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.
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