Ideas from the town hall

LORNE BALSHINE SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has been a permanent component of the daily news in the North American media for a long time. In recent months, the media has conveyed more pro-Palestinian sentiments and has shown a bias against Israel, according to a message delivered at the fourth Town Hall meeting at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver Aug. 21.

More than 200 people attended the meeting to hear guest speaker Judy Lash Balint talk on media bias and to discuss how to help Israel today in her "high crises" period.

Israel wants peace and the Arabs want Israel, said Balint, a Jerusalem-based journalist and author of Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times. If the Arabs put their weapons down, there will be peace, but if Israel puts its weapons down, there will be no Israel, she said, adding that these are the messages that need to be delivered to the Middle America public.

Balint suggested several different ways to deliver these messages and emphasized the importance of speaking out to the media and supporting students on campuses. Following her initial presentation, the audience split into groups for roundtable discussions. At the end of the meeting each group shared their thoughts on each issue, as did Balint. The points and ideas raised at the meeting focused on three areas: ways to speak out to the media, politicians, forums, etc.; ways of combating anti-Israel bias on campuses and in high schools; and ways to reach out to the non-Jewish community.

Spreading the message

Among the suggestions that Balint put forward with respect to getting pro-Israel messages out to the public were to take media personalities to Israel and to establish a community liaison with local Vancouver media personalities.

From the audience break-away groups, there was a strong feeling that Jews need to change the public's perception that the Palestinians are the underdogs. Since there are only 13 million Jews in the world, it was suggested, Jews are really the minority or underdog. Other suggestions included sponsoring speakers and films to educate people on the origins of the conflict, lobbying the international community to try and stop the ongoing Palestinian and Muslim teaching in schools of hatred against Israel and Jews, preparing a one-page fact sheet to hand out to people and media, and encouraging local rabbis to speak out more and be more political on the High Holidays.

The Israel Action Committee Web site was suggested as an educational tool to assist people who want to petition politicians and write letters to the media.

Concerns on campuses

Balint addressed the issue of Palestinian groups on North American campuses and how to combat the information that's being disseminated by them.

"We must find interested students on campuses and not rely on Hillel," she said, adding that a good idea would be to organize a "teach-in" on campuses, where speakers would include resource people from Israel or New York.

Balint added that organizing interviews on campus radio stations, meeting with influential Jews who are active in the arts and politics and asking them to exercise their influence could also be effective.

Most members of the audience agreed that anti-Semitic campus activities were a grave concern. They suggested providing information in student newspapers, glossy posters for the campuses and a 30-second sound bite for radio stations as educational tools, as well as organizing seminars about Israel.

Reaching the non-Jews

In discussions about how to reach the non-Jewish community, several suggestions were forthcoming, including:

• providing Christian groups with information on Israel at a grassroots level – leaflets, videos, films, speakers, etc.

• inviting the involvement of influential non-Jews, such as Rev. Bernice Girard and former B.C. minister Grace MacDonald, to "fight ignorance."

• organizing educational missions to Israel.

• creating travel assistance programs for non-Jewish people to send them to Israel, either for free, with a partial reduction or through a volunteer work project, etc.

• organizing a road show where speakers travel to non-Jewish schools to educate the students about Israel.

Lorne Balshine is with the Israel Action Committee.

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