(Forward/Ma'ariv) Natan Sharansky - When I got to Rutgers University in New Jersey last month, my arrival was greeted by a noisy demonstration of Palestinian and Jewish students holding signs reading "Racist Israel" and "War Criminals." Opposed to them were hundreds of no less rowdy Jewish students, full of motivation to defend Israel and give the protesters back as good as they got. At these moments I felt that there was some point to my trip, perhaps because the violent hostility had stirred the students and motivated them to want to fight and win - which I was delighted to see. At Harvard University, one Jewish student admitted to me that she was afraid - afraid to express support for Israel, afraid to take part in pro-Israel organizations, afraid to be identified. The mood on campus had turned so anti-Israel that she was afraid that her open identification could cost her, damaging her grades and her academic future. Having grown up in the communist Soviet Union, I am very familiar with this fear to express one's opinions, with the need to hold the "correct opinions" in order to get ahead, with the reality that expressing support for Israel is a blot on one's resume. My conversations with other students at various universities made it clear that her feelings are widespread, that the situation on campuses in the U.S. and Canada is more serious than we think. And this is truly frightening. On campuses I tried to show the true picture - who is the only democracy in the Middle East and who are the dictatorships, where are human rights honored and where are they trampled. I talked about the battle of Jenin, when we decided not to use airplanes that could hurt the Palestinian civilian population, and instead sent our soldiers hunting house to house for weapons and terrorists. I wanted, as someone who had spent a considerable part of his life struggling for human rights, to explain that support for terrorists and dictators like Yasser Arafat and his gang cannot be considered support for human rights.
2003-10-24 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive