By: Netanella Refael

On Wednesday November 10, Alma Sifrin will be speaking at Brooklyn College. Alma is 20 years old who made Aliyah from Canada and is currently serving in the IDF. The Jewish Agency for Israel sponsored Alma, along with other speakers to share their stories with students from the New York area.

This week has been an interesting week for Hunter College students! Last year, a group of pro-Israel students came together and formed an organization, I.R.I.S.E., which mainly focuses on educating others about Israel. They started their semester with an amazing display of pro-Israel facts that was unfortunately vandalized with derogatory slurs. When the organization disturbingly learned early this week that there was going to be an anti-Israel display in their hallways they decided to be proactive and to line their hallways with “ISRAEL WANTS PEACE!” posters. These posters included different sacrifices that Israel had to make in the past in order to get peace. These posters attracted attention from many students and drew people away from the anti-Israel display. Hasbara Fellowships commends I.R.I.S.E students for being such great Israel advocates!

Next week, anti-Israel speaker Norman Finkelstein will be making his way to Albany to lecture the outside community as well as SUNY, Albany students. To prepare our students for Finkelstein’s extremist anti-Israel views, Hasbara Fellowships’ own Natalie Menaged gave a session on Wednesday to pro-Israel students about Answering the Most Difficult Questions About Israel and Defeating anti-Israel Propaganda and Speakers. If you would like to bring an informative session like this to your campus click here. We even offer online activism training!

Last week, JEC and Birthright Next hosted an exclusive screening of Crossing the Line in NYC with producer Raphael Shore.  Our own fellow Rebecca Kadosh has the please of speaking to the audience and giving them a first-hand students perspective of what anti-Semitism on campus is like.

Stay tuned for more and don’t forget to apply for our winter fellowships trip!