With this in mind, I came to the painful realization that the campus Pro-Israel movement is seen as the Goliath. The Pro-Israel movement distributes shiny pamphlets, orders beautifully arranged food, and has top-rate speakers. They are well funded. Yet, despite the arsenal of promotional tactics, pro-Israel advocates are generally on the losing end in popular opinion against the underdog: the BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions) movement.
The BDS movement rarely caters events. Its speakers are radical. Its literature is inflammatory and written conversationally. And in order to appeal to the public, the BDS movement does not call its supporters “Palestine advocates,” it calls them “human rights activists.”
The Pro-Israel movement also values democracy and human rights, tolerance and justice, the right of all peoples to self-determination. So, why does the movement cling to the corporate approach while the cause has so much at stake?
This asymmetry extends to how the Pro-Israel movement describes themselves. “Pro-Israel advocates” vs. “human rights activists.” The word “advocate” sounds businesslike. The word “advocate” calls to mind the image of lawyers in suits. Advocacy hardly seems like a role taken on out of love or dedication to a cause, and instead seems like a position assumed out of a devotion to money or prestige.
By contrast, the word “activist” implies marches on the Mall in Washington, D.C. where Dr. King shared his “I have a dream” speech, anti-war protests from the 1960s, and grassroots organizations. Activism is generally perceived as grassroots, whereas advocacy is thought to be corporate. (How true these perceptions are is a different matter.)
In short, grassroots is cool; advocacy is not. And as long as the term “Israel advocates” is being used, the pro-Israel movement just isn’t “cool.”
In reality, BDS is just as commercial as the Pro-Israel groups are. It, too, receives donations from wealthy donors and organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee and Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as the lobbyists of oil-rich Arab states. For example, A Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a Jewish outlet for the BDS movement, has had contributions go from $280,000 to $1.5 million in the past eight years. In fact, even the Rockefeller Brother Fund is financing BDS through a $140,000 two-year grant for “peace-building” to JVP. Despite massive funding, however, the BDS movement does not look corporate. It looks grassroots, something that the pro-Israel movement is not doing very successfully.
This broad appeal to the people is especially seductive for college students, with their general (and often somewhat socialist, or at least universalist,) desire to fix the world and be activists for a cause.
The Pro-Israel movement also values democracy and human rights, tolerance and justice, the right of all peoples to self-determination. So, why does the movement cling to the corporate approach while the cause has so much at stake?
For the Pro-Israel campus group to gain more followers, it needs to broaden its appeal. Rather than advocating like intellectuals, the group must act like, well, activists. It must speak to the impulse of the student to work for “the people” with grassroots events like vigils and “Campus Kippah Days” in response to “Campus Keffiyeh Days” or “Campus Days of Rage.” The pro-Israel movement followers must make activism accessible with as few long words and lectures as possible. If not, Israel supporters will never win the hearts and minds of college students who want nothing more than to make the world a better, less corporate place.
Leora Eisenberg is a high school Israel activist at Nova Classical Academy. She blogs at the Jerusalem Post (“Generation Why”), and her articles have been featured in Israel Hayom, Hevria, the Forward, the Algemeiner, the Orthodox Union, and Minnesota Public Radio.
