College students can more ably defend Israel when armed with knowledge, Israel’s new consul general for the Midwest told about 60 students at the Fiedler Hillel Center on Friday night.
“We are here to equip you with more tools so you can go to your campus and make your case known,” Moshe Ram said at the start of the Israel Advocacy Leadership Convention.
About 60 students from 16 universities, including 10 Northwestern students, attended the convention. Chicago’s Israeli Consulate coordinated the event in response to university student reactions to the Palestinian uprising that reignited in September 2000.
In planning the convention, the consulate first gathered information from students about what they wanted to learn, said Nicole Ontell, head of academic affairs at the consulate.
“(Jewish) students on campuses were looking to us for help and for answers after the situation in Israel erupted,” Ontell said. “They were being approached by students because they were seen as representatives for Israel. We wanted to give them a working knowledge that they could take back to their universities and help the information grow on their campuses.”
Ram, consul general since August, called for strong leadership in the Middle East and the United States.
“The Jewish community in the United States is one of the most important strategic assets of Israel,” Ram said.
“A major way to contribute to Israel’s cause now is to support the United States during the bombing in Afghanistan,” Ram added. “The American Jewish community must stand behind the president in this war.”
Gadi Baltiansky, press secretary for former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, spoke Saturday morning, asking Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians to achieve peace.
He recalled an anecdote from his time as press secretary in which he had the freedom to interpret the mood of a confrontation between Barak and Syria’s foreign minister. He chose to portray it as light-hearted.
“It’s very important that we give the positive message,” Baltiansky said. “We need to show that yes, we want peace, and yes, we’re willing to make concessions. Then people will believe us.”
The weekend provided students with sessions about the recent history of Israel and the Middle East as a whole, also including much opportunity for discussion.
University of Wisconsin-Madison freshman Daniel Greenwald said his campus is “very anti-Israel,” and he attributed much of this sentiment to a general lack of understanding.
“People see a 30-second clip on CNN and don’t understand the intricacies of the situation,” Greenwald said. “We hope to learn about (the intricacies) and pass the information on to our fellow students.”
Ryan Evans, a freshman at Loyola University in Chicago, said anti-Israeli sentiment is not a problem on his campus; he was drawn to the conference by a “curiosity to learn more.”
Before bringing the convention’s information back to NU, students will first “take the time to absorb all of the information we learned,” said Elisheva Margulies, Students for Israel co-president.
“Then we’re going to have many educational programs in the hope of getting more students involved,” said Margulies, a Music sophomore.
