"As college students with a vested interest in Israel...we have the responsibility to be Israel’s ambassadors."

By Danny Wein

When speaking to audiences, Michael Oren likes to tell the following story about his path to his current job as Israeli Ambassador to the United States. Oren, originally from New Jersey, had wanted to be Israel's ambassador to the United States ever since the days of his youth when he met then Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin. He then spent his career preparing for the post in the world of academia becoming one of the foremost historians on America’s deep roots in the Middle East and Israel. But when he was finally offered the position by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he was surprised when everyone from Netanyahu to Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman to the person that issued him his government cell phone commented, “Oy, you going to have a hard job.” Undeterred, Oren wondered “what could be that hard about this job?” However, just a few months into his new post, he admitted that his previous decades of studying the region did little to prepare him for the challenges he now faced as Ambassador to the United States.

Whether or not this story is actually true, its basis is far from fiction. For instance, a video on YouTube shows Ambassador Oren being interrupted half a dozen times by Muslim students while speaking at UC Irvine last year. Several months later, he was the center of controversy at Brandeis University as students petitioned against having Oren speak at their commencement (yes, the same Brandeis University with a 50+ percent Jewish population).

As an incoming pro-Israel college student, I often encounter the same reaction from adults who have long since graduated, “Oy, you are going to have a hard job.” Because of places like UC Irvine and schools in Toronto, North American college campuses have obtained reputations as highly charged breeding grounds for not just anti-Israel activity, but anti-Semitic activity as well. The University of California, Berkley is just one of many universities that have attempted to pass, or have been successful in passing, measures to divest their schools’ pensions from companies doing business with Israel. Political cartoons in school newspapers equating Zionism to racism, and worse, Nazism, are increasingly pervasive. Rallies are held protesting Israeli “apartheid” of its’ Arabs and Palestinians. As college students with a vested interest in Israel and how it is perceived on college campuses, we have the responsibility to be Israel’s ambassadors and correct the many misconceptions that permeate throughout universities.

Situations like these can be extremely intimidating to confront, especially being one of only a small number of vocal Jewish students on campus. For those reasons I participated in The David Project’s Campus Fellows seminar, which not only made me much more confident in combating anti-Israel activities on my campus, but empowered me by giving me the facts and arguments needed to educate people who are misinformed about Israel.

 "Seeing the other participants’ passion about Israel made me realize just how important it is to stand up and make my voice heard."

Michelle Kamen, Appalachian State University Class of 2013, shares her thoughts on her experience at Campus Fellows 2010. 

How did you learn about Campus Fellows?

I heard about The David Project when I went to an Israel advocacy conference at Duke University last year where the organization presented on the conflict in the Middle East, which I really enjoyed. When Sarah, my campus coordinator, told me about the Campus Fellows Seminar, I immediately jumped at the opportunity.

What were your expectations going in?

I knew I was going to learn a lot, but I don't think I realized exactly how much. I also didn't realize that I was going to be surrounded by some of the smartest, most passionate people I have ever met. It was truly refreshing to know that there are other people out there who share the same beliefs as me and do everything in their power to stand up for them.

What made the biggest impression on you from Campus Fellows?

Beyond learning all of the in-depth information, I feel like I really gained a sense of confidence from Campus Fellows. Before I participated, I knew what my beliefs were about Israel and I was very adamant about them, but I don't know if I would have had the confidence to speak up when faced with questions or opposition. Seeing the other participants’ passion about Israel made me realize just how important it is to stand up and make my voice heard. Now, thanks to The David Project I have the tools to do exactly that.

How will you take what you learned back to Campus?

First and foremost, I will take all of the amazing facts and information I learned during Campus Fellows and try to educate the people around me. Not only do I want to promote Israel and its right to exist, I also want to show the people on my campus how much Israel contributes to our modern society and that there is more to the country than an incredible military and constant warfare. Most importantly, I now have the David Project as a resource to help me achieve all of these goals.

David Project Campus Fellows take a break to pose for a photo before a boat ride through Boston Harbor.

