{"id":15150,"date":"2015-10-16T00:03:49","date_gmt":"2015-10-16T07:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=15150"},"modified":"2015-10-14T20:22:30","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T03:22:30","slug":"camera-counters-mistruth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/10\/16\/camera-counters-mistruth\/","title":{"rendered":"CAMERA counters mistruth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canadian-Israeli Sidney Shapiro addresses the CAMERA conference in Boston last August. (photo from CAMERA)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Sidney Shapiro had finished his Israel Defence Forces service just weeks before he arrived on campus at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ont.<\/p>\n

\u201cI walked into the door of the school and there is a huge poster of a kid, a Palestinian kid, in the shadow of a field box and some Israel apartheid whatever,\u201d he said, referring to a familiar cartoon employed by Canada\u2019s anti-Israel movement. \u201cSo I wrote an email to the professor who put up the poster, saying I just served in Gaza for two years, I know a lot about it, I\u2019ve seen from my firsthand experience. I\u2019d like to talk to you about it. Not debate or try to convince you, just tell you what my experiences were. And he [replied], \u2018I don\u2019t talk to baby killers.\u2019 That basically set the tone for the rest of my university experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shapiro, whose family made aliya from Canada when he was 10 years old, joined the Jewish Students Association at Laurentian and now, while working on his PhD, is president of the club. Over the years, he told the Independent, his club has had tremendous support from the Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). In August, Shapiro was a guest speaker at the organization\u2019s largest-ever campus advocacy conference.<\/p>\n

While primarily an American organization, CAMERA has been a powerful resource whenever the Zionist students at Laurentian have called on them, Shapiro said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started working with them four years ago,\u201d he said. \u201cWe went to various U.S.-based organizations, as well as Canadian ones, and the most responsive one was CAMERA.\u201d<\/p>\n

CAMERA differs from other advocacy groups in that it focuses attention specifically on promoting more accurate, balanced and complete media coverage of Israel and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have a Hillel, we don\u2019t have a Chabad and we\u2019re extremely isolated in terms of responding to Israel advocacy problems on campus,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cSo, while we have some support from the Federation, from CIJA, from other organizations, we don\u2019t have anybody on campus. CAMERA, of all the organizations we ever worked with, is the most responsive, has the most resources and has been a really good partner when we have a frustrating situation on campus, picking up the phone and actually helping us dealing with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Saudi government sends about 500 students a year to Laurentian, but Shapiro said that is not where most of the trouble comes from. The small band of anti-Israel activists tends to be far removed from the realities of the Middle East. The more common image of a \u201cpro-Palestinian\u201d activist, he said, is \u201csomebody who grew up in the [Canadian] north and has never been exposed to this except that [Israel is] the evil empire and everything that has to do with Israel is merely propaganda. People are incredibly brainwashed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Shapiro, who spoke at the conference on the topic of Israeli history, Zionism and Jewish identity, was one of eight Canadian students at the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important outcome of the conference is networking,\u201d he said, \u201cmeeting many other students. Whether they go to big universities or small universities, we are in exactly the same position.\u201d<\/p>\n

A senior CAMERA official countered the idea that the pro-Israel side is losing the battle for minds on campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a misconception that Israel is losing terribly on American campuses,\u201d said Gilad Skolnick, CAMERA\u2019s director of campus programming, in a statement. \u201cIn fact, it\u2019s the anti-Israel side that\u2019s losing most of the time.\u201d Of the 44 BDS campaigns [boycott, divestment and sanctions], only 12 have passed BDS resolutions, and over two dozen have failed.\u2026 That isn\u2019t to say students don\u2019t face extremely difficult challenges in a lot of places. They do. So, we have to train them as much as possible for whatever comes. Our program provides them with resources and support.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canadian-Israeli Sidney Shapiro addresses the CAMERA conference in Boston last August. (photo from CAMERA) Sidney Shapiro had finished his Israel Defence Forces service just weeks before he arrived on campus at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ont. \u201cI walked into the door of the school and there is a huge poster of a kid, a Palestinian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[801,1616,4330,4685,4683,4684],"class_list":["post-15150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-antisemitism","tag-camera","tag-israel","tag-laurentian-university","tag-media-bias","tag-sidney-shapiro"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}