Defeating Hate Week

On select college campuses across North America there is an annual week devoted to spreading hatred towards the Jewish state. It goes by the name “Israel Apartheid Week,” but a more accurate title would be “Hate Week.” This year the staff of the newly established Rutgers Hillel Center for Israel Engagement (RHCIE), Tzvi Raviv and Lihi Rothshild, along with student leaders, developed a plan that we call “Defeat Hate Week.”

Our strategy was threefold: (1) Prepare the community by providing knowledge (2) craft smart pro-Israel messages based on the latest research and 3) redirect attention from anti-Israel events. By following through with this plan we were able to successfully defeat messages of hate and promote messages of truth and hope for peace.

To prepare our community, we felt it was necessary to expose the Rutgers student body to the hate speech and demonstrations they might face. To do this we screened the film “Crossing the Line” at Rutgers Hillel on two separate occasions. This film explores the proliferation of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incidents on North American college campuses. Following the screening, RHCIE staff and leaders in the pro-Israel community presented different ways to advocate for Israel on campus, as well as a discussion about what to expect at Rutgers specifically.

Raffi Mark 13'

Holding this event on two occasions allowed for a broader audience of students to learn and discuss in a more personal and in-depth forum. By preparing students to face hate and negativity, we were also able to unite our community around our own positive messaging.

In addition, on February 17, fifteen student leaders from Rutgers attended the Talk Israel Weekend Retreat. The statewide retreat was organized in a partnership between the Jewish Federation of MetroWest, the RHCIE, and the David Project. At the retreat, Rutgers students and students from across New Jersey learned how to better advocate for Israel on campus.

Preparing our students was only the first step. Utilizing the latest research and the select resources from other pro-Israel organizations, we crafted messages that present the human face of Israelis and emphasize the similar values of Americans and Israelis. Another aspect of our messaging was the use of pro-Israel terminology, such as branding this anti-Israel week as Hate Week.

With our student leaders prepared and our smart messages ready, we moved to the next phase of Defeat Hate Week: to redirect attention from anti-Israel events to pro-Israel events. In conjunction with Hasbara’s Israel Peace Week, we held a variety of programs all week to highlight the positive images of Israel that our campus rarely sees. Attendance at anti-Israel programs this year has been poor, so instead of drawing attention to their events by protesting and arguing, we focused on providing positive messages, so that the Rutgers community could meet real Israelis and through these meetings see the human face of Israel.

We started the week on Monday February 27th with an event called “Guess Who? Israelis, the Melting Pot of the Middle East,” at Rutgers Hillel. A standing-room only group of 65 students turned out to hear a panel of Israelis of diverse backgrounds talk about their everyday lives. Wednesday night we followed that session with a program titled “Ethiopia to Israel: Operation Moses Firsthand” at which students learned in-depth about Ethiopian-Israeli Zion Uness, his personal account of being transported from Ethiopia to Israel and the inherent connection he always felt to Israel as a homeland. Defeat Hate Week culminated Thursday as over 700 hundred Rutgers students of different backgrounds signed the “Real Partners. Real Peace” pledge of Support for Peace in Israel. This petition included a call for direct negotiations, opposition to a Palestinian Unilateral Declaration of Independence, and for the Palestinian Authority to end its association with the terrorist group Hamas. This petition will be published next week in our camps newspaper, The Daily Targum.  During Defeat Hate Week, a series of three different pro-Israel op-eds by students were also published in the Daily Targum.  

 After a long day of tabling, the pro-Israel community came together Thursday night to learn more about the American-Israel relationship at “Israel and America: The Culture of Friendship, sponsored by RIPAC, in preparation for a delegation of Rutgers students and RHCIE staff attending the upcoming AIPAC policy conference. 

Rutgers students banded together this week to say that there is no room on our campus for baseless hate and unfounded claims. We gave no validity to claims of “apartheid” and extremist arguments. We welcomed dialogue and encouraged students to expand their view of Israel and Israelis. This year at Rutgers University, through students promoting peace, truth, and open conversations, we were able to defeat Hate Week.

Raffi Mark is a Rutgers Junior from Wayne, New Jersey, majoring in American Studies. He serves as the Rutgers Hillel Israel Chair and is a StandWithUs Emerson Fellow.