The David Project recently wrapped up its most successful summer ever of its Campus Fellows Seminars. Three sessions were held at Boston University with more than 100 students in attendance representing more than 60 campuses. Initial reviews of the conference were glowing: 

“I had a really great experience at Campus Fellows. I now feel so much more confident about advocating for Israel and making my voice heard. Also, it was really inspiring to listen to all of my peers and how truly passionate they were about advocating for Israel. The staff was great as well and I look forward to working with them as I plan events on my campus,” seminar attendee. 

To see more pictures of Campus Fellows and tag yourself in them check out the David Project Facebook Page.

At the conference students worked with David Project educators and campus coordinators to learn about Israel and the Middle East as well as strategies for advocating for Israel on their campuses. Topics covered were understanding the Arab Israeli conflict, making the case for Israel, exploring the roots of modern Zionism, and responding to anti-Israel sentiment on campus.

Also on hand to work with the students were experts Shoshana Bryen, senior policy director at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs; Bret Stephens, Deputy editor, editorial page, The Wall Street Journal; and Jonathan Shanzer,  vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of Hamas vs. Fatah.

Were you there? Tell us what you thought! 

Recently a friend passed along the link to a blog site where the blogger re-posted dozens of pictures from LIFE Magazine archives from 1948 Palestine - specifically the end of the British Mandate.  These pictures are beautiful, sad and fascinating.  They offer a view into the world of war, displaced persons and the fight for survival in this complex and wonderful place.  I hope you enjoy all three installments of these photos as much as I did.  Here is the first one to start you off. 

Jewish girl, Rachel Levy, 7, fleeing from street w. burning bldgs. as the Arabs sack Jerusalem after its surrender. May 28, 1948. John Phillips

Click here to see the rest of the pictures and read the captions and journalists' anecdotes.

Happy Yom Ha'atzmaut!  Isreal is 62 today so I thought I'd share two great pieces - one a speech by Israeli Ambasador to the US, Michael Oren and the other an article by Israeli-American comedian Benji Lovitt.  I think these two pieces really celebrate not only what is great about Israel but also what American Jews have to be proud of when it comes to Israel.  Enjoy and Chag Sameach!

Here are the first 3 of Benji's "top 63" list.  Click HERE for the whole article - You won't be sorry!

You've waited all year and it's finally here. Inspired by last year's "61 more things I love about Israel" and 2008's  "60 things I love about Israel," without further ado, here are 62 more things I love about Israel.

1. I love attending a religious wedding for the laughs that come from hearing "The Final Countdown" played klezmer-style.  I don't know if the band Europe are dead yet but I suspect they're digging their graves so they can someday roll in them.
2. I love how everyone who watched "Avatar" discovered that the Navi have a famous singer named Ninat. Who's their favorite author, JB Yehoshua?
3. I love how the Jeopardy crew came here to research the country for their show.  "What are freichot?"

This article just made me smile.  I especially love the last line.  As Yom Ha'atzmaut (and Yom Ha'Zikaron, for that matter) approaches, it seems like the pefect time to take a moment and remind ourselves about the things that make Israel 'the most wonderful country on earth.'

Loving Israel is in the details

By Joel Chasnoff · April 14, 2010

NEW YORK (JTA) -- In honor of Israel’s 62nd birthday, I’ll forgo the expected Op-Ed about Israeli government corruption, the Bibi-Obama drama, or the Israeli Rabbinate’s stranglehold on marriage and divorce.

Instead, I offer this love letter to Israel: "Top 10 tiny details about Israel that make it the most wonderful country on earth."

10. Egged Bus #394: The midnight ride from Tel Aviv to Eilat. The trip begins in the gray-stucco slums of south Tel Aviv. Two hours later, you’re rolling through the desert beneath a blanket of stars. You crack open the window. The desert smells dry and ancient, like an attic. At dawn, you pull into Eilat as the city comes to life.

9. The way Israelis refuse to cross the street on a red light. Drivers blare their horns the instant the light turns green. Yet pedestrians refuse to cross the street until the sign turns green. I’ve witnessed this phenomenon at 3:00 a.m., the streets bare and not a car in sight.

