J Street U, a national collegiate organization advocating a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, held their first Student Town Hall event in Charles Commons from Saturday through Monday, drawing more than 300 students from 57 colleges and universities. The conference was the largest event ever hosted by J Street U.
Throughout the weekend, students attended panels with experts on the conflict and learned from fellow J Street U leaders about making social change on their respective campuses.
“This weekend is about evaluating [our] work, interrogating our strategies and holding those in power to account,” Elisabeth Housman, a Washington University in St. Louis student and a Town Hall co-chair, said. “[A] goal of this weekend is to challenge American political leaders and our communal leaders to not only express their support for an end to this conflict for two states, but to take real action to support it.”
The event also drew prominent Jewish speakers and government leaders, including Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder and president of parent organization J Street, Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs, Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D-MD) and the chief representative of the delegation of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to the United States Maen Areikat.
Many of the speakers, including Ben-Ami, spoke with cautious optimism about the current two-state negotiation efforts. These negotiations, which have been moderated by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, were put on hold after Israel refused to follow through with a planned Palestinian prisoner release. The Palestinians then started an international recognition campaign, sparking finger-pointing from both sides.
“It feels like Secretary [Kerry] took two bickering kids and blew the whistle and said, ‘Time out! I’ve had it with you guys!’” Ben-Ami said. “There isn’t a way to resolve this conflict without an agreement. The only way that this will ever get resolved is through negotiations.”
Some students, including J Street U Chicago Co-Chair Leigh Alon, were surprised with Ben-Ami’s remark that he doesn’t think peace will be achieved under the current Israeli government.
“I was jarred by the fact that [Ben-Ami] said no,” Alon said. “With the recent issues there have been with the talks, the tone has been a bit more negative. That just means we have to continue our work.”
Other speakers, including Edwards, urged students to continue pressuring government officials to continue working towards a solution.
“There are those who will use the events of the past week to close off further negotiation, and we cannot let that happen,” Edwards said.
Sarah Yerkes, a political officer in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs, also encouraged the audience to continue their activism and reassured them that the Obama Administration will continue to push for peace in the region.
“Neither side has given up, and trust me, I’m checking my Blackberry every five minutes to make sure that’s still the case,” Yerkes said. “The U.S. position on all these issues doesn’t change when there are negotiations or there aren’t negotiations. Our plan B is our plan A.”
In addition to addressing the current state of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, many speakers and students discussed strategies for dealing with more conservative Jewish organizations, including The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Hillel, both of which often accuse J Street U of being anti-Israel because it openly criticizes the Israeli government’s actions.
“There is an unbelievable demonization about J Street in the Jewish world, and it’s ugly,” Jacobs said. “We’ve got to model what it means to be a real Jewish community. Love the stranger, love the one who is just like you and love the one who is not like you.”
Many Jewish students in attendance, including Portland State University student Iris Summy, said that the disagreements between J Street and other Jewish groups creates tension within their campus and local Jewish communities.
“Several of my friends in [other campus Jewish] groups have presented this dislike for J Street, like a sour taste in their mouth,” Summy said. “Presenting ideas to traditional organizations [is] a thing that I struggle with.”
Kalyani Gran-Kaimal, the freshman representative on the executive board of George Washington University’s J Street U chapter, said that although she struggles to engage her campus community with the organization, the Town Hall helped remind her of the influence that the organization has on a national level.
“The politicians that worry about our votes and organizations like Hillel that don’t always support us need to know that we’re big and we’re doing things,” Gran-Kaimal said. “[Being here] reminds me that there is a great constituency for peace, which is fantastic.”
The J Street U members wanted to engage attendees with the speakers through their unique panel format. Panel moderators, who were all J Street U leaders from across the country, led discussions with the audience before the panel to brainstorm questions that would challenge the panelists.
The audience also was given breaks to process and converse with the people sitting around them during discussions, and the moderators debriefed the audience afterwards about the impression that they thought the discussion had made on the speakers.
Eliana Leaderman-Bray, co-chair of J Street U at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and co-moderator of a panel titled “Partners for Peace? The State of the Israeli Left and Peace Camp,” said that the goal of the panel was to demonstrate the credibility of the movement to the panelists while educating all audience members, regardless of prior knowledge of the subject.
“There are a lot of people [here] that are just coming into J Street U and just finding out what the work is about, and there are people who have been really involved for four years,” Leaderman-Bray said. “Part of breaking up in between questions is to really help those new people understand what’s going on [and] help everyone process what’s been said on the panel and make it a more inclusive space.”
Several of the panels were also co-sponsored by other political campus groups. The Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS) co-sponsored Areikat’s speech, The JHU Politik co-sponsored a panel on the legacy of the Oslo Peace Accords and the Hopkins College Democrats co-sponsored a panel on politically progressive Judaism.
“I think the panelists at Sunday’s event did a great job of demonstrating how religious beliefs can translate into political participation,” Akshai Bhatnagar, the Hopkins College Democrats co-president, said. “In my experience, too many Hopkins students think of politics, particularly partisan politics, as a realm outside of religion and morality.”
In addition to celebrating their commitment to peace in the Middle East, Town Hall attendees also discussed Judaism’s commitment to social justice issues in general.
The audience was particularly captivated by Heather Booth, the founding director and president of the Midwest Academy, a national training institute national for leaders passionate about social justice. Booth delivered a rousing speech about her own experiences advocating for social justice causes, from participating in the Civil Rights Movement and increasing abortion access before Roe v. Wade to her present day activities.
“[Out of all of the] issues I’ve ever worked on, I’ve never found an issue as emotionally difficult as working on Middle East issues for peace, democracy, two states, justice, humanitarian rights and Palestinian rights,” Booth said. “You are achieving victories by just being here. We can do anything that’s needed not without fear, but in spite of it, because we are all together.”
