“A stand for freedom” read the headline of a recent New Jersey Star Ledger editorial (July 20) commending New Jersey Governor McGreevey for allowing an upcoming pro-Palestinian conference at Rutgers University devoted to divestment from Israel. The event will also “celebrate Palestinian resistance.”
The response of the student newspaper and the administration to provocative, but accurate, pro-Israel ads and to an anti-Semitic letter full of lies, is a lesson in moral confusion.
In a campus atmosphere hostile to Israel, how can pro-Israel students effectively convey their message? The key is to tailor the message to the student audience, a heterogenous group of different backgrounds and opinions.
At rallies, demonstrations and other charged events at campuses across North America, pro-Israel students have faced harassment, at times violent, from their pro-Palestinian counterparts. These students have legal options and other means of recourse.
At Yale, Amiri Baraka discusses his controversial poem which suggests Israel had prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks. Students expose his ignorant views.
The violent suppression of freedom of expression at Montreal's Concordia University in September directly reflects the resort to force, intimidation and terrorism which has plagued the Middle East for many years.
Bashing Israel has been a popular campus activity since the rise of student radicalism in the late 1960's but during the past year some Harvard students have noted an increase of anti-Israel bias inside the classroom.