8. The Jewish soul of even the most secular Israelis. I served in the Israeli Army with kibbutz kids who were so anti-religious that they never even had a bar-mitzvah. But on Friday nights, as the brigade sung the Sabbath Kiddush en masse, I could see my secular comrades mouthing the words.

7. Flush handles on Israeli toilets. Almost all Israeli toilets, both public and in homes, have two flush handles -- one for “light” loads, and one for heavy ones. This saves Israel’s most precious natural resource: water. And it’s genius.

6. Drop-dead gorgeous Israeli soldiers. The men are hunky, the women beautiful. Try not to drool as you watch them strut down Ben Yehudah Street in their olive-green uniforms, M-16s slung across their backs. It’s not so much their physical beauty that charms us as what they embody: Jewish power.

5. Shuk Ha-Carmel on Friday afternoons. So many things about Israel drive me mad. The bureaucracy is crippling. Government offices operate when they want, for as long (or short) as they want, usually something like 8 a.m. until noon Mondays, Wednesdays and every other Thursday. Each week, another group goes on strike -- schoolteachers, garbage men, postal workers, phone operators, cable guys, bus drivers, doctors, nurses, paramedics, airport baggage guys, and the old men in blue jumpsuits who walk the streets of Tel Aviv stabbing pieces of trash with meter-long spears have all struck in the past year -- so the country never runs at full power.

The Knesset, Israel’s 15-party parliament, is trapped in a state of perpetual gridlock. And yet, when I step into the Carmel Market and hear the shopkeepers barking their wares, smell the mixture of frying lamb, goat cheese, and human sweat, and watch the people line up to buy flowers for Shabbat, I remember why I love Israel so much. It’s the excitement of the place, but also the Middle Easterness of it -- the barking, the bargaining, the haggling that’s at once friendly and brutal. At pushcarts and stalls, middle-aged men with gold chains and raspy cigarette voices sell mangoes, lemons, whole and quarter chickens, cow lungs, cow tongues, cow testicles, sheep brains, 50-plus varieties of fish, calculators, knockoff Nikes, carnations, sponges, girdles, batteries, and men’s and ladies’ underwear.

Friday afternoons, with only a couple of hours until sundown, the peddlers shout their last-minute pre-Sabbath bargains: “Tangerines, 1 shekel, 1 shekel!” “Pita, hummus, chickpeas-- yallah! Shabbat, Shabbat!” Whenever I walk through the souk, I think about all those American diplomats who call Israel the America of the Middle East. If those diplomats really want to understand Israel, they should leave their fancy Jerusalem hotels and take a stroll through the Carmel Market.

4. Chocolate milk in a sack. Half a liter of Kibbutz Yotvateh chocolate milk sealed in a palm-sized plastic bag that you rip open with your teeth and then squeeze, causing the milk to shoot into your mouth in a way that makes you feel like you’re drinking straight from the udder of a chocolate cow. Need I say more?

3. The incredible bond between Israelis. Maybe it’s a remnant of shtetl life in Europe, or perhaps it has something to do with living so close to your enemy. Whatever the reason, Israelis act as if everyone is everyone else’s next-door neighbor. The first time I experienced this unique bond was the week I arrived in Israel to begin my army service. I was driving to Tel Aviv in a rental car when a guy pulled up next to me at a stoplight and beeped his horn. “Hey, achi!” he called. “My girlfriend’s thirsty. You got water?” Beside me, on the passenger seat, was a bottle of water. But it was half empty.

I held up the bottle. “It’s already open,” I said.

“No problem,” he replied, and stuck out his hand.

A week later, I was at my girlfriend, Dorit’s, family’s apartment with her parents. It was dinnertime and we had ordered pizza. Finally, after two hours, the pizza guy showed up on his motor scooter. He was disheveled and sopped with sweat. “I got lost,” he whimpered.

“So come inside! Sit!” said Dorit’s mother, Tzionah. “Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee,” said the pizza guy. “Milk and two sugars.”

