Yet again, someone trying in good faith to take their seat at the Jewish communal table has had their chair pulled out from under them.
At a Nov. 16 meeting of the Jewish Student Union at the University of California, Berkeley, the students of the union’s general board voted to reject the Berkeley chapter of J Street U’s application for membership. The union, considered the official voice of the Jewish community at Berkeley, is an umbrella organization funded partially by Berkeley Hillel and partially by the student government. Though Jewish groups can seek funding and recognition directly from Hillel, as J Street U does, many also choose to join the union, which gives additional funding to its 15 member organizations.
J Street U, a college branch of its parent center-left Israel lobby, is two years old and has a presence on 32 campuses. Despite a fierce campaign by the right to discredit J Street, their views are well within the American Jewish mainstream, including opposition to settlements and support for a two-state solution. And this has never happened to them before on a college campus.
There are already several Israel-centric members of the UCB’s Jewish Student Union, including “Tikvah: Students for Israel,” a far right-wing group.
A preface to a blog post by Tikvah Co-President David Sverdlov on the website of the Hasbara Fellowship, said, “Various student organizations led by Hasbara Fellows voted against the measure, including Tikvah Students for Israel, Jews in Engineering, and the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity.” The Hasbara Fellowship is a well-organized, well-funded group devoted to training students to attack anyone on their campus who voices an opinion to the left of the Hasbara Fellowship.
This event is part of a larger trend: In March, the Brandeis chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace was barred from joining Hillel. JVP is best known for its support of the controversial Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and Hillel International had already released guidelines that prohibited individual Hillels from engaging with JVP.
Brandeis Hillel’s move was no less wrongheaded than this one, but it was far less surprising. The rejection of J Street U by the Berkeley union is far more disturbing because it represents a rejection of particular subset of mainstream American Jewish opinion by the official organ of a particular Jewish community.
According to their page on the Berkeley website, J Street U’s chapter “seeks to create a space on campus where students can bring together a commitment to Israel with a commitment to justice, human rights, and democracy.”
J Street U’s mission is perfectly in line with the Jewish Student Union’s mission statement, which says that the union “strives to unify Jewish student groups and coordinate efforts by providing a forum for communication…. The Jewish Student Union is committed to a pluralistic vision of Judaism.” By rejecting J Street U, they have narrowed their forum and completely jettisoned their “pluralistic vision.”
In an interview with New Voices, Simone Zimmerman, a Berkeley student and a leader of the Berkeley J Street U said, “Our JSU is not exactly representative of the Jewish student community here. It’s disproportionately made of representatives from our more right-wing Israel groups.”
Eliana Lauter, whose term as president of the union’s board ended at the same Nov. 16 meeting, told New Voices that she has been on the board for two and a half years. Since Tikvah was admitted, she said, “There’s been a shift in how many of Tikvah’s people became voting members.” Some Tikvah members are on the general board as representatives of other member groups, such as Alpha Epsilon Pi.
Lauter was deeply troubled by what happened at the Nov. 16 meeting. “There were some very hurtful things said to the J Street U members in the room and now they feel unwelcome at the Jewish Student Union,” she told us. “It’s almost as if they’re being silenced.”
The extent of the mean-spirited attitude of Tikvah’s members is made clear by something else Zimmerman said: In an email, she told us, “I was in the JSU a little over a year ago when we voted in Tikvah: Students for Israel, our right-leaning Israel group, into the JSU. I supported their right to a seat at the table.”
Of course, Tikvah’s members are responsible for their own actions. But their attitude didn’t come out of nowhere. It comes from the disgusting debate-stifling tactics and positions advocated by professional pro-Israel propaganda mongers. Groups like Tikvah: Students for Israel have received training from conservative programs such as Hasbara Fellowships, teaching the students how to actively inflict damage on the Jewish community through these underhanded tactics.
With one arm flailing around, the Jewish establishment is in a never ending state of panic, afraid that they aren’t doing enough to attract and hold onto Jewish college students. With their other arm, they sow the seeds of their own defeat, creating an atmosphere that alienates centrist and liberal students with legitimate concerns for and criticisms of Israel.
It is tragic that Jews with a right-wing stance on Israel have become paranoid at UC Berkeley, where they face strong opposition from a student body friendly toward Students for Justice in Palestine. It is downright depressing that they can’t rise above that fear and recognize their self-destructive tendencies as they continue to circle the wagons and “protect themselves” from members of their own pro-Israel set.
There is value in a place like the union where groups from across the political spectrum — as well as those with no Israel agenda to speak of — can come together to discuss matters of importance to Berkeley’s Jewish community. But the Jewish Student Union is not living up to that lofty vision because of the polarizing damage done by the Jewish right. The decision to block J Street U from becoming a part of the Jewish Student Union only serves to stifle legitimate debate in Berkeley’s Jewish community.
If the Jewish community is wondering where all the young Jews are, the story of J Street U at Berkeley provides the answer: They have gone elsewhere, to a place where no one accuses them of being traitors to their own people simply because they had the audacity to speak their minds.
New Voices editorials reflect the opinion of the New Voices editorial board.
Correction: This editorial initially attributed the preface to David Sverdlov’s blog post to Sverdlov, implying that it was a part of his post. The preface was added to his post by Hasbara Fellowships, the organization on whose website the post appeared.
