40 LA Students Selected for Israel/UAE Special Visit

Brandon Takavoli, 20, will never forget a story his relative told him about what happened to her at a grocery store in Tehran.

“My grandmother said she was holding a cucumber in her hand and the clerk said ‘don’t touch that dirty Jew, you’re going to contaminate the rest of us cucumbers,'” Takavalli told The Wall Street Journal in Jerusalem.

Takavoli, a sophomore at the University of Southern California and a graduate of Milken Community School in Los Angeles, was in Israel with about 40 college students from across the U.S. as part of the Geller International Scholarship, a trip that will take place Jan. 2 To 13 carried out including a visit to the United Arab Emirates. The tour, which takes three rounds to be accepted, is conducted under the auspices of the Israel Campus Consortium (ICC).

Takawoli said so far he has spoken to Israelis in East Jerusalem and representatives of Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

“I think it’s important to create human connections,” he said.

He explained that his family left Iran for Los Angeles in order to be free.

“The struggle was in my bones for a long time,” he said.

He explained that he works on his campus against the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement known as BDS.

“USC’s anti-Israel campaign is subtle,” he said. “USC’s anti-Israel campaign is subtle. We don’t have a racial segregation wall, and we don’t have a face-to-face thing like UC Berkeley. Our institution has an anti-Israel bias. Our students avoid talking about Israel because our students Pro-Israel students in the Senate don’t want to open a can of worms. The best example I can give you is the editorial board of a student newspaper publishing an article about the executive branch’s failure to take steps against Greek fraternity life to protect women. Right at the end, out of nowhere, it included a sentence saying it was the exact same thing as managers not taking a stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. No connection at all. But they just threw it out there. It triggers people and makes People get annoyed.”

Lauren Samidi, 22, said she grew up in a close-knit Persian Jewish family in Beverly Hills until Chabad menorahs were vandalized during her senior year at San Diego State University. to anti-Semitism. Samidi said things at her school were generally fine.

Jacob Baime, chief executive of Israel on Campus, based in Washington, D.C., said the idea is to take elite students on a national trip to demonstrate leadership qualities.

“We have to engage today the people who will be the leaders tomorrow,” he said of groups that include Christian students.

Anti-Israel groups at universities “are so invested in campuses because they believe the path to ending U.S. support for Israel goes through campuses, and that’s one of the reasons we’re seeing a rise in anti-Israel activism in the U.S.,” Baime said.

Baime said this is the first of the annual trips for college students who are selected each year.

The group met Fleur Hassan-Nahum, deputy mayor of Jerusalem, who “excellently explained Israel’s position and the changes to the Abraham Accords,” met a senior police officer, and visited Ay Da refugee camp.

He said the group met Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, deputy mayor of Jerusalem, who “excellently explained Israel’s position and the changes to the Abraham Accords,” met with a senior police officer and toured the Aida refugee camp . They will also visit Tel Aviv’s LGBTQ community.

He said 116 people applied for 30 seats and they got more funding to bring it up to 40.

“With anti-Semitism on the rise, our entire coalition is expanding because the challenge came so quickly,” Baime said.

“When it comes to campus administrators,” he added, “I think what we need to see is moral leadership from them. of anti-Israel activism and mistakenly believe that they are witnessing a political debate. What we must remind them is that Israel is an important part of Jewish identity.”

He commended Hillel International, the Academic Engagement Network and the Brandeis Center for their efforts to explain to university officials what was happening.

“The modern incarnation of this anti-Semitism manifests itself as anti-Zionism,” he said. “They’ve had some success with their work on different campuses, and I’ve seen it have some impact. Israel is the center of Judaism, and Jews have prayed for thousands of years, not only for Jerusalem, but to return to Jerusalem. We saw a few Student organizations are banning Zionist speakers, which is why there is a Title VI investigation.”