"Please Don't Kill the Vibe": When the National Student Union Forgets Its Role

"The only revolutionary politician in Israel is Itamar Ben Gvir, and even he just turned 50," Ofer Shelah wrote in his column in Haaretz, under the headline "Israel's Young People Are the Oldest in the World." As chair of the Bezalel Students' Association and a member of the leading body of the National Union of Israeli Students (NUIS), I have to agree with this statement — at least in terms of the institutional political arena.

The NUIS is the largest youth body in Israel, and one of the largest elected bodies in the country. It has an annual budget of hundreds of millions of shekels and an organizational structure capable of mobilizing students from Tel Hai in the north to Eilat in the south. In principle, student organizations are tools for developing leadership, organizing, and formulating political positions for young people. They're supposed to be the spearhead of struggles, to lead the most innovative discourse. But that's not what the NUIS does. 

Few student leaders have been capable of truly critical thinking and expression about the status quo in Israel; the agenda mostly consists of internal disputes, and the word "political" itself has become a pejorative used in debates among association representatives. 

If I were to define the Union presidency's moral mandate, it would probably be quite simple: Don't kill the vibe with your politics.

In this context, the NUIS has turned from a body that organizes students, leads them, sparks necessary debate, builds power, and instills faith in democratic systems into a collection of lawn-party organizers and beer suppliers. "Student representation" mostly amounts to deals made over students' heads, without student involvement, while attempts to intervene in the political agenda come only as a last resort and are marked by a lack of independent thinking. 

Even the Student Union's flagship campaign, "Carrot and Stick: Don't Serve, Don't Receive," which threatened to strip basic social rights from citizens who don't serve in the military, isn't an original idea at all. The campaign, "Youth Movements for Equal Burden-Sharing," was adopted by the Tel Aviv University Student Association, and only reached the NUIS after this initial rollout.

But the Union isn't a special case — it's a mirror image of Israeli politics, which (in recent years) has become an arena where the dispute isn't over what is right to do, but over who gets to wield the same conservative toolbox. As we saw in the recent war against Iran, we heard differences of tone and style toward the government from actors as different as [Naftali] Bennett and the Democrats, but almost no principled disagreement over the very logic of endless war. 

No one dared say that this war is driven by messianic fantasies of "total victory" and ethnic cleansing, and beyond that, reflects a basic misunderstanding of the interests of the country's citizens, especially young people, who have been collapsing for years under the burden of the war.

Under these conditions, even those who define themselves in opposition to Netanyahu operate within predetermined boundaries, where "there is no alternative" besides using military force, and partnership with Arab or Haredi society isn't even on the table. None of the various political agents manages to articulate a position that fundamentally challenges the existing order. There is no lively debate, no thinking about tomorrow, no substance.

This political reality is Netanyahu's greatest victory. 

For young people in Israel, the consequences, clearly seen in student representative bodies like NUIS, aren't just a lack of representation, but a lack of horizon. The current generation is growing up inside a political system that recognizes no political alternative to Netanyahu, and most young political leaders in Israel simply don't know any other mode of operation.

But it's not only students who suffer from a lack of political imagination! The critical leadership of heads of Israeli academic institutions has effectively vanished, too. In a recent interview, for example, the president of the University of Haifa, Prof. Gur Alroey, boasted that in his view, "the Arab students at the University of Haifa are the least politically mobilized of all the cells in universities across the country [...] all they want is to finish their studies." We are studying and shaping our political identity in a reality where a university president aspires to boast that his students lack the capacity for critical thought.

Prof. Alroey's problematic statement isn't just racist — it's also mistaken. Despite the grim reality I've described, it's important to look at student initiatives that do try to push back. These initiatives constitute an opposition seeking to link struggles that are usually kept separate: [the struggle] against the occupation and settler violence is connected to the struggle against endless war, and to the fight for social and environmental justice. 

Beyond that, these initiatives simulate the political future we'd want to see here: a Jewish-Arab future characterized by dialogue among the different parts of Israeli society. The very existence of such spaces on campuses today draws fierce opposition from supporters of the current government, both on the campuses themselves and within the NUIS.

One example of such an initiative is the student branch of the Standing Together movement at the University of Haifa: a Jewish-Arab, socialist, feminist student group working against fascism, brute force, the occupation, and the war. The group’s activists lead many actions on and off campus against the madness the government is producing, with a clear alternative that lays out a vision of peace, equality, and social justice in response to the burning issues shaping Israeli politics.

Among its activities was the break-in to the live broadcast of the "Big Brother" TV show, in protest against the endless war. This action, and many others, stir public controversy of the exact kind that should be stirred in this difficult period. These are actions that break through the wall of normalization that the government and its supporters are trying to sell the public, and present it with a new agenda.

This model lets us imagine a Student Union that isn't afraid of its role: to be political. Not just in the narrow sense of this or that partisan position, but as a force that organizes the public, creates debate, builds social solidarity, and leads the student public toward critical thinking and activism. 

We need a Union capable of building a culture of struggle, instead of conforming its agenda to a reality dictated from above. A Union that formulates clear demands of the government, of academia, and of Israeli society, and above all, doesn't operate like the previous generation of politicians who are razing this land to the ground. Such a Union is possible, and when I look at my colleagues, the students from Haifa, I believe it can still come into being.

Nadav Golan is the chair of the Bezalel Students' Association and a member of the Standing Together movement's leadership.

Editing: Shiraz Angert Translation by Niv Likwornik