DC Campuses (with Itamar Marcus)

I travelled to Dc with a co-worker from Hasbara Fellowships. We were co-sponsoring events in DC with Itamar Marcus, the director of Palestinian Media Watch. There were two events that we hosted, both of which caused a bit of a stir.  

The first one was hosted at American University, a campus which when we walked across it, we saw "Palestinian Solidarity Week" signs, flags, and information plastered across the quad. We knew this event was going to get interesting.

Around the begining of the event, we were asking people to sign in. A group of Muslim students entered the event together, all refusing to sign the registration list. They sat as a group in the middle of the room not saying much. The event eventually started, myself and my corworker introducing ourselves, our respective organizations, and inevidably the speaker. After about 10 minutes into the presentation / lecture, the group of Muslim students started to yell and scream at the speaker, accusing him of being a settler and entirely disrupting the event. After about 5-8 minutes of this, campus police were summoned and after much back and forth, were removed from the event.  

From my observations, American University seems to be an unfriendly campus toward Israel, with a very strong pro-Palestinian presence. 

Our next event was crosstown at Georgetown University. Not the same kind of atmosphere as we had at AU, but rather an intimate classroom setting at the Jesuit campus. 

The event went off without a hitch, but during the Q&A we had an interesting discussion with a Palestinian Georgetown student who agreed that the hate speech presented to the youth throughout the PA TV programming was dispicable. She wasn't entirely switched over to Israel's cause, but I engaged her in a long conversation after the event, and she seemed more open to learn about Israel's side of the story and the problems with the Palestinian Authority's leadership.

Pittsburgh / Cleveland (with Aryeh Green)

During the still frosty part of the Spring semester, I scheduled a campus tour with Aryeh Green, adviser to MK Natan Sharansky, across campuses in the Northeast that typically dont receive Israel related speakers. Ironically, a year earlier I had done an internship for Sharansky's office in Jerusalem, where Aryeh was my main supervisor. Here's a picture to prove it:

I digress...

To kick off Aryeh's multi-campus tour, we headed to Pittsburgh, a town I had little interest in visiting, and I remain somewhat disinterested in returning. With the help of some great student activists, we ran a great event at Carnegie Mellon University, sparking the students to ask questions, many directed at Aryeh, and hopefully many at themselves.

We stayed in Pittsburgh for Shabbat, addressing the Hillels of Pittsburgh on Friday night which included students from both CMU and the Univ. of Pittsburgh. I spent Shabbat at the Chabad rabbi's house near campus, which just so happened to be an hour's walk from the only Orthodox shul in town. Oy. If I recall correctly, lunch didn't start until after 2pm, and it basically finished near the end of Shabbat.

That night I ran to the airport to rent a car. Bright an early the next morning we drove, through the light flurries, and then real snow, to Cleveland. Not fun, at all!


My previous experiences in Cleveland have been mixed: in the summer of 1997, Camp Mesorah took us to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. To us 13 & 14 year-olds, this museum was dull. So my friends and I ran through it and headed to the HMV music store downstairs. When her CD, the cashier told her that the CD, and all the others, was $10. I proceeded to purchase 3 of my own: Sublime, Metallica, and Matchbox 20 (oddly enough, I still love Metallica and MB20). We ran back into the museum letting our friends know of the great $10/CD deal downstairs (something unheard of at the time) . After the HMV became flooded with my fellow campers, we started to notice that some people were being charged $10 per CD, and some were being charged full price (often over $15 an album). After further investigation, I noticed the one "discount" cashier wasnt opening his register. Rather, he was pocketing the cash and only opening the register to give change. Long story short... he was arrested, we apologized, but were allowed to keep our CDs. That made listening to the Black Album's "The Unforgiven" even sweeter. This, however, was the only exciting happening in the Cleveland vicinity.

My other experience in Cleveland is a bit more recent: at last year's GA (General Assembly of the UJC). While I got to participate in a special track called: "Do the Write Thing", the conference wasnt as exciting as I'd had hoped. However, a late night event at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (this time 7 years older and wiser), was a lot more fun and exciting, despite the lack of cheap CDs. At the end of the conference, Cleveland still proved to be a bore.

Now, in my 3rd visit, Aryeh and I headed to the Cleveland Hillel, right off of the Case Western Reserve University (whatever that means!?) campus. We got to have brunch with some students and community members during Aryeh's talk. After the talk we were invited to attend the Cavs game, which normally would not have been exciting, except for the fact that we got to see LeBron James play. Aryeh actually went straight to the airport, whereas I, stayed at the game, only to leave early to head to the airport (long story there as well...).

All in all, neither Cleveland or Pittsburgh proved to be all that exciting (especially not this time around). Maybe they're worth visiting over the summer?