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miJEWtiae
By WJW Staff , Rockville, Md
akredo@washingtonjewishweek.com
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
J Street U not dropping "pro-Israel" from its slogan
Adam Kredo
After the Jerusalem Post reported that J Street's campus arm has dropped the "pro-Israel" tag line from its slogan - leaving the group merely "pro-peace" - J Street has labeled the report untrue.
Yesterday, The Post reported that J Street U would remove the term “pro-Israel” from its slogan in order to avoid alienating students who are not comfortable with it.
In a statement this morning, J Street disputed the report, saying that the term "pro-Israel" is written "in all legal documents signed to create this effort and is included in the policy guidelines for J Street U.”
(The group also notes that no particular slogan was ever associated with the group.)
In the article Monday evening, The Post reported that Lauren Barr, a junior at American University and secretary of the J Street U student board, said, "We don't want to isolate people because they don't feel quite so comfortable with 'pro-Israel,' so we say 'pro-peace.'"
The article went on: “Barr, secretary of the J Street U student board that decided the slogan's terminology, explained that on campus, ‘people feel alienated when the conversation revolves around a connection to Israel only, because people feel connected to Palestine, people feel connected to social justice, people feel connected to the Middle East.’ ”
Barr also noted that individual student chapters would have free reign to add - or remove - the terms “pro-Israel” or “pro-Palestine” as they see fit.
J Street, however, immediately distanced itself from Barr’s comments: “The statements and slogans of individual students and campus groups may not reflect J Street U policy,” the group said in a press release this morning.
The problem is that statements made by J Street U’s students and campus chapters indubitably reflect on the group’s own policy.
By endowing J Street U's student board with the power to create and enact policy, J Street has, in part, compromised its larger mission.
Students should be encouraged to traverse the tricky Middle Eastern conflict, but allowing that debate to take place under the J Street umbrella has, in this case, muddied the group’s waters.
Even if one campus group residing under the J Street U umbrella decides on its own to remove “pro-Israel” from its slogan, that decision certainly reflects upon the larger J Street U movement, and, by proxy, J Street itself.
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