*tel aviv, the west bank, and an argument to lightly hold your beliefs. last updated 05/06/2025* #### some disclaimers and the structure of this post This post was written as my final project for a course on Israel and Palestine (outlined in [[#background]]). I first recap the course to explain the context for the trip that the class took to Israel and Palestine, then make a general argument for the advantages of lightly holding one's beliefs — even the deepest held ones — informed by, and analysed through the lens of, what I saw on the trip. I initially wrote this piece in the second person. This felt accusatory. Then I wrote in the indefinite pronoun "one", which felt self-righteous and far too confident. The natural thing I was avoiding, of course, was writing in the first person — because I didn't hesitant, maybe even fearful, of openly sharing any ideas that could even remotely be construed as controversial with my name attached. I've decided to stop this cowardice, with the notable disclaimer that — in the spirit of this post — these are not my definitive *beliefs* on the geopolitical situation, they're experiences I had over the course of the class, and that where beliefs arise, I lightly hold them. Everything I've written could be wrong. This post is particularly invalid whenever easily changing one's mind for good reasons is bad. Yet in the period during, and after, the class, I've found intellectual flexibility to be an asset in more instances than being closed off would be, and I wanted to write about that. If this post is offensive or disappointing, please [[1/blogroll|contact me]]. If you have any thoughts at all, please [[1/blogroll|contact me]]. This piece of writing was the most difficult I've ever done, partially because I wasn't sure who I was writing for. Part of me, egotistically, wanted to break through to the most convicted. Looking back, I could have written this more towards an audience of rationalists or less polarised intellectuals. I think the actual audience has been myself — and people like me — in the future. My implicit purpose is to remind myself of the danger of strongly holding convictions without reason, or more simply, to remind myself of why I should lightly hold my beliefs. I'm grateful, as always, to you, for reading. Thus concludes the second person. #### background I'm in a class that goes by many names on campus. The Israel class, the Beachhead conservative outpost flagship class, the "genocide field trip" class. The official title is *SCLL190: Courageous Conversations on Israel and Palestine*, a fairly mundane title that disguises the most unique class I'll likely ever take in college. Every Monday, a group of twenty six of us will gather a bunch of chairs in a circle, and hear from guest speakers — who have included the (somewhat controversial) chancellor and (now former)[^11] provost of my university, a doctor who has served in Gaza, a duo of a formerly incarcerated person and a correctional officer, Israelis and Palestinian activists currently living in the West Bank, a notable Rabbi and an Imam, amongst others — discussing the big questions and different perspectives on the conflict. None of this, however, seems to capture the real, implicit purpose of the class, which is not just to learn about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Instead, the goal seems to centre on using a topic with a wide range of complexities, often clashing furiously with each other, to facilitate a more constructive form of discussion — and ideally, to leave participants with a generalisable experience of how to better approach conflict, encourage dialogue, and learn from those one disagrees with. However straightforward you [^19] may think this articulation was, the execution (i.e. the class as it happened) was several degrees more complicated. The class is taught by three external instructors, who include an exited juice entrepreneur who now runs a company dedicated to "building a stronger America by promoting a culture of pluralism and practicing civil discourse"; an ex-political advisor who told me his job now was "helping people he loves [working with] solve their biggest problems"; and a formerly incarcerated landscaping tycoon, who has worked in non-profit health, the federal probation office, and the DoJ.[^12] These three take turns travelling to North Carolina each Monday. Our non-travelling instructor is a professor at UNC whose other courses have included a class that takes the students to a gun range before discussing the second amendment, and a class on gender where an assignment is to go on a date.[^13] This obviously begs the question: *how does this class even exist?