Fighters Not Followers: How Jewish “Leadership” Castrates Campus Activism
Alexandra Markus and Chaim Zalman Hutz
IsraellyCool
Fri Apr 19 2019
...The Israel activism movement needs bold, confident, big personalities. They need aggressive action, real charisma and risk-taking, but instead, what they’re getting is soft, tame, weak, fearful inactivism. Young activists are scared of the social backlash of identifying with a cause that is deemed not part of the “leftist package” and thereby being branded a “bad person”. They are also stifled by their leadership, composed of professional fundraisers rather than grassroots activists, who are completely paralyzed with fear from donors who are completely behind the times and out of touch with the reality on the ground....
...When Alexandra was at Columbia, it was Hillel that was telling her not to oppose Israel Apartheid Week with anything, acting that if we pretended it didn’t exist it would go away. When her group put up the Pinocchio, it was Hillel that was acting embarrassed and telling them to take it down, even going so far as to publish op Ed’s in disapproval. Later, at least one member of the SSI board of directors (aka big donor) vetoed Alexandra for a position at SSI’s National due to their belief that the Pinocchio was unnecessarily confrontational and “gauche.” This is how real activists get stifled, and why pro-Israel activists aren’t respected as activists....
