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Write On trip to Israel trains new advocates
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By ELLEN SCHUR BROWN
Editor, Family Section
Many trips promise “The Real Israel.” But the Israelis who met the teen advocacy group Write On for Israel, co-sponsored by The AVI CHAI Foundation and the Cleveland Jewish News, really delivered.
On a recent 10-day Israel trip, a component of the Write On advocacy training, 20 local high-school seniors and I met business people, kibbutzniks, activists, soldiers, artists, journalists, and hopefully, the young people who can change the situation.
Media bias was a recurring theme from David Horovitz, editor of the English-language newspaper The Jerusalem Post. He was especially critical of the BBC, which he called “endemically hostile to Israel.” Journalism is failing Israel and underestimating the threat of Islamic extremism by not reporting the context of the region, he explained.
More accurate reporting wouldn’t change the Palestinians, he admitted, but might affect their supporters.
While many Israelis we met are optimistic about President Obama, Horovitz criticized the president’s Cairo speech for pinning Israel’s right to exist on the Holocaust. “The bottom line is this is the only place where Jews have been sovereign. Every prayer is about Zion,” he said. “We didn’t establish this country; we re-established it.”
Later the same day, the teens toured the Old City of Jerusalem and rescued archaeological artifacts excavated from under the Dome of the Rock. We learned Palestinians deny there was ever a Jewish temple on this site, yet we found ancient coins, jewelry and bones from kosher sacrificial animals.
The advocacy trip was planned by Write On director Amnon Ophir and featured speakers representing left to right, political to artistic.
Many days started with security briefings. Counter-terrorism expert Sheldon Shuman warned that Iran is the greatest threat. He stated that peace with Saudi Arabia and Syria is on the horizon because they fear a nuclear Iran.
Ideologically driven governments do things we consider irrational, he said, such as allowing genocide of their own people to achieve their goals of killing Jews and bringing other Arab states back to the true Muslim faith (Shia).
He reported that Israeli schools have a new curriculum about how to survive a nuclear attack. Students in grades 11 and 12 are training as EMTs.
“There isn’t an Israeli citizen who doesn’t want peace, and that’s why after every bombing we go back to the negotiating table and offer anything for peace and security, including re-division of Jerusalem,” he said.
Retired Col. Kobi Meron showed the teens, within a space of just a few miles, the borders with Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Atop Mt. Adir, he pointed out the former army division HQ just over the Lebanese border and spoke openly about mistakes in the Lebanon operation, withdrawal, and the price paid in human life. The students visited the exact spot where soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were kidnapped due to a security breach.
“Deterrence is critical for the future of this country,” he stated.
We ate lunch at an army base, learning that red dishes are for meat (blue for dairy) … and to bring our own toilet paper.
Five soldiers, muscular and tan, came to ride along on our bus, where they talked with the students about everything from how they competed to get into the paratroopers’ unit to what was on their iPods. These young men also shared their experiences during the recent Gaza incursion and told the American teens the measures they employed to avoid civilian casualties.
CJN columnists Cliff Savern and Marcy Oster spoke about their different perspectives on swapping land for peace and helped the young people hone rebuttals to some of the criticism of Israel they’re likely to hear on college campuses.
We heard similar sentiments in Efrat, a settlement on the West Bank, which looked surprisingly like any gated community in California built of Jerusalem Stone.
From Har Gilo, an active army base, we could see Bethlehem. “There used to be crosses on every house,” recalled Mike Cohen, founder of the Galilee Institute, whose reserve unit secured the town after terrorists took over the Church of the Nativity.
Israeli advocacy isn’t just about arguing about the security situation or rights to the land, pointed out Zavi Appelbaum of the Israeli foreign ministry. It’s also about the positive sides of Israeli culture: arts, landscape, Western lifestyle, ecology, technology, and biblical history. She encouraged the future advocates to put the conflict in the context of all the things that make up Israel and to talk about Israel’s human face.
They’ll be talking about dancing at a concert of Tractor’s Revenge, one of the country’s top rock bands, and about “G-17,” a play about the first intifada performed at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theatre, which questioned the effect of combat and occupation on the soldier’s personally (performed in Hebrew with English translation projected above).
