I
n 1988, the Muslim Student Association and the Palestinian
Solidarity Committee took to the Diag to construct a
wooden “shanty house,” a popular protest among anti-
apartheid activists of the time. The MSA and PSC were
demonstrating in solidarity with the first Palestinian Intifada,
painting on their shanty “STOP ISRAELI OPPRESSION.”
Angered by the demonstration, members of the right-leaning
pro-Israel group Tagar responded in the fall with their own
carpentry project: an Israeli school bus painted with flames
shooting from its windows. The display was a memorial to a
recent attack, where a mother and her three sons burned alive
after terrorists firebombed the bus they were riding. The Tagar
model carried the names of the four victims, as well as the
demand “STOP ARAB TERRORISM, COME TO THE PEACE
TABLE.”
Within hours of its construction, student complaints
led Tagar members to reword their sign as “STOP ALL
TERRORISM.” But it was already too late.
Outraged by the initial message, the Michigan Student
Assembly — a predecessor to Central Student Government
— moved to condemn Tagar, demanding an apology and
threatening to derecognize the group. The Michigan Daily’s
editorial page piled on, calling Tagar racist and endorsing the
Assembly’s resolution to cut off funding.
The 1988 controversy over Diag demonstrations was one
in a long line of battles between the University’s large Jewish
student population and vocal left wing — battles that go back
more than thirty years. Fights over divestment resolutions are
just the latest manifestations of tensions that have boiled over
into racism, anti-Semitism, and exclusionary rules on speech.
Israel-Palestine is a polarizing topic on any campus, but this
is exacerbated at the University of Michigan, a school equally
known for its radical activism and vibrant Jewish community
(two traits not mutually exclusive). Powerful pro-Israel groups
fuel this extreme polarization, whose resulting climate has led
students to attack each other personally, question their own
identities, and try to overthrow the status quo.
On campus and abroad
The University first became a popular school among Jewish
students in the 1920s, when a rising tide of anti-Semitism led
elite schools like Harvard to begin capping the number of
Jews they would admit. The University was one of a handful
of schools to scoop these students up, building a long-term
pipeline from Jewish communities across the country. During a
tour of Michigan Hillel last month, Tilly Shames said she often
meets Jewish students from out of state with three or even
four generations of Wolverines in their family. Shames is the
executive director of Michigan Hillel, which has served as the
University’s center for Jewish life on campus since 1926.
The state of Israel was founded two decades later in 1948, but
its inception as a major political issue for American Jews, let
alone college students, would not come until the late sixties. In
their book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” political
scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt contend that a
political connectivity to Israel is largely the result of a number of
Arab-Israeli wars, especially the Six Day-War. From “The Road
to Renaissance,” a history of Hillel International: “Spurred by
pride in Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six Day-War Jewish students
created groups that championed causes from Soviet Jewry to
Israel, Jewish feminism to chavurot, Ethiopian Jewry to the
environment.”
Victories led to a mixture of pride and fear among Jews
worldwide; pride in defending Israel, but fear of future wars. By
the 1970s, Israel had developed into a crux of Jewish cultural
and political identity, which became a contributing factor in
the deep relationship between America and the Jewish state.
During the same time, college towns like Ann Arbor became
ground zero for the New Left. The University has remained
synonymous with radical student movements, while continuing
to cultivate one of the largest, most vibrant Jewish communities
of any university. The tension between these two factions would
be palpable by the 1980s, with the 1988 Diag demonstrations
serving just one example.
In 1989, after three Michigan Daily editorials were
particularly harsh in their criticism of Israel and Zionism
(“Zionism … is from its inception a racist construct” read one
piece), hundreds of students protested outside of the Student
Publications Building. They held signs like “Daily editorials are
anti-Jewish” and “Print facts not slander.”
This tension between Jewish students and pro-Palestinian
advocates on the left did not disappear, though it temporarily
eased during the less contentious 1990s. After the failure of the
Camp David peace talks in 2000, Palestinians launched the
second Intifada and began calls for boycotts, divestment, and
sanctions on Israel — BDS. In April 2002, students rallied for
divestment from Israel at more than 30 campuses across the
country. That same year, University students founded Students
Allied for Freedom and Equality, or SAFE, the campus chapter
of Students for Justice in Palestine. SAFE called for divestment
and peacefully protested outside of a large Israel-focused
conference at the University that year. The Daily came under
fire again, this time erroneously publishing that SAFE incited
riots.
