After initially turning down J Street U as a Boston University Hillel student group in April, the Hillel student board voted Thursday to accept the group in order to promote open discussion of the situation in Israel and the Middle East, according to a Friday statement.
The decision came after months of conversation with community members and deliberation from the student board to cultivate a more open environment to talk about these issues, said Student Board President Rebecca Fleischer.
“It [the decision] was based on a majority vote,” said Fleischer, a senior in Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. “We felt it was necessary for the community in Hillel to have more open conversations because right now, it is very conservative, and we felt that not everyone can have a say.”
J Street’s principle states, “We believe in the right of the Jewish people to a national homeland in Israel, in the Jewish and democratic values on which Israel was founded, and in the necessity of a two-state solution,” according to the national J Street website.
J Street President Solomon Tarlin said he is pleased with the group’s acceptance into Hillel because it will give students another way to learn about their Jewish identities and the situation in the Middle East.
“Once the members of the Hillel student board and the Hillel community in general [realized] what we really were, what we could do and how we could be such a positive force in the community, that’s what really created the situation that we can be accepted to Hillel,” said Tarlin, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences.
J Street originally applied to join Hillel in the spring and has since fixed issues pointed out by the student board and changed its leadership to make the group stronger, Fleischer said.
“We turned down J Street for the first time for many reasons,” she said. “They were a new group at the time and didn’t know who they were going to be. We questioned the one event they had done because it didn’t follow the guidelines of J-Street.”
The decision to bring them into Hillel was made with the expectation that J Street will uphold the Israel standards of Hillel International, the parent organizations for Hillel’s on college campuses, and follow the same rules and regulations of other BU Hillel student groups, BU Hillel said in the statement.
“At the present time, it is critical for our students to set aside their differences and come together under the idea that we, in the end, are pro-Israel. We must be united for Israel, and Hillel must be the place to foster this kind of dialogue,” BU Hillel said in the statement. “We hope that all of us can find a way to see this change as a positive step for our community to grow for the future.”
While the inclusion of J Street reflects the board’s goal to make Hillel a place for “richer and more diverse conversations,” according to the statement, not all students welcome the change.
Raphael Fils, a member of Hillel and co-founder of the student-run committee Save BU Hillel, said the J Street vote was “the perfect time” to launch the group.
“The biggest [and] saddest part about the J Street vote is that it really alienates lots of students in the community and was against a majority of the community’s wishes, as well as donor’s wishes,” said Fils, a junior in CAS. “I know lots of money is going to be lost because of the decision, which is then affecting students that were alienated and the Jewish community as a whole at their expense.”
Twenty students serve on the committee, and the initiative has garnered approximately 300 signatures in support, Fils said.
The decision to accept J Street is just one of the many things that contributes to the lack of strength and unity within Hillel, Fils said. Two of Save BU Hillel’s largest goals are owning The Florence & Chafetz Hillel House at Boston University and finding a permanent rabbi.
“Save BU Hillel was actually started before the J Street vote. It’s been in the works for about two months,” he said. “Our focus is to bring back the hundreds of Jewish students that have been turned off by Hillel and don’t come to Hillel anymore to come back and reform Hillel to properly serve the Jewish community. Hillel, as it claims, is the center of Jewish campus life, and the majority of the Jewish community feels that it isn’t.”
Isaac Cohen, a member of Hillel who is part of the Orthodox Minyan Group, said he understands that some students are unhappy with J Street’s acceptance for political and class reasons, but not enough to mobilize.
“I can imagine extremely wealthy donors discontinuing their donations to BU Hillel,” said Cohen, a junior in CAS. “Many students have told me that they will not be participating in certain services because of this, yet there hasn’t been a decline in numbers at Hillel services.”
Hillel is not endorsing J Street’s politics, but rather acknowledging that the group adds a different perspective to the community, Tarlin said.
“As far as that goes, it’s pretty clear that J Street has a lot to offer the community, and for those who are interested in it, I don’t demand or desire that every student is the most affected person in our club or any club,” he said. “Beyond that, obviously Hillel has a much more religious community take, and we’re a very focused group with a very specific purpose.”
Like Hillel student board members, Tarlin said he remains hopeful about the future of J Street and its role in the BU Hillel community.
“A lot of the work J Street does on campus is really about getting the institutions of our community and eventually listen to perspectives that can be kind of difficult. It’s very rare to hear perspectives sometimes that are critical of the occupation and critical of some of the Israeli government,” he said. “The real benefit of J Street joining the community is being able to present this and open the community to these new perspectives.”
Sarah Poff and Sekar Krisnauli contributed to the reporting of this article.
Vice Chairman and archives keeper for The Daily Free Press Board of Directors. Former news editor. I like data, politics, and higher education, but will write about anything.