On a lighter note, visiting the modern Azrieli Mall in Tel Aviv, the girls shopped and the boys ate pizza and burgers – a change from the kibbutz (cafeteria) food we’d been eating.
Another of the group’s goals was to learn about Israel’s thriving economy. Kibbutz Degania Aleph was the first socialist farm, started 100 years ago. These early pioneers who cleared the desert and established rules of kibbutzim had a lasting effect on Israeli society and on the teens.
Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu, became Israel’s first organic commercial grower and bred bumble bees that can live in hothouses and pollinate tomatoes. The urban Kibbutz Beit Yisorel helps poor minority families, mainly from North Africa. Israelis can delay their army service for one year and work with the local children running a preschool, summer camp or homework center.
Finally, we found signs of hope in unlikely places, such as Jasar a Zarqa, a scrappy Arab village with a breathtaking beach. The Cleveland teens got into groups with students with names like Iman, Rasem and Watfa, but a drumming call-and-repeat song broke the ice. Perhaps Harry Potter, iPods and e-mail can be the worldwide uniter.
“I hope you will tell what you really know,” one of the teachers reminded me. “It’s not what you hear in the media about (poor) relationships between Arabs and Jews. It’s the opposite. Tell people you are welcome here.”
Next week: A visit to beleaguered Sderot on the Gaza border.
About the program
Write On for Israel is a two-year program that immerses high-school students in issues of Israel advocacy and journalism, preparing them to respond to anti-Israel propaganda and events on college campuses. Juniors spend seven Sundays during the school year learning about Israeli history, current events and culture as well as honing advocacy skills like journalism and debate. The first year culminates with a 10-day summer trip to Israel.
During this coming school year, the seniors who just returned from Israel, in addition to writing about their experiences for the CJN, will design a poster campaign, an Israeli culture event at MOCA, create a video from their travels and develop an Israel program for public schools over the next year.
Selection is under way for the next group of students, who begin the program this fall. The program is funded by The AVI CHAI Foundation and run in partnership with the Cleveland Jewish News. Program directors are Amnon Ophir of Akiva Center and Tina Keller, youth director of Beth Israel-The West Temple. Rabbi Michael Unterberg of Fuchs Mizrachi School is the main educational director. Former CJN editor Cynthia Dettelbach supervises the media training.
On a recent 10-day Israel trip, a component of the Write On advocacy training, 20 local high-school seniors and I met business people, kibbutzniks, activists, soldiers, artists, journalists, and hopefully, the young people who can change the situation.
Media bias was a recurring theme from David Horovitz, editor of the English-language newspaper The Jerusalem Post. He was especially critical of the BBC, which he called “endemically hostile to Israel.” Journalism is failing Israel and underestimating the threat of Islamic extremism by not reporting the context of the region, he explained.
More accurate reporting wouldn’t change the Palestinians, he admitted, but might affect their supporters.
While many Israelis we met are optimistic about President Obama, Horovitz criticized the president’s Cairo speech for pinning Israel’s right to exist on the Holocaust. “The bottom line is this is the only place where Jews have been sovereign. Every prayer is about Zion,” he said. “We didn’t establish this country; we re-established it.”
Later the same day, the teens toured the Old City of Jerusalem and rescued archaeological artifacts excavated from under the Dome of the Rock. We learned Palestinians deny there was ever a Jewish temple on this site, yet we found ancient coins, jewelry and bones from kosher sacrificial animals.
The advocacy trip was planned by Write On director Amnon Ophir and featured speakers representing left to right, political to artistic.
Many days started with security briefings. Counter-terrorism expert Sheldon Shuman warned that Iran is the greatest threat. He stated that peace with Saudi Arabia and Syria is on the horizon because they fear a nuclear Iran.
Ideologically driven governments do things we consider irrational, he said, such as allowing genocide of their own people to achieve their goals of killing Jews and bringing other Arab states back to the true Muslim faith (Shia).
He reported that Israeli schools have a new curriculum about how to survive a nuclear attack. Students in grades 11 and 12 are training as EMTs.
“There isn’t an Israeli citizen who doesn’t want peace, and that’s why after every bombing we go back to the negotiating table and offer anything for peace and security, including re-division of Jerusalem,” he said.
