The agony of moral defeat
The acting out and vitriolic language against Israel that so often defines campus anti-Israelism may make the activists feel good about themselves for striving for social justice, but, as journalist Khaled Abu Toameh has contended, these are hollow efforts, that “[i]nstead of investing money and efforts in organizing Israel Apartheid Week, for example, the self-described ‘pro-Palestinians’ could dispatch a delegation of teachers to Palestinian villages and refugee camps to teach young Palestinians English. Or they could send another delegation to the Gaza Strip to monitor human rights violations by the Hamas authorities and help Palestinian women confront Muslim fundamentalists who are trying to limit their role to cooking, raising children and looking after the needs of their husbands.” What was Abu Toameh’s conclusion about this misdirected effort to support the Palestinian cause? “What is happening on the U.S. campuses,” he wrote, “is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the ‘occupation’ as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel . . ,” and “we should not be surprised if the next generation of jihadists comes not from the Gaza Strip or the mountains and mosques of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but from university campuses across the U.S.”Defender of Israel Responds to Racist Attack
Today’s FrontPage Interview guest is Chloe Simone Valdary, a junior and international studies major at the University of New Orleans (UNO). In her short time on campus, Ms. Valdary has distinguished herself as a passionate defender of Israel and Zionism, creating the organization Allies of Israel, one of the lone pro-Israel groups at her university. Ms. Valdary is also the assistant director of special programs for the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (ISBI) and blogs for Arutz Sheva and the Times of Israel. In addition to being featured by the Jewish Press, BET.com, Breitbart.com, the Jerusalem Post, among others, Algemeiner named Ms. Valdary one of the top 100 people positively affecting Jewish and Israeli life. Recently, Ms. Valdary’s advocacy has elicited the ire of anti-Israel activists, one of whom resorted to racist attacks against her.At AIPAC, Student Activists Make Themselves Heard
The conference was an unequivocal display of support for the alliance between the United States and the State of Israel, and the list of speakers was typically impressive. Party leaders were joined by senior Senators John McCain and Robert Menendez and Secretary of State John Kerry - all of whom stressed the mutual benefits and shared moral values which underline the continued alliance between the two countries. From the Israeli side the list of dignitaries was no less impressive: from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to opposition leader Isaac Herzog, as well as a number of other Knesset Members including Economics Minister Naftali Bennett.Pro-Israel Activist Chloe Valdary @ AIPAC PC 2014
But in between the big names, Arutz Sheva took the time to speak to some of the 2,300 student activists who attended the event, many of them for the first time.
One such activist was Chloe Valdary, a student from New Orleans whose Declare Your Freedom initiative - launched just last year and set to take place for the second time later this month - is gaining ever more attention on US campuses.