April 21, 2010
By Anna Richlin, University of Rochester
Anna is double majoring in religion and biology. She is active in Gamma Phi Beta sorority as the panhellenic affairs vice president. Anna spent her freshman year in Israel on Young Judaea’s Year Course program and recently returned from a program in Israel through Hasbara Fellowships. The ICC provided an Israel Advocacy Grant to support Israel Peace Week at the University of Rochester.
Israel Peace Week (IPW) began as the vision of five ambitious college students from universities around North America. After completing Hasbara Fellowships, an intensive Israel activism trip based in Jerusalem, we felt compelled to proactively demonstrate the truth in the face of a wave of hateful propaganda on college campuses. Since the launching of the initiative in early February of 2010, many respected universities and organizations have offered support and joined the mission. Notably, nearly 4,000 members joined our Facebook group in a matter of days, and nearly 40 universities held Israel Peace Week events on their campuses.
As well as organizing and orchestrating IPW international, I am specifically the New York and New Jersey regional coordinator for IPW. In this role, I assist all students at colleges in this region who are holding IPW events. I help them in planning events for their specific campuses and regions, finding speakers from around the world to come to their campuses and speak about their connection to the cause, and obtain funding for their events.
I am additionally in charge of Israel Peace Week at the University of Rochester. Our main event at Rochester was an Israel Peace Fair, which was held on March 1. This event visually demonstrated peace attempts initiated by Israel but rejected by the Palestinian leadership. The event was certainly a success, with around 100 students in attendance. During our event, we had a video presentation of a compilation of students and prominent faculty members on campus expressing their opinions regarding Israel and her pursuit of peace. Several organizations co-sponsored Israel Peace Week, including Christian and Jewish groups, fraternities, sororities and more, making it even more successful. On Thursday, March 4, Ishmael Khalidi, an Israeli Bedouin who works for Avigdor Lieberman in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, came to Rochester to speak about his experience as a minority in Israel. This event was well received by students and faculty and demonstrated another avenue through which Israel has been making steps towards peace.
At Rochester, we are running follow-up programming on campus as well. We are holding a Yom Ha’atzmaut barbeque outside of our student union and hope to attract many students to our event to celebrate Israel’s 62nd year of Independence.
Israel Peace Week swept the globe, and the IPW team is excited for events to be bigger and better in the years to come, with IPW on more campuses, sending out our message loud and clear.