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November 7, 2003/Cheshvan 12 5764, Vol. 56, No. 7
Jews brace for Palestinian conference
RACHEL POMERANCE
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
COLUMBUS, Ohio - On the flat road from the Columbus airport to Ohio State University, 1950s-style billboards for Wonder Bread and Wendy's, which got its start here, hang over square parcels of land.
It's a fitting welcome to this conservative Middle American town, which is an unusual host for the upcoming North American Conference of the Palestine Solidarity movement.
In contrast to schools like Berkeley or the University of Michigan - which hosted the previous two conferences and where anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism have risen during the Palestinian intifada - Ohio State is a peaceful campus with plenty of pro-Israel support.
Students and faculty say the campus is apathetic about politics, with most locals driven by a different agenda: the college football schedule.
In fact, the pro-Palestinian conference, scheduled for Nov. 7-9, will no doubt be overshadowed by a major home game, when Ohio State's beloved Buckeyes, currently ranked seventh in the nation, take on Michigan State, ranked 14th.
Conversations with stu-dents on campus revealed that most had no idea or only vague knowledge of the pro-Palestinian event.
"It's so easy to live in a bubble at Ohio State," said junior Kara Silverman, co-chairwoman of the campus' Israel Action Committee, a group associated with Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, that also works closely with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
The conference, which hopes to get universities to divest their holdings in companies that do business with Israel, was moved from Rutgers University to Ohio State due to internal squabbles.
That split could represent discord in a pro-Palestinian movement that is floundering, according to Wayne Firestone, director of the Israel on Campus Coalition, an umbrella organization for 26 Jewish groups.
Firestone said pro-Palestinian activists are mounting "small, fairly unsophisticated grass-roots" efforts to portray Israel's security fence as a racially motivated separation wall and to compare the American occupation in Iraq to Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the divestment campaign is widely considered a failure. Signatures on divestment petitions have been far outnumbered by counterpetitions, and hundreds of university presidents have signed or issued statements rejecting divestment from Israel.
For their part, Jewish groups seem to shrug off the conference as the antics of a few fringe elements.
Except for the New York-based group The Coalition for Jewish Concerns-Amcha, which is trying to coordinate a 500-person protest on Nov. 9, most Jewish groups are trying to downplay the conference.
"The sense was that if we don't give the group attention, the likelihood is that they themselves will not get attention here at Ohio State on a Michigan State football weekend," said Marsha Hurwitz, CEO and president of the Columbus Jewish Federation.
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