On Monday Jan. 29, I was hijacked. I stepped into the Senate office building ready to lobby my senator, Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), about ending the Iraq War as part of the nationwide lobbying day organized by the United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of political groups committed to ending the war. I was prepared to offer what I feel are practical ways for the Senate to stop the war from escalating. Alas, when I walked into Nelson's office, I discovered that some of my fellow lobbyers had their own agenda. They spent nearly half the meeting talking about the atrocities of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. One even went so far as to pull out a bottle of olive oil from Israel that was conspicuously wrapped with an image of Saddam Hussein and hand it to Nelson. Because of this tangental discussion, we didn't have enough time to discuss our points about Iraq. When we left, I felt like I hadn't accomplished anything.

This struck me as a stark metaphor for one of the biggest problems we face on campus. This issue was made apparent most recently by the visits of Jimmy Carter and Alan Dershowitz, who discussed the barriers to peace in Israel. While I don't reject the Baker-Hamilton Report's contention that "the United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability" and strongly feel that America's lack of open criticism toward dubious actions by Israel damages our reputation in the region and the world, the reality is that soldiers and untold numbers of civilians are dying every day during our current occupation of Baghdad. As students in the United States, we can have a greater impact on ending the war in Iraq by raising our voices to our senators and representatives than on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a completely gridlocked and hopeless situation.

Perhaps our desire to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has left us apathetic when it comes to dealing with the Iraq quagmire. Last semester, Brandeis' chapter of Democracy For America sponsored a signature drive against the Iraq War, but did little else to raise awarness and initiate anti-war advocacy efforts. And the drive was only during the bloodiest months yet, when the news reported downed choppers and hacked bodies daily. There was not a single march, rally or protest organized on campus in opposition to the war. Even factoring in online forums like Facebook.com, it was impossible to locate a single anti-war group started by Brandeis students or broadly supported in the Brandeis community.

All over campus this week, one can find fliers that detail the radical history of our student body, from sit-ins to storming campus buildings. This does not, of course, imply that we have abandoned our legacy and become lazy.

Rather, we're spending too much time arguing about a single line from page 213 of Carter's book and whether it constitutes anti-Semitism, and channeling too little energy and anger as a community toward combating the real injustices being perpetuated by our own government in Iraq. The prevalent Israeli-Palestinian discourse on this campus is dividing our community rather than turning us into a powerful movement that can take control and achieve something.

Last Tuesday, after I returned from a several-hundred-thousand-person anti-war march in Washington, D.C., I attended a small peace vigil on campus sponsored by the Brandeis chaplaincy. Fewer than 30 people attended, but I felt as much energy resonating from this small crowd as I did from the thousands in the capital. For one moment, any semblance of the divisiveness that pervaded the campus during the past few weeks disappeared completely. There were no distractions of anti-Semitism or diversions on Israel as we all focused in a moment of silence on the troops lost in combat and the innocent civilians who have lost their lives. It was a small but beautiful start to what I hope will be a broader movement to bring our community together.