* #### how does this class exist? In the 2023-2024 school year, the UNC campus dialogue, protest, series of happenings (whatever term you[^20] believe is accurate) on the issue was fairly eventful. Any attempt at describing events is probably construable as passing judgement — which is not my intention with this post. Feel free to search online, if curious. SCLL190 was born out of the university administration's desire for a pilot project facilitating "healthier" conversations on the issue, a cause that all of our instructors were involved with to varying degrees prior to the course. Again, I am aware this description may come off as passing judgement or as a political statement — which is not my intention. Over spring break, our class travelled to Israel and Palestine. To recount the entire experience would require a significant amount of description, and to recount only the highlights would require a significant amount of unbiased judgement. Neither of these are particular strengths of this blog. Some of my classmates have written more detailed summaries; and of course, [[1/blogroll|I'll recount the experience more fully anytime.]] This post will instead interweave notable anecdotes with the largest takeaway from the trip (below). ## personal reflections on lightly held beliefs My university is full of strongly held beliefs. Every answer, from anything as quotidian as "what's your major" to something more significant like "what are your stances on abortion", will receive an answer that slopes downwards near the ending, taking an angle of certainty. During election season's "are you voting for Kamala", the simple English words like "yes" — which takes less than a calorie to create — signified so much more! The same can be said of "pro-choice", "conservative, "pro-Palestine" — these labels are convenient, compressed ways of conveying a lot more. People often sort themselves into simple camps and identify — in an almost them vs. us; who is not in the camp — sort of way.[^14] I'll forward two thoughts on this phenomenon. First, I'll present some general arguments that have convinced me to lightly hold my strong beliefs. Second, I'll say that even when strong beliefs are deservedly held, why I still consider lightening my grasp on those beliefs. In other words, part one will discuss how there are often reasons to change your beliefs, and part two will discuss why one should always be open to updating beliefs when these reasons arise. ##### one: flawed origins Here's a story that often informed how my beliefs arose when I was younger. Due to debating, general media caricature, and probably some other litany of factors, I overwhelmingly believed in "evil governments", where more often than not, I characterised a state as a highly rational, selfishly motivated actor who only does things for land or profit. When I applied this lens to Israel, I resultantly fell into the "pro-Palestine camp".[^22] What I learned on the trip was that the argument Zionists make for their claim to the land isn't based on profit. During the trip, every local — including Palestinians living both in and outside of Israel — acknowledged some larger reason for Israelis feeling attached to the land: ranging from biblical history and previous presence to refuge. I give this example not to fully explain my entire belief structure. Instead, this is one case of how my misconceptions had been clarified through the experience — I had previously applied a lens that was familiar, and probably correct in some cases, to a case where it may not be fully true. If I had firmly held this belief that Israel was just trying to violently claim some prime real estate, I would have gone down a series of further, increasingly absurd, beliefs to protect it: maybe every citizen I met was a liar, maybe all the locals are cleverly placed propaganda in order to brainwash me, maybe the Bible's setting wasn't actually in Israel, etc., etc. Lightly holding the initial belief allowed me to more open-heartedly evaluate both its initial source (i.e. the debater's lens), and the following pieces of evidence (i.e. the conversations I had) than starting from some pre-determined truth one step after the initial source. ##### two: equally confused crowds Most of my beliefs are, in part, formed by the people I'm around, the media I consume, and the conversations I hear. This, in the absence of direct life experience, is almost all of what I have to calibrate my beliefs. These group beliefs have to come from somewhere: which either means my beliefs come from someone else's belief formed via experience, or their belief formed via someone else's belief via someone else's experience, and so on; or maybe I read a piece of media that someone else's experience was used to write, and so on. As an experiment before this trip, I asked a staunch Zionist how he came to justify disproportionality.[^15] He gave some reasons, then I asked him what the root of those beliefs were. I was looking, essentially, for the genealogy of this belief. He pointed me to his parents, who pointed me to a singular anecdote about an IDF fighter seeing a Hamas terrorist teach a young kid to shoot a weapon that his grandmother had read on her friend's Facebook post. From this opinion being espoused by his circle, he had confirmed the belief that without eradicating all terrorist presence in the region, Israel would forever be under threat. The extent of the evidence for his belief, if I eliminated the "crowd effect" (i.e. his parents, grandparents introducing this argument to him) is simply that one anecdote. Yet he learned to parrot this argument, and because no one questions the root of his belief, he never recognised the leap he was making. One simple way I've tried to avoid this trap is to ask for evidence whenever I hear a belief, rather