Pro-Israel M.I.A.s

Written by Gal Beckerman

Pro-Israel and missing from Israel advocacy

Last spring, as suicide bombings assailed Israel, Monica Froman felt compelled to act. For Froman, a junior at the University of California at Berkeley, being Jewish had always meant supporting Israel, and this was a time when Israel desperately needed that support.

But as she sought to express her solidarity with Israel, attending rally after rally on campus, she felt more and more disgusted with what she saw. "The biggest problem I encountered with the rallies was the amount of propaganda that was being tossed around," she says. "The history of the Middle East is so complex that it is impossible to contain all this knowledge within the confines of a demonstration." More than anything, Froman felt that being pro-Israel was beginning to mean only one thing: not questioning or criticizing any aspect of Israeli policy.

"I wanted to stand behind Israel fully in this time of need," she says, "but I also felt censored, as though open conversation in the public arena was not allowed." Eventually Froman stopped going to rallies and stopped participating in pro-Israel advocacy at Berkeley.

Froman is not alone.

At campuses across the country, Jewish students who support Israel are opting out of campus pro-Israel groups and advocacy. Perhaps this phenomenon can only be expected. "There are always going to be those who don’t feel their political views are voiced by Israel advocacy groups. That’s the art of consensus building," says Benjamin Klafter, campus outreach coordinator for the Israel Center of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation. "Get as many under the tent as possible, but realize there are always going to be some left out on both ends." On the right, there are many students who feel their campus is too lenient in its attitudes towards the Arab position. And on the left are more open-minded liberals who would like to raise their voices in support of Israel, if they did not feel that bullhorns are drowning out critical discussion.

Rabbi Andrew Bachman, director of the Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at New York University, describes the students who have been coming to him in growing numbers looking for opportunities to question and engage in dialogue as a "silent majority."

Michael Jankelowitz, who served as Hillel’s national director of campus Israel affairs during the 2001-02 academic year, confirms that this is a national phenomenon. Hillel professionals from across the country came to him over the past year for advice on how to deal with progressive students who felt alienated from the Israel groups on campus.

And Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, Columbia University and Barnard College’s Associate Chaplain, noticed critically pro-Israel students at her campus often "felt like they didn’t have a place at the table. They felt conflicted about where they fit into the Jewish community."

What is the source of the alienation of these Jewish students? For a dozen students from across the country interviewed by New Voices last summer who identify as "critically pro-Israel," the dominant influence of mainstream pro-Israel advocacy groups, most notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), on efforts to support Israel on campus create a stifling atmosphere. Students complained that the slogan-filled protests, lack of discussion, and generally uniform position of campus advocacy made them feel uncomfortable advocating for Israel on campus.

Aliza Wasserman, a sophomore at Cornell University, as an intern last summer at Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a grass roots organization, researched students who were alienated by the existing political voice on campus. She found they were opting out because "they don’t see why the issue on campus has to be one of right or wrong."

Last September, when Miri Wexler returned to the University of Wisconsin at Madison after spending her junior year in Israel, she says that the Jewish group she had been most active in before she left would not accept her questioning of Israel. Each time she attempted to discuss Israeli policies and the ethics of the conflict with other members of MADPAC (a local affiliate of AIPAC) she says she was shot down by those who told her that it was unacceptable to raise such concerns in a time of war.

Eventually, Wexler says, "I chose to withdraw from the group and not affiliate with them." Instead, she began spending her time with Palestinian-American students who were willing to exchange ideas with her. These were heated discussions "that sometimes got confrontational. But they were discussions."

Greg Woodward, a senior at Columbia University, considers himself pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian. Last year he felt "left out of the pro-Israel groups on campus that couldn’t accept my sensitivity to Palestinian issues."

Woodward cites AIPAC’s current campaign to "Take Back the Campus" as an example of what’s wrong with Israel policy on campus. "It’s a violent way of operating if you think that a campus is a thing to ‘take,’" he says. "A campus should be a place for diverse views. The goal should never be to take the campus. The goal should be to enlighten."