Back in October, Holly Bicerano, a Jewish student at Boston University, penned an article for the Times of Israel entitled “Why Hillel Should Welcome Anti-Zionists and BDS Backers.” Extolling the virtues of a group calling itself “Open Hillel” – a moniker adopted in protest at the refusal of the official Hillel student organization to host speakers at its events who advocate the elimination of the State of Israel – Bicerano wrote that excluding such organizations and individuals “would be a serious mistake…Doing so will only serve to divide the community.”
Two months later, however, Bicerano has undergone a dramatic change of heart.
In a fresh piece for the Times of Israel, Bicerano, who served as Campus Outreach Co-ordinator for Open Hillel, said that the organization “has something else in mind” other than its stated goals of “open dialogue and inclusiveness.”
“The people who claim that Open Hillel’s main objective is to garner support for the BDS movement may not realize just how right they are,” Bicerano asserted.
Bicerano said that while Open Hillel zealously insists on tolerance for the BDS movement, “many Open Hillel leaders are intolerant of pro-Israel voices that they dislike.”
Bicerano discovered this fact when she invited Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and the author of “Night,” the classic account of his incarceration in the Nazi Auschwitz concentration camp, to a recent Open Hillel conference.
Shockingly, Bicerano recalled that her Open Hillel comrades “took this as an opportunity to demonize and reject him. They felt that they could not make their point without resorting to name-calling and using curse words against Wiesel.”
Bicerano also recounted that Open Hillel’s attempts to address the issue of “anti-normalization” – an anodyne term used by pro-Palestinian activists to harass and marginalize pro-Israel students – consisted of inviting two members of the violently anti-Semitic hate group, Students for Justice in Palestine, to address Open Hillel supporters.
“By presenting the topic from only this ideological standpoint, the committee actually indoctrinated people to hate Israel, rather offering a balance of views – from which people could decide for themselves what to believe,” Bicerano wrote.
Most damningly, Bicerano stated that “Open Hillel has become a vessel for the BDS agenda…”
In July 2012, IsraelNationalNews.com enumerated several vital facts reflecting J Street’s consistently anti-Israel posture. These included the following:
J Street’s political action committee (PAC) receives funds from the Saudi Arabian embassy’s attorney, Nancy Dutton.
J Street receives more than $10,000 per year in contributions from Genevieve Lynch, a director of the National Iranian American Council, which is a pro-Iranian lobby.
J Street’s PAC has received tens of thousands of dollars from one of the leaders of the Arab American community, Richard Abdoo.
J Street’s PAC repeatedly took contributions from a Turkish American, Mehmet Celebi, who had helped produce Valley of the Wolves, a viciously anti-American and anti-Semitic Turkish film.
J Street recently sponsored a speaking tour for John Ging, head of the Gaza-based UNRWA, an entity whose raison d’être is to perpetuate the Palestinian refugees’ status, thus encouraging their “right of return.”
J Street’s visit to Israel in February 2010 was co-sponsored by an anti-Israel group called Churches for Peace in the Middle East, an organization which supports the boycott, divestment, & sanctions (BDS) efforts against Israel.
Anti-Israel U.S. Arabists are attracted to J Street, sitting on its advisory board or contributing to J Street’s PAC. These include Ray Close, former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia and then advisor to the head of Saudi intelligence; Lewis Elbinger, State Department foreign service officer; Nicole Shampaine, director of the State Department’s Office for Egypt and the Levant; Ted Kattouf, former ambassador to Syria and the United Arab Emirates; Robert Pelletreau, former ambassador to Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain; and Philip Wilcox, former U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, and president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.
Daniel Levy (Jeremy Ben-Ami’s partner in founding J Street) stated at a conference in Abu Dhabi that “the creation of Israel” was “an act that was wrong.” Levy also defended the Goldstone Report, which was very critical of Israel’s 2009 military operation in Gaza.
J Street welcomed BDS lobbyists to its national conference, where BDS ran a session on strategies and justifications for boycotting Israeli products.
In January 2012, J Street in Jerusalem held a special meeting to honor Israeli soldiers who refused to obey the orders of their commanders.
In March 2012, J Street lobbied the U.S. Congress against a resolution condemning the blatant incitement and anti-Semitism in Palestinian schoolbooks and the Palestinian media. Moreover, J Street refused comment on the Palestinian Authority’s school curriculum which openly promoted the violent struggle to “liberate” all of “Palestine.”
‘Open Hillel’ Legitimizes Anti-Semitism
By Zach Stern
Published Oct. 14, 2014
Some Jews fought with the Greeks and Romans against their fellow Jews. Some sympathized with the crusades and the pogroms. Some Jews even supported the Nazis leading up to World War II.
