Rabbi David Eliezri uses a video of a Muslim student protest to teach college students from around the country to stand up for Israel.
The video shows Muslim students on the University of California's Irvine campus in February 2010 shouting anti-Israel epithets at guest speaker Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States.
Produced by the international pro-Israel organization StandWithUs.com, the video is a vehicle for Rabbi David Eliezrie to engage students from college campuses throughout the United States in an Israel advocacy exercise during Chabad's National Jewish Retreat at the Hyatt Regency Bonaventure in Weston.
Eliezrie, director of the North County Chabad Center in Yorba Linda, Calif., said he was at the Irvine campus event and spoke with Oren several times throughout the evening.
Oren continued to try to talk until the students, many of whom were from the university's Muslim Student Union, were taken out of the room and arrested or walked out in protest. He finally was able to speak to the audience.
"This event caused a convulsion in our Jewish community," Eliezrie said. "How should the Jewish community respond? Maybe they should do nothing. Maybe the Jewish community should do to them what they did to us. Maybe we should demand the university suspend or expel the students."
There was a big debate, he said. "The Jewish community was shocked in Orange County. They felt vulnerable."
The university suspended the Muslim Student Union for three months and the local district attorney indicted 11 student organizers on charges of disrupting the peace.
"How do we express our support for Israel on campus" Eliezrie said. "Are we afraid of being too outspoken about Israel? A lot of times we're too afraid to bring the true issues to the front."
Students need to "flip the conversation," he said, and become more assertive.
"Go on the offensive," someone in the audience said.
"I think it's time for us to be a little more outspoken and put them on the defensive," Eliezrie said. And we need to ask "What connects us to Israel? What is the connection between us and the homeland of the Jewish people?"
The 11 students who organized the vocal protest, dubbed the "Irvine 11," were found guilty and given a sentence of community service, Eliezrie said. "The Jewish community was tested," he said. "A lot of the Jewish establishment groups were afraid to do the right thing."
The lesson, Eliezrie said, is people will respect you if you stand up, are assertive and have the self-respect to not run away.
Michael Lebovitz, 22, a junior at the University of Kansas, said the Muslim organizations and the groups that support them are neither active nor vocal. "They might not like Israel but they are not interested in starting any fights," he said. "Once we get that one student….We have to be prepared," Lebovitz said, and know arguments and strategies.
"I think he's right on the ball," Rabbi Vidal Bekerman said of Eliezrie's presentation. Bekerman, 35, is the Chabad rabbi at York University in Toronto where in February 2009 Muslim students barricaded Jewish students inside the Hillel and "verbally assaulted" them. Police escorted the students from building.
"We should totally reverse the discussion," Bekerman said. "When we're defending, the whole conversation is in their control."
