With the prospect of a year ahead in 2013 unlike any we have ever witnessed, we
in the American pro-Israel community have no time to lose to learn the lessons
of 2012. Israel’s conflict with Hamas and the other militants of Gaza in
November served as a dress rehearsal for what may come.
My work with
American campuses provides a case study of the pro-Israel community’s response
to these events, and some of the lessons are grim. In many ways, the pro-Israel
campus community has never had more resources and more reach, including support
for students from Jewish organizations such as Hillel, the Jewish Agency, Jewish
federations, and Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, as well as campus support from
Israel-focused organizations such as StandWithUs, The David Project, Hasbara
Fellowships, Christians United for Israel, Scholars for Peace in the Middle
East, Project Interchange, AIPAC, the Israeli government, the Israeli university
consortium, and more.
My own organization, the Israel on Campus Coalition
(ICC), works with these and many others to strengthen the pro-Israel campus
community with training, resources, information-sharing and
leadership.
Yet despite those considerable resources and efforts,
anti-Israel activities on campus persist and deep divisions within the pro-
Israel community continue to frustrate our ability to seize control of the
campus agenda. It was discouraging to witness anti-Israel rallies, protests and
other events on college campuses roughly quadruple in November, almost four
years after the last sustained conflict in Israel and Gaza, and to see the pro-
Israel community scrambling to respond, even in places that had seen consistent
efforts by detractors in the recent past. Our community had forgotten lessons it
had learned, often through bitter experience, just a few years ago.
On
campus, part of that lost memory is cyclical: students graduate and move on,
taking their knowledge and experience with them, and new student leaders must
learn afresh. Sadly, turnover of professionals dealing with Israel on campus is
high as well; few remain more than a few years, and in many cases, students
remain on campus longer than the professionals.
But for all that the
campuses experience rapid turnover, the off-campus pro-Israel community suffers
from a lack of information-sharing and institutional memory as well; we, and the
students and professionals we support, spend significant time teaching the
off-campus community about effective Israel advocacy and engagement, often
teaching the same lessons to new groups of community activists one year after
the next.
Our community cannot afford to spend its time continually
reinventing the wheel. It is both costly and damaging that we must relearn that
effective advocacy occurs by establishing a proactive agenda and by nurturing
positive, lasting relationships with decision-makers before crises emerge;
neither should it be necessary to relearn that while public rallies and disputes
may motivate our base, they alienate many or more, both within our base and in
the audiences we hope to reach. On campus, new student leaders could be forgiven
for failing to appreciate the lessons of the past; our broader community has no
such excuse.
In the year ahead, Israel’s geopolitical realities will be
uncertain.
With continued unrest in Egypt and Sinai, an unbowed and
motivated Hamas in Gaza, potential instability in Jordan, an escalating civil
war in Syria, increasing belligerency from Hezbollah, a Palestinian Authority
desperate to reestablish diminishing relevance through international pressure
and, not least, an Iranian regime continuing undeterred in its quest to obtain
nuclear weapons capability, events in the Middle East in 2013 are likely to
continue to wash over Israel and its allies like a tidal wave. We must quickly
consolidate the lessons of this past year if we are to learn and improve from
them.
We can be sure of a two things, on campus and elsewhere. First,
Israel’s detractors will ride a venomous wave from the most recent conflict into
the annual anti-Israel hate festivals of February and March. Second, the
pro-Israel community will continue to have a pool of bright, talented, capable
people, access to significant resources and, most importantly, the luxury of
right on their side.
Applying that talent and those resources to best
effect will require that we learn the lessons of 2012 and retain what works.
With the stakes as high as they are likely to be in 2013, we cannot afford to
forget again.
The writer is executive director of the Israel on Campus
Coalition, an organization dedicated to weaving and catalyzing the campus Israel
network to create a positive campus climate for Israel.
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