of the refuted claim that Israel shelled a United Nations school. But again, my intent here is not to be a fact checker. I leave that job to angry letters to the editor. The issue here is how this display has and will change the tenor of our campus discourse.

The display was perturbing for its simplicity, for its favoring “awareness” over knowledge. A situation that is by no means devastatingly clear was reduced to pithy statements removed from any context; a nuanced debate was scrapped for sound bites.

Such a superficial representation of a complex reality is worse than misleading: it is the cheapest form of propaganda. That the University would provide funding for such a display raises serious questions about its commitment to real debate. One questions Dean of Students Kent Hubbell’s ’68 statement that the university expected “constructive results” from the display. The black flags strewn across the Arts Quad would tend to disagree.

Indeed, the destruction of the display — which I happened to view from the seventh floor of Olin — was a narrow-minded response to a narrow-minded campaign. From what I saw, the perpetrators had not thoroughly planned the “attack”; in fact, it appeared to be spontaneous, without any motive but pure steam-blowing. Is this what President Skorton had in mind when he called for more “open and active debate” on campus? Certainly we are not lacking for activity. But what do we mean by “debate”?

Debate, though often misconstrued as such, is not self-congratulation. It requires two parties willing to listen to and recognize opposing insights. If there is no such recognition, then the “debate” is nothing more than a parallel play of monologues. Real debate, indeed, real discussion, can come only from a place of mutual acknowledgement.

Such has been the modus operandi of a group of Muslim (including members of IAJ) and Jewish students, who have met for biweekly dinners for a “mutual, cultural, inter-faith exchange,” in the words of a participant as said to me. The amicable environment of these dinners was such that when the heads of both CIPAC and Hillel saw the display, they reacted with surprise and no small sense of betrayal. As the president of Hillel remarked, he would have appreciated at least a “heads up.”

In that light, we therefore must address the claim of IAJ President Khullat Munier that “there’s not much dialogue on campus.”

First and foremost, her statement completely disregards the existing efforts at real dialogue. Such an omission is strange, given that her group, along with the Muslim Educational and Cultural Association, actively participates in these dinners. Thus, her statement demeans not only the Jewish groups involved but hers as well.

Second, does she reasonably believe that this display will bring about “real” dialogue? From empirical observation thus far, we can confidently respond in the negative. The display has only engendered ill-will and has left a bad taste in the mouths of those who were willing to engage in dialogue. One can assume that the sense of betrayal felt by those student leaders involved will hinder them from engaging in the “dialogue” as whole-heartedly as they once did.

And who could blame them? The “mutual dialogue” in which they invested their time turned out to be a farce. Their notion of “progress” in bringing the two communities together was revealed as nothing more than a pipe dream. And no, we cannot evince “progress” from the rearrangement of the flags into a peace sign.

Indeed, the only usefulness of the display has been to clearly illustrate the distinction between “dialogue” and “awareness.” The former requires nuance and mutual respect; the latter exists in a vacuum, immune to the demand of the other.

An illustration: a friend who was involved in the biweekly dinners told me that when walking down Ho Plaza, he encountered a fellow dinner participant distributing quarter-cards about the Gaza operation. The distributor handed him no card, and made no eye contact. “He couldn’t bring himself to look at me,” my friend stated.

Tragic, indeed. Such, however, is the price of “awareness.”