Retired Col. Kobi Meron showed the teens, within a space of just a few miles, the borders with Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Atop Mt. Adir, he pointed out the former army division HQ just over the Lebanese border and spoke openly about mistakes in the Lebanon operation, withdrawal, and the price paid in human life. The students visited the exact spot where soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were kidnapped due to a security breach.
“Deterrence is critical for the future of this country,” he stated.
We ate lunch at an army base, learning that red dishes are for meat (blue for dairy) … and to bring our own toilet paper.
Five soldiers, muscular and tan, came to ride along on our bus, where they talked with the students about everything from how they competed to get into the paratroopers’ unit to what was on their iPods. These young men also shared their experiences during the recent Gaza incursion and told the American teens the measures they employed to avoid civilian casualties.
CJN columnists Cliff Savern and Marcy Oster spoke about their different perspectives on swapping land for peace and helped the young people hone rebuttals to some of the criticism of Israel they’re likely to hear on college campuses.
We heard similar sentiments in Efrat, a settlement on the West Bank, which looked surprisingly like any gated community in California built of Jerusalem Stone.
From Har Gilo, an active army base, we could see Bethlehem. “There used to be crosses on every house,” recalled Mike Cohen, founder of the Galilee Institute, whose reserve unit secured the town after terrorists took over the Church of the Nativity.
Israeli advocacy isn’t just about arguing about the security situation or rights to the land, pointed out Zavi Appelbaum of the Israeli foreign ministry. It’s also about the positive sides of Israeli culture: arts, landscape, Western lifestyle, ecology, technology, and biblical history. She encouraged the future advocates to put the conflict in the context of all the things that make up Israel and to talk about Israel’s human face.
They’ll be talking about dancing at a concert of Tractor’s Revenge, one of the country’s top rock bands, and about “G-17,” a play about the first intifada performed at Tel Aviv’s Cameri Theatre, which questioned the effect of combat and occupation on the soldier’s personally (performed in Hebrew with English translation projected above).
On a lighter note, visiting the modern Azrieli Mall in Tel Aviv, the girls shopped and the boys ate pizza and burgers – a change from the kibbutz (cafeteria) food we’d been eating.
Another of the group’s goals was to learn about Israel’s thriving economy. Kibbutz Degania Aleph was the first socialist farm, started 100 years ago. These early pioneers who cleared the desert and established rules of kibbutzim had a lasting effect on Israeli society and on the teens.
Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu, became Israel’s first organic commercial grower and bred bumble bees that can live in hothouses and pollinate tomatoes. The urban Kibbutz Beit Yisorel helps poor minority families, mainly from North Africa. Israelis can delay their army service for one year and work with the local children running a preschool, summer camp or homework center.
Finally, we found signs of hope in unlikely places, such as Jasar a Zarqa, a scrappy Arab village with a breathtaking beach. The Cleveland teens got into groups with students with names like Iman, Rasem and Watfa, but a drumming call-and-repeat song broke the ice. Perhaps Harry Potter, iPods and e-mail can be the worldwide uniter.
“I hope you will tell what you really know,” one of the teachers reminded me. “It’s not what you hear in the media about (poor) relationships between Arabs and Jews. It’s the opposite. Tell people you are welcome here.”
Next week: A visit to beleaguered Sderot on the Gaza border.
About the program
Write On for Israel is a two-year program that immerses high-school students in issues of Israel advocacy and journalism, preparing them to respond to anti-Israel propaganda and events on college campuses. Juniors spend seven Sundays during the school year learning about Israeli history, current events and culture as well as honing advocacy skills like journalism and debate. The first year culminates with a 10-day summer trip to Israel.
During this coming school year, the seniors who just returned from Israel, in addition to writing about their experiences for the CJN, will design a poster campaign, an Israeli culture event at MOCA, create a video from their travels and develop an Israel program for public schools over the next year.
Selection is under way for the next group of students, who begin the program this fall. The program is funded by The AVI CHAI Foundation and run in partnership with the Cleveland Jewish News. Program directors are Amnon Ophir of Akiva Center and Tina Keller, youth director of Beth Israel-The West Temple. Rabbi Michael Unterberg of Fuchs Mizrachi School is the main educational director. Former CJN editor Cynthia Dettelbach supervises the media training.
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