In the early 2000s, many of the same narratives surrounding
BDS were playing out across the country, leading national pro-
Israel groups to revamp their campus strategies.
As tensions rose in 2003, the American Israel Public Affairs
Committee, or AIPAC, brought 240 students to Washington,
D.C. for advocacy training seminars. Since at least 1980, all-
expenses paid trips, national conferences and training seminars
have been a key tactic in AIPAC’s campus effort. Michigan
Hillel sends a cohort of students to the annual policy conference
every year.
In a speech at AIPAC’s 2010 conference, Leadership
Development Director Jonathan Kessler told a crowd, “AIPAC’s
job is to identify, engage, and educate” leaders in student
government and political groups.
Doing this fulfills two goals for AIPAC: advancing the pro-
Israel cause in academic environments, where opinions of Israel
are typically more critical, and befriending the students who
are “self-selecting” to become America’s future policymakers.
When students return to campus, they come with the tools and
the zeal to spread the pro-Israel message and dismantle BDS
efforts. Talking about a 2010 divestment resolution by students
at the University of California, Berkeley, Kessler stated matter-
of-factly, “We’re going to make sure that pro-Israel students
take over the student government and reverse the vote.”
“This is how AIPAC operates in our nation’s capital,” Kessler
told the audience. “This is how AIPAC must operate on our
nation’s campuses.”
This March, some 2,500 students from all fifty states attended
AIPAC’s annual policy conference, including hundreds of
student government presidents.
Defining “pro-Israel” at Michigan
Like AIPAC, Hillel has taken on an aggressive and often
controversial strategy in pushing the pro-Israel message on
campus. In 2002 Hillel International established its Center for
Israel Affairs and co-founded the Israel on Campus Coalition;
the latter began as a national coordinating committee and
provides strategic consulting to improve Israel’s image on
campus. For a short time in the mid-2000s, Hillel produced
signs and T-shirts with the slogan “Wherever we stand, we
stand with Israel.”
Michigan Hillel is home to seven Israel-focused student
groups (not all political in nature) and estimates that its
programs reach around 3,000 of Michigan’s 4,000-4,500
Jewish undergrads. Along with being the center of Jewish
life on 550 campuses, Hillel often speaks with the presumed
authority of a united Jewish voice. At the University and other
schools, Hillel International’s hard line stance on Israel can
be deeply problematic, as it represents a large break for many
progressive Jews.
Some of these students have found representation in J Street,
a liberal pro-Israel group that preaches a two-state solution
and opposes BDS. J Street has seen its presence grow both on
campus and in Washington, acting as a foil to the increasingly
controversial AIPAC. Last week, 1,100 students from around the
country attended J Street’s fifth annual conference as members
of J Street U college chapters. Speakers blasted recent remarks
by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and after Hillel
International President and CEO Eric Fingerhut rescinded an
offer to speak, students walked to Hillel headquarters, posted
sticky notes on the windows in protest, and left a box of letters
demanding a meeting.
Despite disagreements with J Street by Hillel International,
J Street U chapters are growing and often find a home in the
campus Hillel. More than 40 Hillels sent groups to J Street’s
conference, including Michigan.
“A lot of times you’ll see pro-Israel as ‘you have to love Israel
no matter what’ and just supporting Israel blindly,” said Ari
Schoenberg, co-chair of J Street U’s Midwest region. “Pro-
Israel is loving Israel in its best way that it can be. So that means,
like, being critical of things that we aren’t proud of.”
Schoenberg speaks for many young Jews with a progressive
view on Israel, whose growing numbers have led to more
representation and power on campus than in the past. In
February, students packed into the Michigan Union for an
event with Ari Shavit, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz, and enthusiastically applauded as he demanded a
more progressive view on Israel.
“We need liberal Zionism again.” Shavit told the energized
Hillel crowd. “Only that will give (young people) the energy, the
tools, and the concepts to belong to our people.”
Hillel International has moved slightly away from its former
slogan in allowing J Street into the fold, and its Israel Guidelines
assert that it “welcomes a diversity of student perspectives on
Israel.” But there are still those who feel marginalized. Hillel’s
standards of partnership prohibit sponsoring “organizations,
groups, or speakers” that present certain points of view. Chief
among these disallowed perspectives are those who deny
Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, but the list extends to
anyone that “delegitimizes” or “demonizes” Israel or who
supports boycott, divest, and sanctions.
