In a meeting Monday with American student leaders, human rights activist Natan Sharansky advised them to combat campus antisemitism by focusing on debunking the basic anti-Israel narrative.
Sharansky, chairman of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), a former Israeli Cabinet member and a longtime statesman, explored these themes in Jerusalem with 40 pro-Israel student leaders from North American universities.
To counter the explosion in anti-Israel sentiment following Oct. 7, 2023, students should try to debunk the underlying perceptions about the reality in Israel, he said.
On campus, many students “were not ready to recognize that the rape of Jewish women by Hamas was a real crime because Hamas was representative of the ‘oppressed’ and Israel of the ‘oppressors’,” Sharansky said. This language, he added, was reminiscent of the Soviet Union, where Sharansky was imprisoned for nine years for trying to make aliyah.
He urged the students to focus on disproving the oppression paradigm. “The more this is realized, the more people will wake up and become our allies,” he said.
Amanda Yakobovitz, a University of Western Ontario student, was inspired by her meeting with Sharansky. “I feel truly honored to have had the opportunity to meet him,” she said.
The student leaders visited several locales ravaged during the Oct. 7, 2023, onslaught, in which about 6,000 terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and abducted another 250.
“We also experienced the beauty of the Israeli nation, which continues to live and dance despite everything, especially during Chanukah, which we celebrated each night of the trip,” Yakobovitz said.
The student leaders from Cornell University, the University of Michigan, Stanford University, New York University, Columbia University and others schools are visiting Israel as part of the Pro-Israel Student Leadership Mission, organized by Hasbara Fellowships in partnership with IsraelAmbassadors.com.