The Student Panel sits at Harvard Law School during the conference on December 4, 2016. (From Left to right) Rezwan Haq (University of Central Florida), Kelsey Kimmes (CSU Long Beach), Misha Vilenchuck (Brandeis University), Kailee Jordan (San Francisco State University), and Jason Storch (Vassar College). On Sunday, December 4, I had the pleasure of speaking at the CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) conference, “War by Other Means: Israel, BDS, and the Campus,” at Harvard Law School. In recent years, anti-Semitism has been on the rise throughout the country, and particularly on college campuses. Much of this anti- Semitism has taken on a new form, anti-Semitism “coded” as anti-Israelism. This conference addressed these very issues. Featured speakers included Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz, Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson, executive director of CAMERA, Andrea Levin, and co-founder and director of the AMCHA Initiative, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin. The aim of the conference was to further understand what drives the growing and aggressive anti-Israel Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that has engulfed our campuses in the United States. The BDS movement is a call to boycott all cultural, academic, and economic ties to Israel in an effort to strangle the country, until they are held accountable for alleged human rights violations against Palestinians. This movement portrays itself as a global human rights movement, however, as explained by Alan Dershowitz in a video message addressing the conference, “there is no BDS movement.” Movements, explains Dershowitz, are a global effort to hold accountable all countries that violate their terms of human rights abuses. BDS is an effort that solely focuses on Israel. Jordan, which is also a previous territory of the British Mandate of Palestine, doesn’t find it’s discriminatory citizenship laws toward Palestinians on the BDS’s movement’s agenda. He explains that If they were a movement for human rights accountability, Israel would be at the very bottom of their list. As a plethora of severe human rights violations are littered across the Middle East, the BDS movement against Israel has gained more visibility than others among college students. Authors, lawyers, professors, academic professionals, activists, and students from Harvard – including students from the Harvard LDB Law Student Chapter — engaged in the discussion of campus climate for Jewish students today. Presentations included “Countering BDS on Campus” by Alan Dershowitz, “BDS Has A History” by Professor William Jacobson from Cornell University, “BDS and Campus Anti-Semitism” by AMCHA initiave’s Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, “Academic Freedom, Free Speech, and BDS: Advancing Viewpoint Diversity on Campus” by Professor Miriam Elman from Syracruse University, and “Answering SJP Propoganda” by Dr. Alex Safian. On a panel along with other current and recent graduates, I shared my personal experiences as an Israel advocate while studying at San Francisco State University (SFSU), a campus with a great presence of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity. I spoke about Professors like Hatem Bazian and Rabab Abdulhadi, both of whom are active leaders of the BDS movement. Abdulhadi, a professor of ethnic studies at SFSU, used University tax-payer funds to finance a field trip for students to Palestinian territory to meet with Palestinian resistance fighters, whom of some were linked with US designated terrorist lists. She met with Leila Khaled, whom Professor Abdulhadi describes as “an icon in women’s liberation and an icon in liberations movements.” Leila Khaled was arrested in 1969 for hijacking an airplane in an act of terror, and she became a famous Palestinian icon for being the first woman to do so. I talked about how leaders of student groups and professors at my school have both gone under FBI investigation, including the former SFSU student Mohammad Hammad, who infamously posted a picture of himself holding a blade on social media, saying: “I seriously can not get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier.” Students from Vassar College, Brandeis University, Cal State Long Beach, and University of Central Florida joined me to discuss their unique experiences on their given campus which brought them to advocate for Israel. Students, including a Muslim speaker who previously was a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) activist and transitioned into a strong Israel activist. The reality of campus anti-semitism captivated the audience and motivated younger students and academic professionals to take initiative to validate Israel’s existence in the classroom and through advocacy. We were left reminded that although the climate can be challenging, the knowledge and motivation of future generations is in our in our hands, especially in a vital environment like a University campus. The conference was closed with a statement by Andrea Levin, executive director of CAMERA, commenting on the very concept of War By Other Means: “We Will Win”. For more updates and footage on the conference, visit CAMERA’s Facebook page here.
