Now that both Israeli Occupation Awareness Week and Israel Peace Week have come to a close, I finally have some time to stop and reflect on the events of the past week. As a Jew and a Zionist, I certainly felt strong emotions every time I encountered a group of student activists on the Rabb steps. Whether they were promoting Diana Bhutto and Noam Chomsky or asking me to sign a petition relating to Gilad Shalit, these activists certainly got an internal rise out of me, even if I couldn't pinpoint at the time exactly what I was thinking or feeling.Now that the dust has settled, I can safely say that I do not feel offended that there are those who deny Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, I do not feel relieved that Zionists on campus responded to Israeli Occupation Awareness Week relatively swiftly and respectfully, and I do not feel proud that Brandeis students are actively concerned and engaged with the issues surrounding the conflict.

Rather, I feel defeated. I feel pessimistic. I feel as if the Zionist dream is dying the death of a thousand cuts.

Let me explain. I am a proud Zionist because I believe that the modern state of Israel presents a remarkable opportunity for the Jewish people to create a model state that can serve as an example of what a just and moral society ought to look like. I want Israel to be a world leader in protecting the rights of the poor and disadvantaged. I want Israel to demonstrate how religion can be a powerful force for good in the world. I want Israel to have an army that is admired not only for its effectiveness but also for its morality.

Most importantly, I want dialogue about Israel to center around these issues. There is terrible poverty in Israel; how can it be solved? How can Israel ensure that a state with so many competing religious groups protects the rights of all its citizens? The Israeli army faces terrible threats daily, so how can it maintain its effectiveness without sacrificing its concern for human life? These are important questions that merit serious discussion.

Yet this past week showed me that these questions cannot merit the thought and discussion they deserve, at least not on our college campus.

What I saw last week was that dialogue about Israel here at Brandeis seems hopelessly focused on the single issue of the conflict with the Palestinians. Both sides of that conflict continuously argue with each other, protest each other and talk past each other confident that if they can effectively express their strongly held opinions about the conflict that they will have made a noble "stand" for a just cause.

Those who organized Israeli Occupation Awareness Week seem unable to look past the issues surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and realize that inside the security fence they so vigorously oppose lies a growing and thriving society: one in which the holy sites of all religions are protected by the state; women, minorities and homosexuals are accorded full civil and political rights; and a society with thriving academic and social institutions.

These activists are so animated by their opposition to the occupation that they reduce the state of Israel to nothing but an occupying colonialist force.

One would think that Brandeis' Zionist activists would know better. One would think that they would see past the conflict with the Palestinians and be able to mount a response to Israeli Occupation Awareness Week that focused on all Israel has accomplished and remains to accomplish as a society.

Instead, Zionist students stood on the Rabb steps reading off the names of victims of Palestinian terrorist attacks. Pro-Israel activism on campus became a grotesque exercise in self-pity and in assigning blame. Zionists allowed the anti-Zionists to set the tone of the debate and focus dialogue about Israel solely on the never-ending conflict with Palestinians to the exclusion of all other issues.

Rabbi Michael Melchior, an Israeli Rabbi and former Labor Party Knesset member, once quipped that so many people seem obsessively concerned with what the borders of Israel ought to be that they seem unconcerned with what will happen inside those borders.

After last week, I feel as if Israel dialogue on campus focuses exclusively on where borders are to be drawn and who is to blame for the fact that neither Israel nor Palestine has any final borders. No one seems to want to talk about what ought to happen within Israel's borders. No one seems concerned about the type of society that Israeli Jews and Arabs will construct within the borders of Israel.

It seems that this seemingly eternal conflict that has consumed dialogue about Israel in the media for decades is also consuming dialogue about Israel here at Brandeis. It seems as if this conflict will prove to be the eternal distraction from realizing the Zionist dream of building a model society in the Land of Israel.

I'm not proposing solutions or suggestions in this article; I am merely lamenting the fact that here at Brandeis, the Zionist dream seems to have disappeared. After a full week of students attacking and defending Israel, I am left wondering why the Jewish people ever longed to create Israel in the first place.