A sharp split in the American Jewish community over the future of 2.6 million Palestinians living under Israeli control in the West Bank and Jerusalem surfaced at a recent event at the Hillel chapter at Washington University.

The sometimes bitter division of opinion over Israel’s military presence in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six- Day War, has since reverberated around the Internet.

Furthermore, the March 31 meeting at the recently refurbished St. Louis Hillel, 6300 Forsyth Boulevard, calls into question, in the minds of some, the proper role of Hillel chapters on college campuses.

Opponents of the featured speaker, a former Israeli soldier who was posted in the West Bank, have charged that he misrepresented Israeli policy and methods toward Palestinians. 

On one side was J Street U, an affiliate of the Washington-based J Street, which bills itself as a pro-Israel, pro-peace organization. Among its activities, J Street sponsors former Israeli Defense Forces soldiers who speak on college campuses under the name Breaking the Silence (BTS).

On its website, J Street declares: “Stand up for the hard decisions that will make a two-state solution possible.”

The message of BTS: The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is harmful to Israel’s long-term survival and corrosive to Israel’s moral stance in the world.

“The only way to control the Palestinians is by intimidating them, which is what the IDF does,” said the speaker, Oded Na’aman, 32, in a phone interview late last week. “It’s a consequence of the political situation. The only way the IDF can act is through brute force and through intimidation.”

He said he conveyed the same message to about 60 students, mostly Jewish, who attended the meeting at Hillel. 

Na’aman was an IDF noncommissioned officer in the West Bank during the second Palestinian intifada in the early 2000s. Today, in addition to speaking as a member of BTS, he is working on his doctorate in philosophy at Harvard.

His characterization of IDF behavior in the West Bank raised the ire of another group that operates nationally on topics being presented to Jewish college students. StandWithUs, based in the Los Angeles area, also sends former IDF soldiers to counter what its founder, Roz Rothstein, calls “ill will” toward Israel and its military.

“We have been following BTS for as long as they have been around,” Rothstein said in a phone interview last week. “We hope that people will either ignore them or that they get no audience. We will be there to respond to misinformation and half-truths.”

Rothstein was critical of Na’aman and his comments. 

“Who is this guy? Why is he doing this?” she asked. “He is painting the entire Israeli army one way.”

At Na’aman’s talk, and representing StandWithUs, was Hen Mazzig, 24, who flew to St. Louis from Seattle to attend the meeting at Hillel, which organizers said was intended for a campus audience.  

Several people interviewed who attended the meeting said they thought Mazzig was there specifically to argue with and discredit Na’aman.

Jacqueline Ulin Levey, executive director of St. Louis Hillel, said that was a situation she worked to avoid because she wanted students to hear Na’aman’s point of view and be able to ask questions of the speaker without the evening descending into a loud debate.

Mazzig says that he is a junior officer in the IDF and that Na’aman’s experiences with Palestinians under occupation were more than 10 years ago. (Mazzig’s  commentary about the event is available at http://bit.ly/1qg5umh).

“I objected to his characterization of the IDF as a human rights violator,” Mazzig said early this week. “He is with a fringe group that does not represent 600,000 Israeli soldiers. … He doesn’t do justice to my army and my people.”

Mazzig also questioned, as have some others, why Hillel would permit the speaker to say what he did.

Also attending Na’aman’s presentation and a subsequent discussion with students was Batya Abramson-Goldstein, executive director of the St. Louis Jewish Community Relations Council. 

“Allowing this kind of discussion to take place at Hillel is pro-Israel,” she said. “It was carefully formulated, and it engaged students who might otherwise feel they have no place in Hillel and the larger Jewish community.”

In an email, Abramson-Goldstein added this comment: “The presentation and discussion were framed with great care by J Street U and St. Louis Hillel. The net result was, I believe, profoundly pro-Israel.”

Levey said she worked carefully with student members to frame the evening’s events and to limit some of what the featured speaker might say and show. She had her eye on the opposition that StandWithUs and others might raise.

“We did not allow Oded to share photos and videos,” she said. “StandWithUs says that testimonies (of IDF soldiers) are anonymous. I did want to be sure that Oded presented his own narrative.”

Levey added that Hillel’s mission in St. Louis is to be a place where many points of view in the student Jewish community from throughout area campuses can be represented. 

“We want students to be able to understand the complexities of Israel and the conflict,” she said.

Levey rejected the charge that by allowing speakers like Na’aman from BTS to speak, the chapter is on a slippery slope toward eventually hosting groups or individuals associated with the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement.

The reach of the Internet means that the March 31 event has reverberated as far away as the Boston area. From there, Daniel Mael, a former Washington University student now at Brandeis, weighed in with his comments (bit.ly/OxcUn3).

Reached last week by phone, Mael charged that some Hillel chapters, including St. Louis, are violating the spirit of Hillel as providing a safe place for Jewish students.

“People give money to Hillel International on the assumption that it will sponsor pro-Israel events,” he said. He said part of the reason he opposes the Open Hillel concept is because he believes it opens the door to Hillel welcoming BDS speakers and promoting anti-Israel content.

However, Elisabeth Housman, a Washington University senior and the J Street campus coordinator, said she considers Na’aman’s talk “very successful.”

“One third of the Washington University student body is Jewish,” she said last week. “We think J Street is making a great contribution to their understanding. We had so many people there that we had to bring in more chairs.”

Housman said the event was “a really wonderful way to involve students and why they should care about Israel. There has been a lot of campus conversation since.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated from the print version to reflect a clarification from Daniel Mael regarding his opposition to the Open Hillel concept.