And Matthew Roe, an outspoken sophomore at Wesleyan University with a strong Jewish identity, says the tack that Students for a Free Israel, his campus’s pro-Israel group, took of denouncing every aspect of the Palestinian narrative played a major part in alienating him. "There is a little bit of criticism," he says, "a little bit of self-criticism, but mostly, their modus operandi is to paint the other side as pure, undynamic, evil. And this is destructive to any form of dialogue besides protest."

Leaders of various pro-Israel groups acknowledge that their format of advocacy may have alienated some students last year, but feel it was necessary to send a clear message to Israel’s detractors. Hillel’s Jankelowitz says that students who might want to critique Israel should be careful because "their voice against Israel will be used by Israel’s enemies as an example that Jews don’t stand united." Jeffrey Ross, director of campus and higher education affairs for the ADL, is even more direct. Referring to the absence of critical discussion, he says, "Tactics and strategies taken by the other side make conditions for dialogue non-existent."

Even Klafter, who identifies as liberal, is cynical when it comes to the prospect of dialogue. "If [Jewish students] want to have dialogue they should pursue it on their own—but good luck. There are always a lot of dialogue-minded Jews on campus but the question that remains is where are the Arabs that are dialogue-minded?"

This type of reactive and defensive attitude discourages certain Jewish students from advocating for Israel on campus. "Everyone is saying ‘the campus is on fire!’ and everyone is trying to find ways to put the fire out," says Shachar Yanai, national director for the student division of the Hagshama Department of the World Zionist Organization, describing the attitude of the major pro-Israel groups. Yanai says that by acting only as fire extinguishers these groups have often made their presence on campus reactionary and defensive rather than pro-active and constructive.

This year, the organized Jewish community is trying to solve the problem by making the platform of the Israel advocacy groups on campus wider. Most notable is the new Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC), an initiative of The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, which functions as an umbrella group for over 20 national Jewish organizations, ranging from Americans for Peace Now on the left to the ADL on the right.

According to Lisa Eisen, program director of The Schusterman Foundation and steering committee chair of ICC, the new organization is trying to find a way to incorporate the needs of all types of pro-Israel students. She seeks to find "common messages" for its member organizations as part of a strategy to attract students who "did not have a safe space" last year. "We need to make Israel more accessible to everybody. We need to look at the multiple constituents we are dealing with and make it comfortable for them to talk about Israel."

This effort will involve moving pro-Israel programming away from the political—away from rallies and speakers. Instead, ICC will emphasize pluralistic events that highlight different aspects of Israeli culture and society. "Israel is a wonderful, beautiful country," says Eisen. "It is the homeland of our people. And we should expose [Jewish students] to the culture, and to the business, the high-tech, and the arts."

Jonathen Rulnik, director of student affairs for the Israeli consulate, says that outreach to Jewish students who are opting out calls for a "multi-front approach that appeals on different levels." This includes what Rulnik calls the "Israeli drum circle." Four drummers, he said, will go to college campuses and bang out Israeli songs. The message, according to Rulnik, is that "Israel is something to celebrate."

Project Communicate, a new initiative funded by Jews involved in the entertainment industry, is promoting an even greater shift in focus from politics to the general culture and history of Israel, suggesting that campus groups organize a "Night of Jewish Stars," events which would bring Jewish celebrities to campuses.

But critical-minded pro-Israel students want dialogue and the freedom to analyze Israeli policy as supporters of the Jewish state—not cultural lessons and smiling celebrities. Woodward, who started his own group on campus of like-minded Jewish students, fears that the ICC, like other "innovative" Israel advocacy efforts, will be run with the same narrow agenda, and will not involve broad student input for programming decisions. "Underneath it all," says Woodward, "if things are still seen as either pro-Israel or anti-Israel, if they don’t support debate on these issues, then they will just continue to alienate people who have any critique to make of Israel."

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.