Tim Cohen, senior VP of Hillel, wants you to know that the Jews are under attack. Beware, there are protestors. And, apparently, their most disruptive tactic is to tape their mouths shut and sit in their seats–then walk out.
Also, Hillel needs more money.
We at New Voices got one of those annoying form fundraising e-mails today from Cohen. It was addressed to Ilana Sichel, the 2005-2007 New Voices editor.
Dear Ilana,
I’m forwarding an e-mail I received from Aaron Weil, Hillel’s Executive Director in Pittsburgh. Please take some time to read his note. I think it will give you an idea of the anti-Israel activities taking place on many campuses. It really underscores the importance of continuing to stand strong in the face of adversity! Please read Aaron’s e-mail and then consider making a gift to help Hillel.
Thank you!
To summarize: “Dear [insert Jew], The Jews are in trouble. Read this story about it. Then give us some money so we can save the Jews.”
Then, there’s the forwarded letter:
Dear Fellow Hillel Directors,
This evening, PIPAC (The Pitt Israel Public Affairs Committee), Panthers for Israel, the Hillel JUC and Campus Republicans co-sponsored a program on campus with an Israeli soldier that was phenomenal. We had 100 students in attendance.
So that sounds cool. Good for them. And I see that they’ve involved Campus Republicans, which is great because Jewish college students are really into the GOP.
Oh, and take a look at the numbers here: “100 students in attendance.” We’re gonna come back to that later in the email when Weil contradicts himself on the attendance.
Campus police came in at the last minute from across campus when it became obvious that the group Students for Justice in Palestine was staging a large protest with people from off campus.
If the protesters are from off-campus, does that make them less legitimate protesters? I seem to recall that the Freedom Riders were mostly from places quite far from where they were protesting.
When the crowd of protesters grew, our student leaders joined me in a meeting with the head of Pitt’s campus police to ask for help. While the event had previously been open to the public, the safety of the students necessitated a decision by the campus police to limit attendance to only students. This cut the number of protesters in half but still allowed over a dozen or so anti-Israel protesters into the room.
I can understand limiting attendance because they wanted to have their talk uninterrupted, but why was it a safety concern? Was the crowd of protesters armed or violent? I’m going to guess that their plan was to disrupt the talk, rather than hurt anyone. But I suppose if your goal is to increase the level of paranoia surrounding the issue and scare people into sending money, then quietly implying that there was a chance of violence might serve you well.
The protesters who were students were allowed in. In an act of protest, they taped their own mouths shut with electrical tape and sat in silence with signs for most of the speech until at one point they got up in unison and marched out to be disruptive. The speaker was professional, unmoved and kept his composure.
Well, that sounds like the least disruptive, most respectful protest I’ve ever heard of.
On the other hand, respectfully disagreeing with someone else’s point of view is definitely not something we want in academia–and this sounds like the worst of the worst when it comes that sort of thing. They sat in silence? With their mouths taped shut? Then, “they got up in unison and marched out??” How dare they end their protest before the speaker was finished?
Weil then fawns over the courage of their speaker, who had the remarkable fortitude to keep speaking even though a bunch of people were sitting quietly through his speech. What a hero.
I guess I’m failing to understand why this protest, of all the campus Israel protests out there, occasioned a fundraising pitch. There are some anti-Israel protests that are actually disruptive, and a few that have turned violent. Then again, I’m not a fear-mongering fundraiser, so I guess I don’t have the proper professional background to grok this.
The student protesters then went outside and joined the non-student protesters and now in a much larger group began again to chant loudly so as to drown out the speaker for a second time.
I’m having trouble following this narrative. A second time? Weil didn’t mention the first time they drowned him out, seeing as they sat silently. Did they really drown him out? A group of people presumably being held back from the entrance to a building were loud enough to drown out a presumably amplified person speaking to a crowd inside? I admit that I’m making a lot of assumptions here. On this point, I’m certainly willing to hear more details from folks who were there. But really?
Before I could get out of my chair, the campus police had gathered outside in larger numbers to swiftly remove the noisy crowd from the scene.
Baruch haShem!
In the end about 80 students heard an incredible speaker who spoke eloquently about his personal experience as a sergeant in the IDF. He was really something.
At the beginning of the email, Weil said there were 100 students there. But now he’s saying 80. So let’s say there were actually 80 students there to hear the speaker. But then, as he said, a dozen student protesters came in. That would mean about 100 students heard the speech. (Well, most of it anyway. Twelve of them rudely excused themselves in silence in the middle of it.) So technically, Weil is right that there were about 100 students there. But by saying so at the beginning of the email in the way that he did, he implies that there were a full 20 more students there to hear the speaker that there actually were. So which numbers are correct?
His [sic] inspired all of us with his message in support of the IDF as well as his call for us to do our part and hold the line in America. He asked each one of us to spend ten minutes a day learning news facts that support a strong Israel.
News facts? I guess those are different from regular facts. Speaking as someone who actually works in the Jewish media conspiracy, I’ve certainly never heard of news facts before. Do they differ from regular facts in that news facts are only true when you’re trying to make the news support your predetermined viewpoint on a polarizing issue?
I am very proud of our students who attended and held their ground. It was a bit intimidating at first, but their courage is growing and we are all excited about the 70 students that are coming to Pittsburgh this weekend from 10 universities to be trained as Israel advocates on their campuses.
Yeah, I bet the quite people with their mouths taped shut were really intimidating. It’s a shame Weil didn’t ask one of the students who attended the event to write about this from her own perspective. That’s something I’d be interested in reading. But then again, that sort of thing seems to be the unique purview of your friends here at New Voices.
It’s a great feeling to feel the tide turn and though the road ahead of us is a long one, evenings like this really demonstrate just who how far we’ve come.
So they’re doing really well, but they need more money? I gotta wonder how big the budget of the Pittsburgh Hillel is. I bet that New Voices’s $90,000 budget pales in comparison. Instead of letting individual employees continue getting paid more than our entire budget to email soapbox obfuscations like this to paranoid older Jews, how about supporting New Voices so we can continue to give a direct, unfiltered platform to Jewish students to say what’s really on their minds?
