Nathaniel Solley/Staff

The campus Jewish Student Union voted Wednesday to deny membership to J Street U at Berkeley, a Jewish student political advocacy group on campus whose application to join the union also was denied two years ago after the group faced accusations of being anti-Israel.

The bylaws of the Jewish Student Union, an umbrella organization for Jewish student groups on campus, stipulate that a member organization must not host speakers who demonize Israel, said Jewish Student Union President Daphna Torbati.

That requirement was a point of contention surrounding J Street U, which advocates a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Much of the disagreement focused on J Street U’s relationship with Breaking the Silence, an Israeli military veterans’ organization that criticizes Israel’s military operations in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, said Elon Rov, a co-chair of J Street U.

“We are not afraid, as American Jews, to address those (difficult issues),” said Shayna Howitt, J Street U’s national communications co-chair. “We are not afraid … to host people who we might disagree with. We’re not afraid to stand up and question how we can best support Israel, because we’re committed to the safety of Israel.”

Breaking the Silence, however, has garnered serious criticism from other Jewish groups that belong to the Jewish Student Union. Torbati said she was concerned the group unfairly disparages Israeli soldiers.

Jewish Student Union members Avi Hecht and David Eliahu said Jewish students with connections to Israel would be alienated if J Street U were allowed to host Breaking the Silence under the Jewish Student Union umbrella.

“For a lot of members … the (Jewish Student Union is) the only place where they can express their love for Israel because of such an anti-Israel campus climate,” Torbati said. “A lot of people have said that they want the (Jewish Student Union) to stay a place they feel comfortable saying they love Israel.”

Hecht added that Breaking the Silence does not offer a fair picture of Israel’s military operations.

“Regardless of J Street’s intents, the effect of bringing a public event like BTS is detrimental to the image of Israel on our campus,” Eliahu said.

J Street U invited Breaking the Silence to campus in fall 2012, and its founder, Yehuda Shaul, will appear on campus again in November.

J Street U last applied to the Jewish Student Union in November 2011 but was rejected for inviting a co-founder of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement to campus in spring 2010, among other reasons.

Members of J Street U said they believed their relationship with the Jewish Student Union had improved after working with the campus Jewish community against the ASUC Senate’s contentious divestment bill last spring.

“We did want and expect that the Jewish community was finally going to legitimize our voice,” Rov said. “But we were disappointed.”

J Street U needed eight votes from the union board and its member organizations to be admitted but received only two, with eight votes against it and two abstentions, Torbati said.

Howitt said that J Street U is not anti-Israel but that it is critical of Israel’s policies in the disputed territories.

“The best way to support Israel is not by refusing to talk about the politics that are often uncomfortable and scary — it’s by addressing those politics,” Howitt said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, a petition circulated online by J Street U calling for the Jewish community to be more inclusive had collected 166 signatures, including those of Jewish ASUC Senators Grant Fineman and Liza Raffi, according to Rov.

“We’re not appealing the decision,” Rov said. “We want to prove to the wider Jewish community that the decision does not reflect the vision of Jewish students … We think this decision is inconsistent with what Jewish students actually want.”

Contact Connor Grubaugh at cgrubaugh@dailycal.org

Clarification(s):
A previous version of this article implied that a number of students at last Wednesday’s meeting of the Jewish Student Union walked out in response to J Street U’s failure to secure membership. In fact, the vote on J Street U was the last item on the meeting’s agenda, so students left the room at the meeting’s natural conclusion.

The post Jewish Student Union votes to deny membership to J Street U appeared first on The Daily Californian.

The campus’s branch of J Street U — an organization whose stated values are pro-Israel and pro-peace — drew heavy criticism from union member clubs who stated that it acted contrary to those values, resulting in the club failing to gain entrance into the union.

During the Nov 16. meeting at which the vote to determine whether to admit J Street U to the union took place, Tikvah, a campus club that advocates Zionism — the movement of the Jewish people for self-determination in Israel — denounced J Street U for allegedly failing to uphold its stated values through actions such as inviting Assaf Sharon, founding member of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, to campus to speak in the spring of 2010.

Tikvah members said at the meeting that they consider Sharon to be anti-Israel, but J Street U argued that Sharon’s beliefs are beneficial to a solution to conflict in Israel.

“As a committed pro-Israel organization, the Jewish Student Union has the responsibility to ensure that those claiming to represent our community support the Jewish State,” said Tikvah co-president Jacob Lewis in a statement posted on Tikvah’s website on Dec. 7. “Because (J Street U) has a history of acting outside of these goals, the organization fell far short of the votes needed to gain the (union’s) support.”

J Street U needed two-thirds of the vote — with voters including the union board as well as member organizations — for admittance, but it received only nine, with 10 votes against and two abstaining.

Members of the campus’s J Street U chapter said they believe the union is censoring discussion on Israel by excluding their club from membership in a Dec. 7 op-ed posted on the Jewish Daily Forward’s website.

In the op-ed, UC Berkeley students and J Street U members Simone Zimmerman, Jeremy Elster, Isaiah Kirshner-Breen and Alon Mazor said they have been wrongly accused of being anti-Israel and simply wish to be part of the larger Israel discussion.

“The Berkeley (union’s) vote is emblematic of a larger trend,” the four said in the op-ed. “Even as pillars of the American Jewish establishment recognize the need to include J Street U and others like us in the broadening tent of pro-Israel advocacy, those on the right double their efforts to shut us out.”

Leaders of both student organizations could not be reached for comment.

Amid heavy criticism from a variety of Jewish publications, the directors of Berkeley Hillel, the union’s sponsoring organization, encouraged the union to reconsider its vote in a Dec. 8 letter to j., the Jewish news weekly of Northern California.

In the letter, the organization’s board president, Barbara Davis, and executive director, Rabbi Adam Naftalin-Kelman, wrote that while they respect the union’s ability to decide for itself, they support J Street U just as much as they do other Israel-focused groups.

“Berkeley Hillel is committed to creating a pluralistic community that embraces the diversity of our Jewish tradition,” the letter states. “At a time when Jewish students are seeking community, we are careful not to exclude Jewish students, and we embrace the wisdom of our namesake Hillel by embodying the value of an inclusive community.”

The union has not announced whether it will vote again on J Street U’s admission.

Christopher Yee covers communities.

The post Jewish Student Union’s vote to bar student group sparks controversy appeared first on The Daily Californian.