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January 31, 2003/Shevat 28 5763, Vol. 55, No. 23
Fighting anti-Semitism
College students learn to advocate Israel on campus
BETH OLSON
Staff Writer
David Matlin, Matt Weisbaum and Elliot Mathias listen to an Israeli-Arab speaker at the Hasbara Fellowships program in Israel.
Photo courtesy of Elliot Mathias
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A new generation of Israel advocates is being born.
More than 100 North American Jewish college students recently traveled to Israel on Aish Hatorah's Hasbara Fellowships program for two weeks of intensive training on how to be active pro-Israel leaders on their campuses.
Three young men from Phoenix attended the most recent Hasbara Fellowships mission to Israel Dec. 22-Jan. 5 - David Matlin, a student at the University of Arizona, and brothers Josh and Harry Flaster, both students at Yale University.
According to the program's director Elliot Mathias, the program has three tracks. The first is education - the history and politics of Israel and the Middle East, and specifically about the Palestinian conflict.
"To understand what is going on today, we need to see it in the wider lens of the Jewish people," Mathias explains.
The second track, activism, presented the students with the tools for a pro-Israel campaign on campus, the "how-to" portion of the program, from how to be a leader to how to deal with divestment or anti-Israel speakers on campus.
"We were able to meet with people from all over the country and pool our resources - what has worked and what hasn't," says Matlin, who is involved with Arizona Israel Alliance - the pro-Israel organization at the UA campus. The organization held a pro-Israel rally earlier this year, circulated a pro-Israel petition and frequently sets up an information booth on campus.
Matlin, who spent his junior year abroad in Israel last year, says there hasn't been as much anti-Israel sentiment on the UA campus.
"It's been pretty low key compared to universities around the country," he says.
While most students at Yale are apathetic, says Flaster, he does participate in an activist group, Yale Friends of Israel. The group not only has an information booth on campus, but also holds vigils after terrorist attacks, raises money for terrorism victims and writes letters to the school newspapers. Additionally, the group is starting Operation S.T.I.C.K. - Stop Inciting Children to Kill.
"Basically it focuses on the Palestinian Authority's treatment of children and how they incite children to become suicide bombers and terrorists, but also how that happens around the world," Flaster explains. "We'll focus on the issue of Palestinians, but also human rights."
While there has been some anti-Israel sentiment at Yale, Flaster says most comes from radicals without a rational way to defend their point of view.
"There's definitely a vocal minority who think that Israel doesn't have the right to exist," he says.
The final track of the Hasbara Fellowships program was motivational - to instill a sense of pride in Israel and Judaism in the students.
"A lot of students feel like they know it's important and they want to be involved and they come off the program feeling like this is something really important, something they want to dedicate a lot of time to," says Mathias.
The participants also did some traveling and met with Israeli political leaders, including Benjamin Netan-yahu.
Aish HaTorah was not the only organization bringing college students to Israel, however. Sarah Kader of Tempe is president of Hillel at UA. During the winter break from classes, Kader traveled to Israel for the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) annual conference.
WUJS is an international student-run organization, with chapters all over the world. Kader says there aren't active WUJS chapters in the United States, where Hillel fills a similar role.
Along with two other Hillel representatives from the U.S., Kader attended the conference which had a similar, yet broader emphasis than the Hasbara Fellowships program.
"The primary point of the conference is to gather all of the Jewish students throughout the world together and discuss world Jewry - to discuss what's going on in our respective countries and to talk about what we're doing to promote Judaism and fight anti-Semitism," says Kader.
The 175 students came from countries all over the world including Croatia, Switzerland, Poland and Australia. A frequent topic of discussion was whether anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are the same thing, says Kader.
"Something that's consistent among all of us is anti-Israel experience - we're all experiencing that on our campuses," Kader says.
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