Concerned taxpayers filed a lawsuit against the Newton School Committee in Newton, MA for the alleged anti-Israel indoctrination of their students. As of the end of August, the School Board has avoided a lawsuit, at least for the time being. Education Without Indoctrination (EWI), who filed suit, claimed that there were “multiple violations of the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law stemming from the school committee’s handling of a burgeoning scandal over anti-Semitic lessons and the promotion of Islamic religious beliefs as objective facts in the public school district’s history classes.” In 2016, Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) exposed anti-Israel and anti-Semitic materials that were being taught in Newton high schools. Materials include the use of the Arab World Studies Notebook, a biased and inaccurate textbook produced by groups funded by Saudi Arabia, and The Modern Middle East by James Gelvin, an anti-Israel BDS advocate. Additionally, students were provided with maps produced by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a doctored version of the Hamas Charter, and were asked to consider whether or not Israel had a right to exist. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) recently published a detailed report on the lessons being taught in Newton schools. It has also been discovered that one of the teachers, David Bedar, has been trained by Primary Source, an organization that is heavily funded by Qatar Foundation International. Taxpayers and parents had asked to see the materials being taught in the classrooms, but Newton Schools Superintendent David Fleishman demanded that parents pay a $4000 fee to see what their children were learning. Additionally, after learning of a FOIA request, School Committee Chair Matt Hills reportedly instructed staff not to let citizens see the offending materials. The school officials have defended the inclusion of anti-Israel materials as diversity of thought. With the hopes of ending the spread of biased propaganda in Newton schools, APT demanded public access to school curricula, an investigation into how anti-Israel propaganda is being inserted into the classroom, and sensitivity training about the right of Jewish self-determination. After filing the lawsuit on August 9th, EWI stated that “In teaching world history, Newton Public Schools (NPS) use unvetted educational materials funded by the Saudi oil company ARAMCO and the government of Qatar. As a result, Newton public school students are propagandized with materials that slander Israel and the Jewish people, and that falsify history to promote the Islamic religion in public schools … Just this past May, Newton North High School invited an anti-Semitic group to screen Palestinian propaganda films to its students. For this, NPS Superintendent David Fleishman earned a rebuke from the New England branch of the Anti-Defamation League and Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council.” Newton North Principal Henry Turner defended the curriculum, saying that “our teachers are professionals who keep their personal political beliefs separate from their teachings in the classroom. They work to ensure that students learn to separate fact from opinion, to discern between different points of view and not agree with everything they see and hear, to challenge their own thinking and that of their peers, and to develop opinions through study and the testing of ideas.” Karen Hurvitz, an attorney representing the Newton taxpayers, said, “This is whitewashing going on … It is not only anti-Jewish curriculum, it is anti-Western civilization. All the Newton residents are asking for is that the curriculum be objective and fact-based and not propaganda.” Hurvitz said, “For months now, dozens of Newton citizens have come before the school committee to complain about the non-objective, anti-Jewish, and Islamic religious lessons, as well as about Superintendent David Fleishman, who has refused to stop it being taught. Yet the names of all these citizens and summaries of what they said were deliberately omitted from the school committee meeting minutes month after month.” Hurvitz added, “All that secrecy has now crossed into illegality.” The exclusion of these details would violate Massachusetts’s Open Meeting Law, which “requires that most meetings of public bodies be held in public, and it establishes rules that public bodies must follow in the creation and maintenance of records relating to those meetings.” A hearing was held on August 21st at Middlesex Superior Court to evaluate the open meeting law violations. The school committee agreed to add the comments back into the meeting minutes, thereby avoiding a lawsuit for now. According to the Jewish Journal, EWI will be reviewing the documents. A court hearing was held on September 12 to determine if the school committee has met the requirements of the Open Meeting Law.