Jewish Collegians Prepare to Defend Israel on the Campuses
By JODI WILGOREN
HONESDALE, Pa., Aug. 22 - As they do every summer, Jewish student leaders flocked to a mountain retreat here this week to trade ideas, hone leadership skills, meet potential mates.
But this year for the first time, the 400 students, from 155 colleges and universities, also spent an entire day training to defend Israel, arming themselves for the public relations war over the Middle East raging on campuses from Berkeley to Boston.
As the first anniversary of the onset of the current Palestinian uprising approaches in September, leaders of Jewish organizations are anticipating a surge in campus protests over Middle East politics, part of a broader growth in student activism. After a year of increased demonstrations, Arab-American groups plan a campaign this fall, modeled on the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980's, to urge universities to divest themselves of holdings in companies doing business with Israel.
And so the message at the conference, sponsored by Hillel, the leading Jewish campus organization, is be prepared, be positive, be proactive.
"As much as we are counting on our soldiers back in Israel to protect Israel, we are counting on you," Giora Becher, Israel's consul general in Philadelphia, told the students, many in T-shirts with Hebrew lettering. "You are our soldiers, you are our commandos, in the public campaign we are having here."
Like similar seminars for Israeli diplomats, the program urged students to stay focused on the issues of sovereignty and security, and not to let well-organized, impassioned pro- Palestinian groups frame the debate as one of human rights.
Acknowledging that even students active in Jewish life often have weak connections to Israel, the Hillel classes also tried to impart facts, with a spin, about the history, the politics and the culture of the Middle East. Along with rabbis and Israeli politicians, the roster of speakers included P.R. professionals schooled in hasbarah, Hebrew for what literally translates as "explanation" but in common usage means propaganda.
In one workshop, "The A B C's of Zionist Legitimacy: How to Feel More Secure About Discussing Israel on Campus," students pondered responses to scenarios imagined from the campus headlines of last year. What if Arab students erect checkpoints on the quad, pretending to be Israeli soldiers as they search backpacks? Or if the Muslim Students Association stages a mock war- crimes tribunal, with Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, as chief defendant?
"You have to be physically present," Bracha Brumer of the University of Toronto suggested. "Submit to the checkpoint yourself. People could write on their shirts, `No bombs, no checkpoints.' "
Though Arab and Muslim students have no parallel leadership boot camp, they too are preparing for the fall. They plan to have vigils on scores of campuses in connection with the anniversary of the current intifada's start last Sept. 28, and to spread the checkpoint idea - tried last year at the University of California at Berkeley, among other campuses - far and wide.
Berkeley will also be host this fall to a conference where students hope to start the divestment drive, complete with mock refugee camps like the shantytowns of another era of campus protest.
"South Africa was the 80's; Israel, for 50 years, has been an apartheid state," said Altaf Husain, president of the national Muslim Students Association. "Even if the Jewish kids are to wake up and try to counteract this Muslim, pro-Palestinian, pro-Jerusalem effort, the facts will speak for themselves."
Jews far outnumber Arabs on most campuses, but are often less united in opinions on the Middle East. Hillel is an umbrella group most concerned with Jewish identity broadly, not Zionism in particular; students may join for religious fellowship, bagel brunches or kosher-hot-dog-eating contests - or to get dates. ("The point of the experience is to make Jewish marriages," the philanthropist Michael Steinhardt told students here, only half-joking.)
But as violence flares in the Middle East, Hillel leaders become de facto advocates, and they are frequently no match for Arab students whose relatives live in the occupied territories or the refugee camps.
"These Muslim kids know so much about what's going on, they know their arguments," said Mitchell Shankman, 19, from Ohio State University. "We just know we're Jewish and we enjoy being Jewish."
So Hillel sent 40 students, including Mr. Shankman, on a three-week mission to Israel this summer for a crash course on the conflict.
The one-day seminar here at Camp Moshava, a religious-Zionist summer camp on a tree-rimmed hill about 150 miles from New York, had similar goals. It also reflected a growing attention to Israel within Hillel, which has helped send 10,000 college students on 10-day trips there since January 2000.
Lenny Ben-David, a consultant on Israeli affairs, urged the students here to plan demonstrations for 100 days dating from the bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria on Aug. 9. Brian Jaffee, director of Hamagshimim, a campus Zionist group, suggested events on behalf of Israeli soldiers missing in action.
As the sun set on students dancing with Israeli flags around a makeshift paper Western Wall and singing "Am Yisroel Chai" - "The Nation of Israel Lives" - the challenge facing the Hillel leaders was clear. In small groups reviewing the sessions, many students complained that the seminars had been one-sided rather than a source of unbiased information.
"I'm here to relax and learn things - I'm not here to become an activist," said a young man in a football jersey, who escaped the workshops to pass much of the afternoon listening to Ozzy Osbourne. "They're preaching how they want us to act; I don't want to be told how to act."
Another student admitted that she had known little about Israel that morning, but was unsure about what she had learned. "I want to be informed," she said, "but I wanted to be informed on both sides."