The story is no different today. There is still a very small – but vocal – minority of Jews who sympathize with those who want to kill us. There is still a fringe sect of Jewish society that finds it necessary to love those who seek to kill us and blame us for our enemies’ baseless hatred.
These views include comparing the Jewish state to the Nazis, calling for the isolation of the only Jewish state and holding it to an impossible standard, and calling for the annihilation of Jewish self-determination.
Enter ‘Open Hillel’, a fringe group of Jewish students and young professionals who seek to legitimize the world’s worst anti-Semites and invite anti-Semitism into the Jewish community. From welcoming supporters of genocidal terrorist organizations (BDS advocates and other ‘Open Hillel’ conference speakers – see below) to partnering with those who seek to wipe Israel off the map (for example, Students for Justice in Palestine), ‘Open Hillel’ is the newest version of Jewish legitimization of anti-Semitism.
‘Open Hillel’ seeks to change the Hillel guidelines regarding Israel programming on campuses to include those who seek the boycott and demonization of Israel and the destruction of the Jewish people and Jewish state. Hillel, according to its guidelines, is already open to all views on Israel, unless those views include a) the boycott of Israel, b) the demonization of Israel, or c) the destruction of Israel. So, by default, all ‘Open Hillel’ advocates for is the inclusion of Israel-hating views in mainstream Jewish society.
These views include comparing the Jewish state to the Nazis, calling for the isolation of the only Jewish state and holding it to an impossible standard, and calling for the annihilation of Jewish self-determination. The US State Department considers these views anti-Semitic, and most Jews also consider these views hateful and anti-Jewish.
‘Open Hillel’ seeks to invite those who support Hamas (an internationally-recognized terrorist group that openly calls for the genocide of the Jewish people) into Hillels on college campuses. It seeks to invite with open arms those who call for intifadas (terrorism against Jewish civilians). These views should be included and imposed upon college students as legitimate ideas, according to ‘Open Hillel’.
‘Open Hillel’ recently held its first conference, where it invited guests such as Rashid Khalidi, who gave a keynote address, and Judith Butler, who spoke about anti-Semitism. Khalidi acted as a spokesperson for the PLO while the PLO was an internationally-recognized terrorist organization. He also still calls for the extermination of the Jewish state. Butler refers to Hamas and Hezbollah (both of which call for the killing of Jewish civilians worldwide) as “social movements that are progressive”; she refers to the genocide of the Jewish people as a social and progressive movement. Again, she spoke about anti-Semitism.
By advocating for the inclusion of this baseless hatred, ‘Open Hillel’ is legitimizing anti-Semitism and inviting this age-old disease onto college campuses.
‘Open Hillel’ members continuously claim that they are simply trying to allow criticism of Israel under the Hillel tent. But they fail to realize that criticism of Israel is already welcome under Hillel’s tent. What they do not realize is that a line exists between legitimate criticism of Israel and calling for its demonization, isolation, or annihilation, all of which are anti-Semitic, even according to the US government.
Would the NAACP invite the KKK to campus to preach racism? Should the Jewish community invite anti-Semites to campus to spread hate speech and call for an end to Jewish self-determination?
Yet StandWithUS has concerns about J Street, and StandWithUS is a trusted non-profit pro-Israel educational organization based out of LA, CA with branches all over the United States.
https://www.standwithus.com/news/article.asp?id=1186
StandWithUs has concerns about “J Street,” a new organization and lobby whose goal is to change U.S. policies on Israel. Though J Street claims to be “pro- Israel” and “pro-peace” and to represent mainstream Jewish opinion, we are troubled because their positions seem to undermine Israel and its search for peace with security. Their views may also contribute to anti-Israel biases and misinformation.
Among our concerns are the following:
We are concerned because J Street echoes many of the charges in Walt and Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby, and denigrates mainstream Jewish organizations across the political spectrum.
