Hillel asks if its open ‘tent’ should include Israel foes

For 90 years, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life has provided what many call a “tent” welcoming students of every Jewish background and denomination on campus. But as Hillel prepares to nominate its next president and CEO, questions persist over how open that tent should be when it comes to opinions about Israel.

Hillel was created in 1923 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and was adopted by B’nai B’rith International in 1924 until the 1990s. The organization has grown to more than 500 campuses across North America.

In a search process characterized as “wide-ranging and open,” Hillel has considered candidates with academic, corporate and/or Jewish community leadership experience to replace outgoing President and CEO Wayne Firestone. Published reports detailing the search process indicate that 325 individuals have been considered, and that more than 200 were personally contacted. The official announcement of Firestone’s replacement is anticipated to come on July 29 during the 2013 Hillel Institute, Hillel’s annual student and professional gathering, to be held this year at Washington University in St. Louis.

National Hillel guidelines state that Hillel will not “partner with, house or host organizations, groups or speakers that delegitimize, demonize or apply a double standard to Israel.” But leading up to the hiring of a new chief executive at Hillel, activist Natan Nestel has been voicing concern about how open Hillel’s tent is.

The former chairman of the Israeli Students Organization in North America (which he founded as a student at the University of California, Berkeley), Nestel is concerned that Hillel has allowed proponents of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to gather under Hillel’s tent. Nestel has created a documentary he said details the activities of pro-BDS groups on the UC Berkeley campus.

Nestel told JNS.org that groups that demonize Israel should be outside of the ‘big tent’ on campus.

“Nominally Jewish groups, including those who assist anti-Israel groups and speakers to come to campuses, should not be included [in the tent],” Nestel said.

Nestel cited the self-labeled “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group J Street, which he said sponsored the appearance at Berkeley of Breaking the Silence, an Israeli group that defames the Israeli army for “war crimes,” “crimes against humanity,” “ethnic cleansing” and “violations of human rights.”

Larry Sternberg, executive director of Hillel at Brandeis University, acknowledged that at a campus like UC Berkeley, “a student may feel besieged,” but that the opposite is true on most campuses. “While BDS must be fought, it is not center stage,” he said.

J Street leaders challenge the claims of critics such as Nestel who say the group should be placed outside of Hillel’s tent. Simone Zimmerman — president of the national student board of J Street U, the group’s campus arm, and a graduate of UC Berkeley’s class of 2013 — told JNS.org that J Street U is giving a new voice to students who “otherwise wouldn’t find a place in Hillel.”

“I think J Street U has been really essential in helping more students in Hillel engage with Israel and develop a more nuanced and complex and meaningful relationship with Israel as American-Jewish students,” Zimmerman said.

Nestel detailed his concerns about J Street, and about Hillel’s reaction to J Street’s campus activities, in a February 2012 op-ed for the Jerusalem Post.

“J Street is already entrenched at Berkeley’s Hillel and the JSU (Jewish Student Union),” Nestel wrote. “The Hillel group, Kesher Enoshi (KE), is its proxy there. This year KE, along with J Street U, brought the founder of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement in to speak at Hillel. He demonized Israel, proclaiming, ‘Jerusalem is a symbol of evil.’ Berkeley’s Hillel director argued that this was ‘within the framework of national Hillel’s Israel policy’.”

At the University of Pennsylvania, where a pro-BDS conference was held in February 2012, Hillel Director Rabbi Michael Uram told JNS.org, “Penn created the space for having the conversations … to come around the table and have conversations in a way that recognizes Israel’s achievements and its challenges. Conversations provide a wide-ranging opportunity for discussion that can lead to engaging the opposition.”

Uram estimates that 12 students organized the BDS conference.

Jonathan Tobin, senior online editor for Commentary magazine, has written that there is “no alternative” to Hillel and its supporters being able to “stand their ground and to help Jewish students find the courage to stand up against the enemies of their people.”

Tobin noted that BDS proponents “are not seeking dialogue; what they demand is the destruction of the modern State of Israel.” Therefore, he wrote, applying “the principle of inclusiveness or neutrality toward BDS is no different than neutrality toward beliefs that stigmatize Jews.”

“What these students [advocating for inclusiveness or neutrality on Israel] don’t understand that is that their fight for an ‘open Hillel’ means giving a pass to hate,” Tobin wrote.