| The War at Home |
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| Written by Richard Frederic Semegram | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday, 05 February 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Fuel For Truth Brings Israel Advocacy to the Nightclub. What Kind of Party Is This, Anyway? Revelers at a Fuel For Truth event in Manhattan. Israel advocacy is a traditionally un-hip cause, lacking the cachet enjoyed on campus by pro-Palestinian activist groups. Fuel For Truth, a non-profit based in New York City, aims to change that by dressing up a straightforward pro-Israel message with cool-kid party hype and militaristic imagery. Through events targeting 18-34 year-olds, the group constructs a preppy subculture where it makes perfect sense to listen to a speech on the threat of radical Islam while standing on the dance floor of a darkened nightclub. In the Club  Fuel For Truth's logo. “We are, as a generation, very social,” says Kat Guttman, director of operations at Fuel For Truth. “We get information from our peers, more than from the news [media]. We get it from our social networks.” To access and influence these networks, Fuel For Truth hosts social events that Guttman optimistically describes as the “the best parties in New York City.” The events, such as the June party at Arena, are held at clubs throughout New York, and are organized around themes such as, "Behind Enemy Lines: What Radical Islam Doesn't Want You to Know," and "FFT Fight Night: Hamas vs. FFT." Yael Gross, a Fuel For Truth member and organizer, describes how “people crowd in...there are always a few celebs photographed in the front.” The party features a half hour slide show filled with easily digestible “facts” about Israel and the War on Terror. Says Gross, “We basically lure them in, kind of 'scare' them or 'shock' them with images and facts that they didn't know...then tell them what they can do to help out and after that the party goes on!” The group also hosts a series of campus parties. A recent press release describing one such event at Columbia University explained that the discussion at a popular bar would “stir in facts using a rapid fire briefing style reminiscent of the TV show 24 to get across the critical data about Israel, the Mid-East Conflict, and why it is so important for young Americans to be informed.” Behind the Shield For most participants, a party and a few sound bites are all of the engagement that Fuel For Truth offers. Each year, however, a few young people are allowed to go further. Attaining full membership in Fuel For Truth is a rigorous and selective process. “The most direct path to membership is to attend our 10-week Boot Camp,” says Guttman. The Boot Camp accepts 20 people a year, teaching them “the history of Israel, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity,” according to a video on the Fuel For Truth website. While participants are allowed to keep their day jobs, the program involves evening classes, readings, homework, and event organizing experience. At the end of the program, graduates undergo an induction ceremony in which they gain the right to wear on their lapel Fuel For Truth’s logo: a blue shield bearing a large Star of David in the center with a smaller crescent and cross in the lower corners. According to Guttman, the casual militarism is anything but accidental. Although she maintains that Fuel for Truth considers itself to be a “democratic, for peace organization," she continues, "We like to be known as a fighting army, with truth as our weapon.” This informs a range of the group's activities, including former military men as speakers, as well as referring to student organizers of campus events as “Fuel For Truth’s Special Forces of Israel Advocacy.” Spreading the Message In the six years that Fuel For Truth has existed, the organization has spread its message to thousands of people in the unaffiliated, assimilated, young urban demographic that the group targets. According to Guttman, they focus on politically unaffiliated and socially influential individuals. Joe Richards, the group’s founder, targeted this particular bracket after deciding that it was being left behind by advocacy groups and was susceptible to the influence of the media and ill-informed peers. In spite of the commonly cited apathy of the Internet Age, Richards believed these young people could be reached. Frank Luntz, the political pollster best known as the Republican party communications guru who named the “death tax,” conducted a survey this past March of Fuel For Truth’s members and participants. “Members are advocating on behalf of Israel eight more times a month versus young people who do not participate in Fuel For Truth,” according to Luntz. The survey also found that 47% of those involved with Fuel For Truth are “more interested in Judaism” than they were before they joined. “Apparently, a byproduct of Israel advocacy is an interest in the religion behind the country,” Luntz says. Not all advocacy is good advocacy, of course. Fuel For Truth’s efforts to convey what they believe to be the basic truths of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a format that goes down easy are typical of an age in which in-depth understanding of current events is too often replaced by a set of entertaining factoids. While the facts that Fuel For Truth purports may be well-researched, their rhetoric of Truth implies an unwillingness to engage in dialogue. When coupled with the militant affectations of the organization’s elite members, such an attitude inspires some concern. Behind the veneer of glossy photo shoots and frenetic messages, Fuel For Truth is structured to breed a sort of certainty not conducive to healthy debate.
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