STUDENT ISRAEL-ADVOCACY PROGRAM (SIAP) 2011-2012

Canadian Institute for Jewish Research

 

STUDENT ISRAEL-ADVOCACY PROGRAM

(2011-2012)

 

Taking Back The Campus!

 

Preamble: Rationale & Goals of the CIJR Student Israel-Advocacy Program

 

  North American campuses have, since the first (1987-88) and second (2000) Palestinian Arab “intifadas”, become the scene of increasingly well-organized and effective anti-Israel agitation and propaganda. This campaign on the part of radical Arab and left-wing student groups, often supported by “progressive” faculty, is reinforced by a steady stream of invited anti-Israel and anti-Zionist speakers. Recently it has been marked by economic boycott and “divestment” initiatives (e.g., “Israeli Apartheid Week”) modeled after the earlier anti-South African “apartheid” movement.

 

   Indeed, what began after the Israeli victory over Arab aggression in 1967 war, as a Soviet-backed Arab propaganda campaign against the so-called “occupation” (recall the 1975 UN “Zionism equals racism” resolution), picked up speed after the 1987-88 and 2000 intifadas. It has morphed today in Western Europe and North America into a delegitimation campaign denying the very political and juridical legitimacy of the democratic Jewish State itself.

 

Jewish students, often isolated and not well-supported by on-campus Jewish organized-community agencies (which tend to shy away from “conflict” ), have increasingly lost the campus initiative. Our students, lacking in specific historical and political knowledge, are often politically naïve and inexperienced, and deficient as well in debating and organizing skills. They are caught off-balance and out-maneuvered by seemingly well-informed, morally aggressive, organizationally savvy and well-financed opponents.

 

   It is time we took back the campus.We must—carefully, consistently, and concretely—come to the aid of our students, and seek the support of all concerned campus groups exposed to this divisive delegitimation campaign. Such implicit, and often explicit, antisemitic defamation, with its never-absent aura of aggressive and violent confrontation, violates the very basis of the modern Western university. This remarkable, and fragile, Western institution, devoted to free inquiry and the pursuit of truth, must not be compromised, or destroyed.

 

   Defense of democratic Jewish Israel on campus is incumbent upon not only members of the Jewish people, but also upon all persons of good will who are participants in and legatees of the Western democratic tradition.

 

As Israel’s enemies well know, our campuses are not “ivory towers”, but crucial sites of ideological and political contestation. It is often in universities that ideas and values subsequently broadcast to society at large, are first elaborated and debated. Again and again in modern history, for better and sometimes for worse — recall Italy and Germany in the pre-fascist/Nazi periods — universities have prepared the way for society’s later cultural appropriation of new values and ideologies. The post-9/11 and Iraq-war world is driven—and not least in the new media of internet web and blog-sites and satellite television stations—by virulent Islamist, and left- and right-wing, anti-Western and antisemitic propaganda.

 

And in this dangerous, 1930’s-like context, the genocidal leader of a soon-to-be nuclear state, Iran, openly proclaims (like Hitler before him) the destruction of the Jews, and this while a somnolent United Nations and a passive European Union not only do little about it, but often—see the Durban I “anti-racism” conference, and the EU’s financial and political support for the radical Palestinians—collaborate in the campaign.

 

Our campuses today are, in fact, scenes of practical political and policy-making give-and-take of immense “real-world” importance, and this has everything to do with the well-being of the Jewish state. CIJR’s Student Israel-Advocacy Program is designed to take back the campus, by empowering Jewish (and interested non-Jewish) students through the acquisition of crucial historical-political knowledge concerning the Jewish People, Zionism, and the State of Israel in its Middle East context.

 

   Through developing such knowledge, along with critically-important speaking, writing and on-campus organizing skills, we hope to stem the tide of anti-Israelism and antisemitism on campus. As such, we hope too to become a nodal point in the battle to defend, not only Israel and the Jewish community, but also, the modern liberal Western university.

