Most young adults entering college are not prepared to encounter the critics of Israel they'll almost certainly see on campus. Young people going off to college in the fall can prepare this Sunday at a seminar being held in Cedarhurst at the JCC of the Greater Five Towns.
During "Israel on Campus: Preparing our students," being held on Sunday, June 10 at 7:30 p.m., representatives of StandWithUs (SWU) will discuss the threats to Israel that exist on campus and the need to empower young people to combat those threats before they get to college.
"Tolerating Intolerance: Hate Speech on Campus," a documentary of video clips of anti-Israel speakers from all over the nation, will be shown. "It shows what type of anti-Israel rhetoric is being spewed on the campuses," said Dani Klein, SWU Campus Director of North America.
Klein hopes that students understand just how important this topic may be in their future. "We're preparing them for dealing with Israel on campus meaning that Israel is a hot topic on the university level," he said. "At almost every university there are discussions about Israel, whether in campus papers or in the classrooms. Somewhere you are going to see people talking about Israel on campus. It's always a topic of discussion."
For that reason, SWU members believe educating students can never start too early. "If we prepare students on the high school level, as juniors and seniors, educating them with background on advocacy tools and tactics about Israel, then once they show up on the university campus they are already ahead of the game," Klein said. "It makes all of our lives, both as a Jewish community and as a pro-Israeli source, stronger."
Klein, and Avi Posnick, in charge of outreach for SWU, also believe that educating parents about what exists on college campuses is just as, if not more, important as educating the students.
"We really want to make sure that the parents are aware of what's happening on the campuses and to make sure that their children are prepared to deal with the anti-Israel speakers," Posnick said.
On a practical level, "The parents can make a bigger deal out of it within the high schools," said Klein, "and they can encourage their kids to get involved in training themselves on how to advocate for Israel. That's not being done enough at the high school level." The fact that many parents have been away from college campus for so long is another reason these seminars are important for them to attend. "The parents need some sort of insight to what is being said on the campuses that their kids may be on," Klein said. "There's a huge disconnect between the parents who may not have been on campus for years to what is being said today."
For more information visit StandWithUs.com.