In a recent Michigan Daily op-ed, a handful of Jewish
students discussed their frustration with Hillel after the
organization refused to sponsor a “Palestinian Solidarity”
themed Shabbat dinner. LSA Junior Sarah Blume, a co-author
of the op-ed, felt a clear takeaway meeting with Shames at
Hillel: “You are a very much not invited here.”
This fall Blume co-founded, and now co-chairs, the
University’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. JVP is a
Palestinian solidarity group for Jews and supports the BDS
movement. Blume, a junior with a disarming smile, spoke in a
quick, fiery passion about divestment and Hillel.
“As a Jewish organization and as Hillel as the umbrella of
Jewish student life, one would think that we would be a part
of Hillel, but we are not,” Blume said. “They actively disclude
people who … disagree with the political stance on Israel.”
Asked if she considered herself pro-Israel, Blume responded,
“I’m anti-occupation,” adding, “I don’t like the labels.”
That dislike of labels was evident as JVP’s op-ed called for
the University to join the “Open Hillel” movement, which
presses individual chapters and Hillel International to abandon
the pro-Israel standards of partnership.
Along with a few other students, Blume also attended
Open Hillel’s conference at Harvard this fall. Swarthmore
College Hillel, after officially breaking from the international
organization, renamed itself Kehilah, meaning “Community.”
In an e-mail, Shames, the Hillel Director, defended Hillel’s
“broad and diverse array of programs,” writing that Israel is a
part of Hillel’s mission.
“Our Hillel does not expect or insist that all participants
in Hillel will pursue our Israel mission. But we expect that
our mission will be respected just as our Hillel respects the
diversity of views among our Hillel and campus community.”
Blume does not feel very respected.
“I don’t want to be affiliated with an organization like Hillel
that discludes and speaks out against and … totally discourages
and offends the voices that I support.”
LSA junior Jonathan Friedman, chair of Hillel’s Israel
Cohort, was empathetic to Blume’s position. Though Friedman
opposes BDS, he said he hopes students with differing views
“have the same opportunity to express themselves.”
A major goal of Friedman’s as cohort chair is to “make the
environment more inclusive” for students who feel unwelcome
at Hillel — concerns he called “quite disheartening.”
Friedman, with shaggy hair, a bushy beard and dark,
glassy eyes, speaks slowly and hesitantly, with an inflection
of nervousness that grows when discussing more sensitive
topics. At numerous events on Israel and BDS, he engaged with
students across the ideological spectrum. He believes in the
necessity of a Jewish state, but was cautious to note that he can
only speak for himself.
“Criticism of Israel is healthy, and by no means disqualifies
someone from being pro-Israel.”
BDS, Friedman fears, divides people and hardens them,
pushing Israelis and Palestinians further apart.
LSA Junior Jacob Abudaram, a CSG representative and
Friedman’s roommate, was disappointed with the 2014
divestment debate and the current campus climate since, which
he calls “terrible.”
“It puts everyone in a box,” Abudaram said, “I was
immediately put in the Hillel box, the pro-Israel box, so that
immediately excludes me from being pro-Palestine, which I
very much identify as.”
Abudaram is Jewish and spent a gap year living in Israel
through the program Kivunim, where he worked on grassroots,
peace-building efforts. He spoke at length about the conflict,
Judaism, and tensions within American Jewry. As an
underclassman, Abudaram interned at AIPAC, worked with
pro-Israel groups WolvPAC and Tamid, and ran for CSG — he
had “poured his soul” into unifying work during his gap year,
and hoped to do the same on campus.
When asked what was going through his mind during last
year’s divestment debate, the usually well-spoken Abudaram
struggled to articulate his feelings on the polarization and grew
quiet.
“It was saddening for me.”
Wednesday, April 1, 2015 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, April 1, 2015 // The Statement
5B
Pro-Israel groups and the campus divide
By James Brennan, Columnist
‘Wherever We Stand’:
ILLUSTRATION BY LEVI KIPKE
ILLUSTRATION BY LEVI KIPKE
ILLUSTRATION BY JAKE WELLINS
See ISRAEL, Page 8B