 

   CIJRis in a unique position effectively to do this because it is an independent, internationally-respected research center, now in its twenty-fourth year, staffed and run by well-known academics and specialists. The Institute’s long experience in working, on- and off-campus, with students, and in addressing the public, Jewish and non-Jewish, on Israel-related issues, is well-known. And, not least, the Institute can effectively address the current campus crisis because it has a tradition of not being afraid, when necessary, of acting forthrightly to defend academic freedom by supporting students combatting antisemitism and anti-Israelism on campus.

 

SIAP SYLLABUS, 2011-2012

Syllabus: This Syllabus lays out the annual learning program of the SIAP Program. It sets out regular meeting times for the Program’s constituent Seminars, Colloquia, and documentary films (any adjustments will be announced well in advance). 

 

Seminars: The roughly tri-weekly Seminars are the core of this program, and meet at CIJR’s office (1396 St. Catherine St. West, suite 218) every third Wednesday beginning at the start of the Fall semester from 5:30-7:30 p.m. The key responsibility of students committed to the SIAP is regularly to attend seminars and to prepare the indicated required reading and audio-visual assignments.

 

Readings: Required and Optional Readings materials are indicated for each Seminar. At the first meetingparticipants will be asked to look ahead and choose a 10 minute Seminar report, and to defend it in the relevant Seminar. All participants will also be asked to research and write one article on a topic related to a given Seminar subject, to be published in CIJR’s student-written Dateline: Middle East magazine.

 

Colloquia: SIAP-related Colloquia, at least one for each semester, given by outstanding academics and specialists on themes related to the individual Seminars, are scheduled. Colloquia will take place on a Sunday morning from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon. A possibility for 2011-12 is an expenses-defrayed Jerusalem Colloquium, on issues related to the SIAP Program as a whole, perhaps in May 2012, (precise date to be set). SIAP Summer Research Internships with leading Israeli think-tanks (Dependant on available funding) are also possible.

 

Practicum:  One Colloquium (mid-March) is specifically focused on addressing media distortions and developing speaking/debating, writing, and organizing skills. It should be noted however, that these issues will be addressed continuously, inall Seminars and meetings (e.g., through Seminar oral reports, discussion and debate, essays, and optional article-writing for Dateline:Middle East, etc., as well as through the practical exigencies of addressing on-campus issues across the year).

 

Audio-Visual Material & Documentary Series:Audio-visual presentations, a series of key films and documentaries, are held Sundays from 2:00-4:00 p.m. at Concordia University in the EV building, RM 6.735. They are keyed into the syllabus and will be chaired by Prof. David Pariser (Fine Arts, Concordia U.).

 

READING LIST: Required = material provided by the SIAP Program in the form of the SIAP Reader;Supplementary/Optional = important additional materials, to be consulted if possible, and used in the preparation of Seminar reports and Dateline: Middle East article preparation. Reserve copies of all indicated texts, Required and Supplementary, are available for consultation in the SIAP section of the CIJR library in Montreal.

 

         Additional Materials

      

• Bard, M., Myths and Facts. A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 2001 ed.
• Berger, D., Editor, History and Hate. The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism
• Dershowitz, Alan,The Case for Israel
• Epstein, I., Judaism
• Fackenheim, Emil, What is Judaism?
• Grayzel, Solomon, A History of the Jews, 5728-1968, 1-vol. revised ed. [1968]
• Hazony, Yoram, The Jewish State. The Struggle for Israel’s Soul
• Karsh, Efraim, Fabricating Israeli History: The "New Historians", The Arab-Israeli Conflict. The Palestine 1948 War (Oxford, Osprey, 2002)
• Katz, Shmuel, Battleground: Fact and Fantasy in Palestine
• Laqueur, Walter, The History of Zionism
• Lewis, Bernard, What Went Wrong? ___________ ., The Crisis of Islam
• Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, J., eds., The Jew in the Modern World, 2^nd ed.
• Bernard Reich,  A Brief History of Israel (NY:  Checkmark Books, 2005)
• Rubin, B. & Laqueur, W., The Israel-Arab Reader, 7^th ed.
• Schoenfeld, G., The Return of Antisemitism
• O’Brien,Conor Cruise, The Siege
• Wistrich, Robert S.,  Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred, A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism - From Antiquity to the Global Jihad
• Wisse, Ruth, Jews and Power
• International Conference on Global Dimensions of Contemporary Antisemitism DVDs.

