Too many Americans are prevented from studying in Israel
Photo: AP
Israel 's image not so terrible
Ordinary Americans from middle America are standing up for Israel
Let’s begin with a warning: This week’s column is not recommended reading for people who love to whine about how bad Israel’s image is, about how much the rest of the world hates us, and about Israel’s terrible PR.
This week I have two upbeat stories for you. The heroes of the stories are not polished diplomats or experienced spokesmen, but just plain old good middle Americans, lovers of Zion who encountered anti-Israel sentiment and decided to fight it. I meet people like this almost every day - ordinary folks who love Israel and who fight to defend its honor. It’s great to hear these stories, and it’s great to share them with others.
One of the issues that is very troubling to the pro-Israel community here is that too many Americans are prevented from studying in Israel. In the U.S. many college students spend a semester or two abroad, and until the intifada broke out, Israel was the preferred destination for many of the Jewish students.
But then the violence began, the State Department placed Israel on a list of dangerous countries, and many universities, including very prestigious ones, stopped allowing their students to study in Israel.
This was, first and foremost, catastrophic for Israel’s image, since the State Department placed Israel on a list that included Libya, Iran, Iraq, and the Sudan.
In addition, we lost some of our best “ambassadors": Studies show that people who spend time in Israel as students tend to be involved in pro-Israel activities even as adults. But these potential ambassadors have been spending their semesters abroad in Florence, Rio, or London instead of Israel.
Terrible verdict
Syracuse University, located in upstate New York, suspended its Israel program not because of anti-Semitism or because of malice, but apparently simply to be on the safe side. Most Syracuse students accepted the verdict, but one especially stubborn undergraduate, Carly Mangel, decided to fight it. Carly is a pro-Israeli activist on campus, and since she first visited Israel and fell in love with the culture and the idea of a Jewish state, she has wanted to study there.
Together with friends, Carly wrote to the university administration, sent emotional letters from students who wanted to study in Israel, and kept an entire file of documents, reports, and recommendations from various people who called upon the university to change its policy. Wonder of wonders, this worked. Three weeks ago Syracuse University decided that it isn’t actually so dangerous to study in Israel, and that its students could once again study there.
Remembering the moment when she heard the news, Carly says it was a wonderful feeling to discover that one person can change things. Nevertheless, Carly, who was elected head of the Jewish student organization at Syracuse, must stay on campus, and cannot take advantage of the newly-won permission to study in Israel. But there are another 3,000 Jews there, and even if only one of them goes to Israel, it will have been worth it.
Fighting media bias
And another story, this time from Florida. Not long ago I spent some time in a tranquil city in Florida with a small but active Jewish community. Several years ago, at some point near the beginning of the intifada, members of the community noticed that the local paper’s coverage of Israel had a decidedly pro-Palestinian slant.
They began to clip articles, count news reports, assess headlines, and check photos, they found that the statistics confirmed their gut feeling that the paper had a pro-Palestinian slant: for every pro-Israel article, the paper had 4-5 that showed Israel in a negative light.
I should mention that in this enormous country, there are thousands of local papers. In Israel we are mainly familiar with the most important American papers such like the New York Times, but many Americans get their news almost exclusively from local papers. Once in a while an item about a far-away country—Israel, for example—makes its way into a local paper, and those few items provide the local papers’ readers all they know about what is going on in the world. Or put differently, what is written about Israel in local newspapers is very important.
Back to Florida
But back to Florida: The most prominent paper in the city I mentioned is a local paper that reaches hundreds of thousands of people, for most of whom it is the only source of news about Israel. This means that what they were reading was especially one-sided: Israelis were always the aggressors, Palestinians always the victims.
If the paper had photos of funerals, they were always Palestinian funerals. The paper’s editors loved to include photos of orphaned children and weeping women, but not when the victims were Israeli. In one instance, after a terrorist attack led to an Israeli military operation, the headline screamed, “Israelis kill Palestinians.” There were many other similar instances.
Members of the local Jewish community got together and decided to act. One person suggested Jewish businesses cease to advertise in the paper, while another raised the possibility of mass cancellation of subcriptions. Ultimately a much less forceful and a much simpler method was chosen: The group asked to meet with the editors, and the editors agreed.
They met in the paper’s offices, and the Jewish community members presented the articles that had appeared in the paper, and asked for fairer coverage. One activist told me that never asked the paper to become pro-Israel, only to present the issues fairly. They showed the editors statistics about terrorism, presented the Israeli point of view, and tried to explain the complexity of the situation.
Wonder of wonders, not only did the editors promise to be more careful, but in fact, gradually, over the course of months, community members began to see a change:
Articles became more balanced, the headlines were more reserved, and the entire coverage of the conflict became fairer. The same activisit told me that they no longer are afraid that they will open the paper and read about what terrible people the Israelis are. They have realized that if no one will defend Israel, they have to do it themselves.