While Tzionah made the coffee, Dorit’s father, Menashe, opened the pizza box. “Please take.” He offered a slice. The pizza guy waved him off. “Nu! You’re offending me!” said Menashe. “What’s your name?"

“Oren,” said the delivery guy.

“Oren. I insist. Eat.”

And I’ll be damned if Oren the pizza guy didn’t sit down at the kitchen table and eat the pizza he’d just delivered. As we ate, I thought about all those porno movies where the lonely housewife invites the pizza boy inside and seduces him on the kitchen table. In the Israeli version of the story, the pizza boy doesn’t make love to the housewife. Instead, he sits down with the family and eats pizza.

2. Dropping off a passenger at Ben-Gurion Airport. You pull up to the Departure door, hug your loved ones goodbye, and watch them walk into the terminal. Then you inhale a breath of sweet Israeli air, look up at the cloudless Tel Aviv sky, and think, “They have to leave...but I get to stay in Israel.”

1. ____________________________________________ . I leave this one up to you. What do you love most about Israel? E-mail me // This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and I’ll post your responses on the blog page of my Web site.

(Joel Chasnoff is a stand-up comedian and the author of "The 188th Crybaby Brigade: A Skinny Kid From Chicago Fights Hezbollah," about his year as a combat soldier in the Israeli army. View photographs from his army service and meet the characters from Joel’s book at www.joelchasnoff.com.)

Lady Gaga Versus Mideast Peace
Are settlements more offensive than pop stars?

Pop quiz—What does more to galvanize radical anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world: (a) Israeli settlements on the West Bank; or (b) a Lady Gaga music video?

If your answer is (b) it means you probably have a grasp of the historical roots of modern jihadism. If, however, you answered (a), then congratulations: You are perfectly in synch with the new Beltway conventional wisdom, now jointly defined by Pat Buchanan and his strange bedfellows within the Obama administration.

What is that wisdom? In a March 26 column in Human Events, Mr. Buchanan put the case with his usual subtlety:

"Each new report of settlement expansion," he wrote, "each new seizure of Palestinian property, each new West Bank clash between Palestinians and Israeli troops inflames the Arab street, humiliates our Arab allies, exposes America as a weakling that cannot stand up to Israel, and imperils our troops and their mission in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Mr. Buchanan was playing off a story in the Israeli press that Vice President Joe Biden had warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "what you're doing here [in the West Bank] undermines the security of our troops." Also in the mix was a story that Centcom commander David Petraeus had cited Arab-Israeli tensions as the key impediment to wider progress in the region. Both reports were later denied—in Mr. Biden's case, via Rahm Emanuel; in Gen. Petraeus's case, personally and forcefully—but the important point is how eagerly they were believed. If you're of the view that Israel is the root cause of everything that ails the Middle East—think of it as global warming in Hebrew form—then nothing so powerfully makes the case against the Jewish state as a flag-draped American coffin.

Now consider Lady Gaga—or, if you prefer, Madonna, Farrah Fawcett, Marilyn Monroe, Josephine Baker or any other American woman who has, at one time or another, personified what the Egyptian Islamist writer Sayyid Qutb once called "the American Temptress."

Qutb, for those unfamiliar with the name, is widely considered the intellectual godfather of al Qaeda; his 30-volume exegesis "In the Shade of the Quran" is canonical in jihadist circles. But Qutb, who spent time as a student in Colorado in the late 1940s, also decisively shaped jihadist views about the U.S.

In his 1951 essay "The America I Have Seen," Qutb gave his account of the U.S. "in the scale of human values." "I fear," he wrote, "that a balance may not exist between America's material greatness and the quality of her people." Qutb was particularly exercised by what he saw as the "primitiveness" of American values, not least in matters of sex.

"The American girl," he noted, "knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs and she shows all this and does not hide it." Nor did he approve of Jazz—"this music the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires"—or of American films, or clothes, or haircuts, or food. It was all, in his eyes, equally wretched.