than just relying on intuition or trustworthiness of the person I'm hearing it from. ##### three: the "experience" overemphasis [^16] It's true that seeing things with my own eyes was probably positive for forming accurate beliefs. On our trip, we saw a Mercedes dealership and a Chinese restaurant in the West Bank and shared cities where the non-Jewish quarters were in substantially worse condition; we heard about how Israeli forces would sometimes not show up to staff the Jordanian border, meaning Palestinians could no longer exit. These little details aren't easy to convey in media without direct — or hearing about someone's direct — experience, and I found them informative in sketching out a fuller picture. Yet the unfortunate nature of these little details is that they are almost based on luck — who I talked to that day, what they felt like sharing, etc. Obviously, the risk of this standard deviation is lower with a wider range of experience (e.g. more time) but there's still some risk of an inaccurately general belief arising out of a limited set of experiences. And so, I hold all my beliefs — including the ones informed by my own experiences — with an equal degree of caution, aware that my experiences are rarely generalisable. ##### four: empathy Our class was at an overlook of Gaza. The area was in ruins. A doctor told us about how the IDF burned critical life-saving machines in hospitals. Earlier that day, we were at the Nova festival grounds. We saw pictures of Hamas staring down people pleading for their lives. Our subconscious had been flooded with children crying with shrapnel embedded in their chests, our eyes constantly presented with innocent, smiling pictures of hostages who still hadn't been returned. I say all this because if I had previously held firm beliefs of "right" and "wrong", I'd almost feel encouraged to ignore any emotional devastation that doesn't correspond with the belief, or the numbers, or whatever other evidence formed the belief. This is a harm disguised as a blessing: firstly, there seems to be something profoundly wrong with ignoring suffering in order to maintain ideological comfort; moreover, it's generally harder to be an advocate, activist, or changemaker if one is incapable of demonstrating empathy for other perspectives. ### on the strongest-held beliefs I'd like to now write about a difficult challenge in the case for lightly-held beliefs. This is the category of beliefs which follow from evidence that if one believes in, command the belief to be strongly held. Notably, because of how powerful these pieces of evidence are, and how damning is the direction they point, even some uncertainty can be justifiably ignored. I conceptualise many of the most outspoken pro-Palestine perspectives[^23] on campus as falling within this category: if I believed in the worldview that this is a genocide, it certainly follows that I should act on this belief like it is a strong belief. I shouldn't say "I'm only 85% sure this is a genocide, but because I'm 15% uncertain, I will not act."[^17] Here are two reasons I'm still open to changing my mind, even in these cases of demanding, strong convictions. Firstly, the cost of error is extraordinarily high. If *any* of the above four arguments apply to a belief that I have likely organised parts of my life around, the result is a fairly large inaccuracy.[^21] When beliefs are held strongly, I'm more exposed to the effects of changing conditions. The events of October 7th, for example, probably changed the nature of many people's support of Palestine.[^18] A stronger held belief is harder to update, and lends itself more easily to bad intellectual practices: lying to myself, for instance, in order to avoid acknowledging the full scope of evidence. This is not an argument against conviction, it's an argument for being open to change one's convictions. The degree of conviction is out of the scope of this post. Second, and most controversially, I think lightly holding my beliefs has made my life more rich. I'm less scared to ask intrusive questions to all perspectives, because I'm not emotionally/intellectually/spiritually attached to my beliefs. I'm more willing to engage with a wider range of people, because I don't feel personally affronted by disagreement. This has some advantage in better refinement of my intellectual views, escaping the echo chambers, etc. — but perhaps more simply, I just feel it's bad form to enter a room and be opposed to X% of people because of my perceptions of their personal beliefs, which they likely had limited influence in the formation of (see above four arguments on the root of many beliefs). We would probably all be better off if we lightly held our strong beliefs — and again, this isn't an argument against outspoken advocacy, this is a proposal to constantly refine one's advocacy. After all, the easiest way to express a belief, and the way most people do, is to adopt one of the short labels we began this section with, sorting oneself into a community — which tends to be antithetical to this purpose of decreasing attachment to beliefs. This is for reasons that range from the echo chamber effect to the simple fact it feels good to hold easily-articulable identities, even when one