A once-in-your-lifetime experience for Hofstra students

Hillel students stock up on pro-Israel talking points, literature, and T-shirts to distribute.

By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
obama mccain 3rd debate 224 88 (photo credit: AP)
obama mccain 3rd debate 224 88
(photo credit: AP)
As Hofstra University Hillel president and sophomore Robb Friedlander put it, "It truly is a once-in-your-lifetime experience to have a presidential debate on your campus," and he didn't want to waste the opportunity. So Friedlander and other Hillel students stocked up on pro-Israel talking points, literature showing how both presidential candidates support the Jewish state, and hundreds of T-shirts to distribute on campus. "Honestly, college kids like free stuff and they've been pretty quick to take to our T-shirts," said Hillel Israel chairwoman Beverly Scholnick, who gave out the shirts at a Dave Matthews Band concert on campus ahead of Wednesday's debate here. "I think we did a pretty good job of getting our message heard," she said, speaking loudly above the music of rock bands and folk guitarists filling the student quad at the Long Island university in the hours leading up to the parley. Nearby, in front of a makeshift MSNBC studio and amid the throngs of students displaying McCain and, more frequently, Obama signs, Samantha Bordoff was wearing one such T-shirt, with bright blue with white letters proclaiming "USA and Israel, Six Decades Strong." She noted the politicians, journalists and campaign activists swamping her campus and said, "There are going to be important people here, it's important to show we care about Israel." In addition to grabbing the eyes of visitors to a campus whose student body is 20 percent Jewish, Bordoff's shirt sparked a conversation among students passing by on the candidates' Middle East policies and which would be better for Israel. Bordoff supported Obama and argued that his approach to Iran would be better for Israel than McCain's. "Obama wants to keep open diplomacy with Iran and McCain wants to ignore it," she asserted. "Having an open [attitude] would be better for Israel and all of the Middle Eastern countries." Brad Marks disagreed. He described such openness as "trying to rationalize terrorism," and said his uncle's death in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem several years ago showed him that that approach "doesn't work." His uncle, Betar Illit social worker Yechezkel "Chezi" Goldberg, was a native of Toronto who made aliya eight years earlier from his wife's native Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn. He left behind seven children when he was killed along with 11 others when a Palestinian detonated himself on Jerusalem's No. 19 bus on January 29, 2004. Goldberg, who worked with hundreds of needy children, was a Jewish Press columnist and hosted a radio show on Arutz 7. The experience is part of why Marks supports McCain's approach, and said that the candidates' attitudes toward Israel was a central issue for him. "I was always pro-Israel. I always felt that way and that just affirmed my views," he said.