SYLLABUS

 

[First SIAP Organizational Meeting: Monday, September 19,  2011, at 5:30 p.m./CIJR Office]

 

1. Tuesday, October 11, 2011:

JUDAISM & THE JEWISH PEOPLE (TO 18^TH C.)

 

Required Reading (click here)

 

                                                                                                                 

            Instructor: Prof. Ira Robinson (Judaic Studies, Concordia U.)

 

            Sunday, October 23, 2011:

1^st SIAP Documentary: “Forgotten Refugees”

                        Chair: Prof. David Pariser(Fine Arts, Concordia U.)

                        Moderator: Prof. David Bensoussan (UQAM)

 

2. Wednesday, November 2, 2011:

Modernity, Zionism, Yishuv (to 1917)

 

Required Reading (click here)

 

Optional Reading (click here)

         

            Instructor: Prof. Frederick Krantz (Liberal Arts College, Concordia U.)

             

Sunday, November 6, 2011: 

 FIRST SIAP COLLOQUIUM: “Combatting the Delegitimation of Israel”

            Chair: Prof. Frederick Krantz (Liberal Arts College, Concordia U.)

                                        

Sunday, November 20, 2011:

2^nd SIAP Documentary: “The Syrian Bride”

                        Chair: Prof. David Pariser (Fine Arts, Concordia U.)
                                                     

 

3. Wednesday, January 18, 2012:

ISRAEL ON CAMPUS, ANTISEMITISM, & ADVOCACY

 

            Instructor: Prof. Frederick Krantz (Liberal Arts College, Concordia U.)

 

Required Reading (click here)

 

Additional Reading (click here)

 

 

Sunday, February 5, 2012:

3^rd SIAP Documentary: “Obsession” 

                        Chair: Prof. David Pariser(Fine Arts, Concordia U.)

                        Moderator: Jean-Charles Chebat (HEC) 

 

4. Wednesday, February 8, 2012:

FROM BALFOUR DECLARATION TO SIX DAYS WAR (1917-1967)

           

Instructor: Prof. Harold Waller (Political Science, McGill U. )             

 

 

Required Reading (click here)

 

 

5. Wednesday, February 29, 2012: 

ISRAELIN THE MIDDLE EAST, I (1967-1993)

           

Instructor: Prof. Norrin Ripsman (Political Science, Concordia U.)

      

Required Reading (click here)

 

Sunday, March 4, 2012:

4^th SIAP Documentary: “Jenin: Massacring Truth” 

Chair: Prof. David Pariser (Fine Arts, Concordia U.)
Moderator: Michelle Whiteman (Director, Quebec Region, Honest Reporting.) 

 

Sunday, March 18, 2012:

SECONDSIAP COLLOQUIUM: SPEAKING, WRITING, ORGANIZING PRACTICUM

             

Panelists:

Barbara Kay(National Post),

Prof.Fred Krantz, (Concordia U.)

 

6.Wednesday,  March 21, 2012 :

Israelin the Middle East, II (1993-2012)

 

            Instructor: Prof. Norrin Ripsman (Political Science, Concordia U.)

                                                   

        

7.Friday, April 20, 2012 @ 12PM:

CONCLUDING SIAP ROUNDTABLE: ISRAEL & GLOBAL ISSUES ON CAMPUS, 2012 FORWARD  
                                  

Instructors: Profs. David Bensoussan, Frederick Krantz, David Pariser, Norrin Ripsman,Ira Robinson, Harold Waller.