might not agree fully with all of a group's tenets. The unfortunate irony is that intellectual communities are a powerful way to refine and challenge beliefs. The actual reason SCLL190 was so meaningful wasn't the trip, it was that the intellectual community was designed with an *extraordinary* degree of intention. While I can't confidently say the class lightly held their beliefs, I can certainly say it didn't feel as if the class held their beliefs in a way that closed us off from each other or closed us off from deeper learning. The real function of any intellectual space should be what happens inside it, rather than the label it provides. A norm of lightly holding deeply held beliefs lends itself better to truth-seeking and refined thinking within communities. Unfortunately, "truth-seeking lightly held belief proponent" is more syllables than "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestine". It's hard to change your mind, especially publicly. We ought to make it easier. ### concluding thoughts In this piece, I have tried to demonstrate, generally, that we should decrease our attachment to our beliefs. One thing I've tried to do is read this piece from different perspectives — Zionist activists, Palestinian activists, my course instructors — and truthfully, I don't think any would be happy. The purpose of this post isn't to express my updated views on Israel and Palestine; it isn't to explain how this class can be generalised to all of knowledge or all of academia; it isn't to proselytise all of you into abandoning all conviction. Part of this class was a documentary that's expected to come out later this or next year. It felt — to say the least — weird to reflect on such complex, controversial issues with this degree of publicity. Increasingly though, I see the bravery required to lightly hold deep beliefs as a similar flavour to the bravery required to think publicly. In that sense, I consider this final project as very much in line with the spirit of the class. And so, I consider the purpose of this piece to document how this experience changed my thinking and changed how I think. I write with the hope that this post will encourage a similar degree of transparency, openness, and honesty in how you think. And that, I promise, concludes the second person. ### an afterword Since returning from the trip, a lot of my friends have asked to cross-check their beliefs with the slice of reality I saw on the ground. Sharing my experiences might be a somewhat flawed, but still valuable, way of informing these friends' beliefs, and so I considered writing a post of doing the hard thing and recapping the whole trip. One of our final speakers, [Dr. Tal Becker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tal_Becker) said something along the lines of how hundreds of thousands of experts have passed through the region and yet the conflict still continues. My slice of reality might be useful to hear, but I doubt it's more valuable than what hundreds of wartime press correspondents currently stationed in Gaza or the dozens of local student activists have to say. I write this to say my intention isn't to sway minds on the conflict. My intention is to argue in favour of divorcing our characters, our identities, and our self-perceived worthiness from our beliefs. All too often, they permanently meld together — at the cost of our intellectual flexibility. *Thank you to A., Dr. Rose, Simon, Hana, all the tea time members, and SCLL190 members who read drafts of this. This is still, always, a work in progress, and may be updated.* [^11]: Theorised to be a result of ideological conflicts over the department the class is in. [^12]: These people are simply incompressible, which I deeply admire them for. [^12-1]: My response to this incompressibility is obviously a reductive, tongue-in-cheek explainer. If this causes some distress, perhaps add the phrase "amongst other things" in there. My apologies. [12-2]: Do you realise how awesome these bios are? [^13]: Personally, I feel this class is a little *too* academically challenging. [^14]: If you believe this to be an unfounded assertion, I'd be happy to discuss more. [^15]: As in, he was willing to accept Israel's efforts, even if they were disproportionate. [^16]: Just as I may have done in this post! [^17]: You can replace 85% with almost any other percentage, and this sentence would still be valid for some section of people. [^18]: I want to re-iterate I'm not certain if people stopped/started supporting Palestine — whatever "supporting Palestine even means" — I'm just observing, off of my own interactions, that people often caveated or addressed how October 7th refined their views. Sometimes it didn't! [^19]: Oops! Sorry for lying about the second person. [^20]: Okay. Just ignore what I said above about the second person. [^21]: As a trivial example: for the longest time, I thought I was incapable of math — and I followed fairly similar logic, that even if I was only 85% unsure that I was incapable of math, the expected value of my actual math ability was probably low. Thus, I didn't take any math at all. I am now a math major. The cost of error has been very, very high. [^22]: Labels are reductive. [^23]: Again, labels are reductive.