December 9, 2009
Stacey Popovsky, ADL's Director of Campus and Confronting Anti-Semitism Initiatives, reports back to the coalition on the Promoting Israel task force.
The representatives of more than a dozen pro-Israel organizations who participated in last week’s inaugural meeting of the ICC’s Promoting Israel Task Force, chaired by Stacey Popovsky of the Anti-Defamation League, faced a broad assignment: to decide on specific goals for the group to achieve in the next six months. One thing immediately became clear: this was only the first meeting of a series of important conversations about how the organizations can work together to support the pro-Israel campus community.
The task force benefited from the active participation of representatives of AIPAC, the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, Americans for Peach Now, CAMERA, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Hasbara Fellowships, Hillel of Greater Philadelphia, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, ICC of Greater Washington, StandWithUs, the Israel University Consortium, the David Project and ZOA — the largest assembled group at the Consultation, reflecting the urgency and attention that the issue engendered among Coalition members. The far-ranging conversation covered, among other topics, suggested responses to anti-Israel activities, ideas for effectively educating students about Israel, and the variety of target populations with which ICC member organizations could work.
The group emerged with several specific proposals. One idea was to encourage and enlist those ICC member organizations that already have an established “base” of involved student leaders for whom they do intensive educational training to expand their ranks by capitalizing on those students’ existing social networks and extending that education to their peers on campus.
The task force members also focused on the most effective responses to anti-Israel activity on campus. The groups in the task force acknowledged the wisdom of tempering responses based on the estimated size and impact of an anti-Israel event rather than utilizing a “one size fits all” approach, recognizing that this strategy can both prevent excessive media attention to what might otherwise be a minor, poorly-attended event and enable the pro-Israel community to maintain its focus on the issues it deems most important.
Finally, the task force discussed the possibility of expanding ICC organizations’ ability to provide students with needed resources – both virtually, via improving the ICC’s web site, and in person, through the revival of regional Israel advocacy training conferences for students.
There is no doubt in the value of having started the conversation on this most important topic – the group will reconvene later this month to continue the discussion – and there is no doubt that the power of collaborative thinking and action will propel the Promoting Israel Task Force toward strong and concerted support for pro-Israel students across the country.