Int’l students from 80 campuses to attend CAMERA’s conference

Parley aims to train students how to react to antisemitic activities on campus

WASHINGTON – In the wake of rising antisemitism across the US, particularly on college campuses, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) will host a conference in Boston to train students how to react.

The event, which will start this Monday, will train students from 80 campuses across the country and the world, including Europe and Israel, on how to respond to anti-Israeli activity. This is CAMERA’s ninth such conference.

“Radical anti-Israel activists are working hard to make colleges and universities unwelcoming to Jewish students,” said Taylor Roth, who is entering his senior year at the University of Florida.

Andrew Netzer, a student at Florida International University, said that “there are students and professors who try to hide their antisemitism behind the language of human rights. They erroneously claim that Israel is the main violator of human rights when, in reality, it’s the only progressive country in the Middle East. CAMERA’s conference will help us develop ways to spread the truth about Israel.”

The committee explained that the conference will feature workshops and noted speakers from the Jewish community and Israel, as well as pro-Israel advocates from other places.

One speaker will be Kasim Hafeez, a British citizen of Pakistani heritage who used to hold radical anti-Israeli opinions before changing his mind and becoming an Israel advocate after reading Alan Dershowitz’s “The Case for Israel.”

“One thing that we’ve noticed is that anti-Israel activists on campus try to dominate the pages of college newspapers,” according to Aviva Rosenschein, CAMERA’s international campus director. “So, at our conference, we train our students to write compellingly for their position, not only in response to anti-Israel narratives but also to proactively advance their argument,” she said. “CAMERA-trained students both respond to anti-Israel activists as well as proactively put forward the Zionist position, forcing the opposition to rethink their arguments.”

Rosenschein explained that today’s college students are met with a well-funded, anti-Israel and antisemitic propaganda campaign. “Part of that well-funded campaign is expressed by the BDS resolutions that are brought up in student governments in colleges around the world,” she said. “Our intensive conference is designed to prepare college students for such propaganda and activism, teaching them the best methods for defeating BDS on campus. We train our students to push back against the lies.”