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<\/a>More than 30 organizations were conference partners and keynote speakers included radio host\/author Dennis Prager, attorney Alan Dershowitz, actor Michael Rapaport, activist Shabbos Kestenbaum and NGO Monitor\u2019s Gerald Steinberg.<\/p>\n
Dershowitz, 86, said that after speaking to Jewish high school students, he was \u201cstunned by their lack of knowledge\u201d about Israel. To fill the void, he will be giving away a million copies of his latest book, The 10 Big Anti-Israel Lies and How to Refute Them with Truth<\/i>, to 1,000 universities and high schools across the United States. He lambasted what he called the \u201ceducational malpractice\u201d pervasive on college campuses, where professors \u201cgive disguise\u201d to Jew-hatred through diversity, equity and inclusion policies, and oppressor-versus- oppressed beliefs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI offered $1,000 to anybody who could find me a single protester in any of these protests on university campuses that has ever called for a two-state solution. Nobody has taken me up on it. No protester wants to see an Israeli state,\u201d he said to the audience of 300.<\/p>\n
He added that \u201cwe are in a fight for our lives. We are in a fight for the future,\u201d because these students will become politicians, corporate executives, media influencers and other types of leaders, and they will have all \u201cbeen brought up with this kind of knee-jerk anti-Zionism.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Darshan-Leitner characterized Students for Justice in Palestine as a \u201cpropaganda arm of Hamas.\u201d She believes their activity is \u201cactually providing material support to a terror organization\u201d and, in doing so, contravenes the Anti-terrorism Act in the United States.<\/p>\n Kestenbaum \u2013 who, last January, became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against Harvard University, alleging systemic antisemitism, and has testified before Congress about antisemitism on college campuses \u2013 told the Jewish Independent<\/i>: \u201cJewish students are fighting a really remarkable fight with limited resources, with limited help and limited funding. It\u2019s the Jewish nonprofits, who raise billions of dollars each year, who could be in a position to do a lot more. And so, I would encourage the Jewish nonprofits not to say, \u2018What can the students be doing?\u2019 but to ask themselves, \u2018What can I be doing?\u2019 to help students.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt is imperative that larger organizations actively support grassroots initiatives that can manoeuvre and mobilize quickly and efficiently, whereby large organizations cannot,\u201d said Amir Epstein, director of Tafsik, a Jewish civil rights group that fights Jew-hatred in Canada and more broadly.<\/p>\n \u201cHundreds of millions of dollars are donated to large organizations, so it isn\u2019t unreasonable for them to contribute considerable monetary aid to empower these grassroots efforts, so we can create a united front to combat the degradation of our Jewish community\u2019s safety, and address the unprecedented antisemitism we face in universities, K-12 schools, media, politics and the arts,\u201d said Epstein.<\/p>\n Montrealer Ysabella Hazan, who started the movement called Decolonized Judean, said phrases such as \u201cthe West is next\u201d and \u201cIsrael is the only democracy in the Middle East\u201d do not resonate with the younger generation. \u201cThey do not speak about us, convey our story or address the accusations that we are facing on the world stage,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd they indirectly prove exactly what the enemies of Israel accuse us of \u2013 being a Western outpost in the Middle East, a settled body, which is not true.\u201d<\/p>\n Columbia business professor Shai Davidai, who has earned renown for calling out Jew-hatred on campuses, told the audience that antisemites have \u201ccreated the new normal\u201d by making students feel uncomfortable being visibly Jewish.\u201d He said, \u201cIf we don\u2019t fight back in the court of public opinion and in the court of law, we\u2019re not going to win this war.\u201d<\/p>\n Prager, who did graduate work at the Middle East and Russian institutes of Columbia\u2019s School of International Affairs, said, \u201cI was basically taught by moral idiots, but they were giants compared to who\u2019s teaching in Columbia today, or at Harvard or at Princeton.\u201d<\/p>\n An argument he proposed to use against the delegitimization of Israel is to draw a parallel to the creation of Pakistan, born the same year as the modern Jewish state. \u201cThere were two Israels in history,\u201d said Prager, \u201cbut there was no Pakistan in history. When it was created, it was wrenched out of India. Nobody ever challenges the right of Pakistan to exist.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Rapaport, known for his social media posts about Israel, advised: \u201cFight with your heart, fight with your prayers, fight with your genius, brilliant, Jewish, Zionist minds. Fight ferociously and do not take a step back,\u201d he implored, while also encouraging Jewish education: \u201cThe more that I learn about our fantastic, magical history, the prouder I become.\u201d<\/p>\n Journalist Douglas Murray, who is not Jewish, and Darshan-Leitner, shared a question-and-answer session.<\/p>\n Murray lamented how \u201cvery senior politicians\u201d and \u201ca generation of Americans\u201d have bought into the \u201cdelusion that, if you were to solve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, peace would break out, not just in the region, but around the world.\u201d But a state of Palestine with Hamas leadership \u201cwill be another Iranian proxy state nearer to Israel,\u201d he said, and it\u2019s \u201can obscenity that more people don\u2019t realize that.\u201d<\/p>\n He also said this is \u201ca great opportunity for alliance-building,\u201d and reminded the audience \u201cnot to forget the Christian communities\u201d and others \u201cwho have been so supportive of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n Winnipeg attorney Lawrence Pinsky told the Independent<\/i> that the conference was \u201cinspiring and helpful,\u201d and he plans to create a community \u201csituation room,\u201d he said, \u201cjust so that we can have a multi-directional approach to any problem. These will be individuals who may or may not be parts of organizations, who actually want to do, and can do.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He said the conference helped him realize that activism should involve \u201cno ego,\u201d and that people should jump into action, not feeling they \u201chave to reinvent the wheel.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a>