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Israel
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Responding to Anti-Israel Campaigns on College and University Campuses |
Building and Effective Response Strategy
Responding to Anti-Israel Incident
Updated: January 20, 2009
While positive programming is preferable, there are situations where it is essential to react directly to anti-Israel incidents and rhetoric. Certainly, any anti-Semitic incidents cannot be ignored. When reacting to such situations it is also imperative to think strategically.
It is important to consider the following:
- Jewish groups on campus should maintain routine contact with appropriate personnel in the university administration (i.e., Student Affairs) and campus security. Keep them informed on a regular basis of national trends in anti-Israel activity (e.g., divestment campaigns, acts of violence, harassment, etc.) that should concern them. If an emergency situation arises, an already established relationship will provide you with easier access to the administration. Consider appointing one individual or a small group to serve as designated liaisons.
- While anti-Israel protests are protected by free speech rights, the protests cannot disrupt normal school functions, obstruct student access to school buildings, create pervasive, severe, or persistent harassment of students, or physically intimidate or threaten individual students. When the protests violate these parameters, alert the university and ask administrators to take action.
- Respond with accurate information in a succinct fashion to specific anti-Israel materials found in the campus media. It is most effective to do so in the form of op-eds or letters to the editor. Generally submit a response once, as continued back and forth gets tiresome to most readers and can prove to be counterproductive.
- In some situations, counterdemonstrations may be an effective and appropriate tactic. Keep the counterdemonstrators separate from the anti-Israel demonstration, so as to minimize the possibility of physical confrontation. Always be civil and come prepared with written statements for the campus and local media. Have a supply of literature that refutes the standard anti-Israel arguments available for the general public. Be sure to frequently cite unbiased sources in your arguments; using only overtly pro-Israel sources invites criticism and allows readers to easily dismiss your arguments.
- When an on-campus panel discussion excludes knowledgeable speakers supportive of Israel, make the case to the administration and to the general campus community that this event violates the accepted standards of fairness and balance. This point is especially vital when such events are sponsored/co-sponsored by academic departments or by the university itself. Your efforts in this regard will prove to be persuasive when you are able to affirm, rather than to challenge, the basic shared norms of the academic enterprise.
- Research anti-Israel speakers before they arrive on campus. Come prepared with pointed questions and to challenge inaccuracies.
- When anti-Semitic materials and/or rhetoric appear, you should publicly condemn them and seek to educate the administration and the general campus community to the dangers of hate on campus. Campus administrators and leaders should be urged to denounce strongly such bigotry. Keep in mind that not all anti-Israel material is anti-Semitic. When in doubt, contact Jewish organizations for guidance. ADL’s advocacy manual, Israel: A Guide for Activists, www.adl.org/israel/advocacy, can be used as a reference for understanding when criticism of Israel becomes anti-Semitism.
- If you feel intimidated or discriminated against by your professor in your classroom because of your viewpoints or beliefs, you should follow established academic procedures and discuss the matter first with your instructor. Do so in a calm and non polemical fashion. If this does not lead to a satisfactory solution, you should next bring your concerns to the chair of the department. Subsequent levels of appeal would be to the academic dean, the academic provost and ultimately the vice president and president. If such appeals are mounted, be sure to have documentation of your claims: include statements from other students, detailed class notes, the course syllabus and assigned readings.
- Be careful with the language and rhetoric you use. It is easy to fall into arguments concerning “us” and “them” and to generalize about Palestinians when you are actually only referring to specific groups, political organizations, terrorist organizations, and so on.
- The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a complicated topic. In order to strategically respond to the anti-Israel campaign, you must educate yourself and your peers on the nuances of the issues.
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