Qutb's disdain for America's supposedly libertine culture would not matter much were it not wedded to a kind of theological Leninism that emphasized the necessity of violently overthrowing any political arrangement not based on Shariah law. No less violent was Qutb's attitude toward Jews: "The war the Jews began to wage against Islam and Muslims in those early days [of Islamic history]," he wrote in the 1950s, "has raged to the present. The form and appearance may have changed, but the nature and the means remain the same."

Needless to say, that passage was written long before Israel had "occupied" a single inch of Arab territory, unless one takes the view—held to this day by Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda, Jemaah Islamiyah and every other jihadist group that owes an intellectual debt to Qutb, including significant elements of the "moderate" Palestinian Fatah—that Tel Aviv itself is occupied territory.

Bear in mind, too, that the America Qutb found so offensive had yet to discover Elvis, Playboy, the pill, women's lib, acid tabs, gay rights, Studio 54, Jersey Shore and, of course, Lady Gaga. In other words, even in some dystopic hypothetical world in which hyper-conservatives were to seize power in the U.S. and turn the cultural clock back to 1948, America would still remain a swamp of degeneracy in the eyes of Qutb's latter-day disciples.

This, then, is the core complaint that the Islamists from Waziristan to Tehran to Gaza have lodged against the West. It explains why jihadists remain aggrieved even after the U.S. addressed their previous casus belli by removing troops from Saudi Arabia, and why they will continue to remain aggrieved long after we've decamped from Iraq, Afghanistan and even the Persian Gulf. As for Israel, its offenses are literally inextricable: as a democracy, as a Jewish homeland, as a country in which liberalism in all its forms, including cultural, prevails.

Which brings me back to the settlements. There may well be good reasons for Israel to dismantle many of them, assuming that such an act is met with reciprocal and credible Palestinian commitments to suppress terrorism and religious incitement, and accept Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish state. But to imagine that the settlements account for even a fraction of the rage that has inhabited the radical Muslim mind since the days of Qutb is fantasy: The settlements are merely the latest politically convenient cover behind which lies a universe of hatred. If the administration's aim is to appease our enemies, it will get more mileage out of banning Lady Gaga than by applying the screws on Israel. It should go without saying that it ought to do neither.

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We had some great success this week with David Project events, Peace Week events at dozens of campuses and David Project representitives at anti-Israel events to ask challenging questions, pass out pro-Israel materials, take notes and make sure their presence was known.  I'll try to post some videos later in the week but the few articles I want to highlight are below. 

This article is great and highlights at the begninning the important work of the Save a Childs Heart foundation.

This one is by our favorite Arab-Israeli journalist, Khaled Abu Toameh - who will be on tour with Hasbara and The David Project in April.

And this last one is about a Jewish student who was assalted by an anti-Israel activist at Berkeley.  Do we ever have to resort to immaturity and violence?

Here is some more interesting news about IAW.  First, the Ontario Legislature voted this week to condemn Israel Apartheid Week activities in Canada.  That's great news. 

Also, check out this video of a debate between one of the student organizers of IAW in Canada (who happens to be Jewish) and a representative of the Bna'i B'rith organization which was instrumental in getting the legislature to pass the resolution this week.  What do you think?

A former Campus Fellow at Columbia University wrote this about what Hillel and other pro-Israel groups at Columbia are doing in response to IAW.  The attempt is to do something that really makes moves towards a just peace and doesn't defame and demoralize the 'other' side.  Well done Jonah and the Columbia/Barnard students involved.

As Israel Apartheid Week 2010 gets in to full swing this week, articles and op-eds are beginning to float around cyber-space.  Everyone seems to have a lot of opinions about what the anti-Israel students are doing, how the pro-Israel students are responding and if any if it makes a bit of difference.  Stephen Kuperberg, executive director of the Israel on Campus Coalition, wrote this piece, and I agree with his premise.  I am overall very proud of the work that pro-Israel students have been doing both in direct response to IAW and in spite of it.  Check out www.israelpeaceweek.org to see what students around the world are doing in a pro-active pro-Israel way. Also check out this article from the JTA about what pro-Israel groups are doing.

Keep up the strong work!