We are concerned about many of J Street’s funders and advisors who have opposed Israel or have ties with Arab governments that have been consistently hostile to Israel. They include one board member who donated $10,000 and is on the National American Iranian Council, widely viewed as the unofficial lobby in America for the current Iranian regime. [1] Others include Zahi Khouri, a wealthy Palestinian businessman, who considers AIPAC and Netanyahu “enemies of peace” [2] Another J Street donor is a board member of Human Rights Watch, an organization that targets Israel [3] for unfair criticism, and was recently exposed because its “military expert” was obsessed with Nazi memorabilia, and because it solicited funds from the Saudi government, enticing them by promising to continue its biased investigations of Israel. J Street advisor Judith Barnett worked for the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Trade, and became a registered agent for Saudi Arabia. [4]
We are concerned because J Street draws a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas. During Israel’s recent war against Hamas, J Street said it could not identify “who was right or who was wrong,” proclaiming that “we recognize that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right and wrong.” [5] We are deeply disturbed that J Street would equate the moral principles of Israel and Hamas, whose founding document calls for the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel, and includes sections that echo The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
We are most concerned because J Street frequently endorses anti-Israel, anti-Jewish narratives. J Street claimed that Israel’s response in the war against Hamas was “disproportionate;” accepted the discredited claims of the UN Goldstone report on Israel’s conduct during the Hamas war; [6] launched letter writing campaigns to support a “60 Minutes” show demonizing Israeli settlers; [7] supported the staging of “7 Jewish Children,” a play with such strong anti-Semitic messages that the BBC wouldn’t air it, [8] and praised Jimmy Carter whose biased views have been so damaging to Israel. [9]
We are concerned because J Street lays equal blame on Israel and the Palestinians for the ongoing conflict, ignoring the long history of Palestinian rejectionism, the extremism of Palestinian organizations like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Fatah-funded Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and the unfortunate results of Israel’s concessions for peace, such as the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. We are disturbed when we read statements blaming both sides equally for the failure of past peace efforts, such as, “It is J Street’s position that the parties themselves have proven incapable of reaching a resolution to the conflict.” [10]
We are concerned because J Street frequently opposes the positions of the Israeli government and its electorate, and urges America to oppose center piece Israeli policies that have wide public support in Israel and the U.S. J Street opposed Israel’s war against Hamas, supported the U.S. administration’s call for a settlement freeze without comparable demands put on the Palestinians, rejects stronger sanctions against Iran, and calls for the U.S. and Israel to negotiate with Hamas. J Street seems to belittle or ignore official Israeli policy and the realities on the ground in the region.
We are also troubled that many Israeli J Street members are affiliated with Israeli political parties that were soundly defeated and marginalized in recent elections, and who seem to be trying to influence the American public and government to adopt their rejected platforms.
We are troubled that J Street claims to represent the silent mainstream of American Jewish opinion even though the polls that J Street conducted to prove the popularity of its positions were exposed as unreliable because biased questions forced the responses that J Street sought. [11] Other polls of Jewish American opinion produced substantially different results.
StandWithUs shares the deep concerns of Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, who condemned J Street’s position on Israel’s war against Hamas. He wrote that J Street’s views are “deeply distressing because they are morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve.” [12]
We are all committed to breaking the impasse on the road to peace in the Middle East, but we should be concerned about a group that misrepresents itself to well-meaning people by falsely claiming that it reflects mainstream American Jewish opinion, and while promoting policies and views that threaten to harm Israel and undermine the arduous efforts for establishing an enduring peace.
[1] http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2009/08/exposing -j-street-fraud-why-is-pro.html
[2] Lenny Ben-David, “Peeling Off J-Street’s Invisibility Cloak: What Today’s NY Times Magazine Won’t Tell You, Pajamas Media, Sept. 13, 2009 at http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/peeling-off-j- streets-invisibility-cloak-what-todays-ny-times- magazine-wont-tell-you/
[3] http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/peeling-off-j- streets-invisibility-cloak-what-todays-ny-times- magazine-wont-tell-you/ and NGO Monitor at ttp://www.ngo- monitor.org/article/human_rights_watch_hrw_
[4] http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/peeling-off-j- streets-invisibility-cloak-what-todays-ny-times- magazine-wont-tell-you/
[5] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? cid=1244371055245&pagename=JPArticle% 2FShowFull and http://www.jstreet.org/page/rep-marcy- kaptur-d-oh-statement-violence-gaza
[6] http://www.jstreet.org/blog/ , Sept. 21, 2009
[7] http://jstreet.org/campaigns/archived Jan. 29, 2009
[8] http://theaterjblogs.wordpress.com/2009/03/26/j- street-letter-of-support-on-discussing-7jc/
[9] http://www.campusprogress.org/asktheexpert/293 4/redefining-pro-israel
[10] http://jstreet.org/page/israel-palestine#
[11] http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index. php/pollak/75641
[12] http://www.forward.com/articles/14847/
It is sad to see the hopeless naiveté of Ms. Fleischer and the BU students who voted with her. They have betrayed their responsibilities to Hillel, BU students (present and future), and alumni (of which I am one). Hillel is an organization that is meant to support Jews and Israel. Hillel is emphatically not a public square where “everyone can have a say”, particularly for the purpose of promoting views that are antithetical to Hillel’s mission. There are numerous other forums that are available for that purpose.
J Street — while formally declaring its “pro-Israel” orientation — consistently voices and lobbies for positions that weaken the State of Israel and inspire anti-Semitism. The Hillel student board apparently does not have sufficient background in the facts to recognize this, and thus they have no business being entrusted by Hillel with these kinds of decisions.