Israel On Campus Coalition

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The Israel On Campus Coalition is a pro-Israel organization founded in 2002 under the auspices of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and Hillel.

The Coalition states its mission as follows:

The ICC aims to become the central coordinating and strategic body to address campus issues and intelligently impact a pro-active pro-Israel agenda on campus. This will be accomplished during an evolutionary process over the next several years, with the ICC emerging as an effective and strategic-focused enterprise. The Jewish community will come to rely on the ICC and its members to meet the needs of the pro-Israel community on campus, identify the important issues and initiatives, and work cooperatively with key partners and community organizations.

A recent (2005) survey by pollster Frank Luntz, commissioned by The Israel Project, found that the real issue is the discomfort that many future American leaders feel about Israel. Today's graduate students "at the finest graduate schools in America," writes Luntz in the introduction to his pamphlet America 2020: How the Next Generation Views Israel, "are turning against Israel in alarming numbers." [1]

1 Speakers' Bureaus
2 Controversy
3 Publications
4 Member organizations
5 External links

[edit] Speakers' Bureaus

The coalition coordinates speakers' bureaus. Among available speakers listed is Charles Jacobs, the founder of the David Project, an affiliate.

[edit] Controversy

In late 2006 and early 2007, a controversy arose within the Israel On Campus Coalition when one the more left-wing member groups, the Union of Progressive Zionists (UPZ) sponsored speeches by former Israeli soldiers who spoke out against alleged human rights abuses in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. This was not appreciated within the coalition's more conservative (right-wing) "pro-active pro-Israel agenda" members of the coalition. The Zionist Organization of America called for the expulsion of the UPZ. Jewish National Fund did not call for the group's exclusion, but demanded that the UPZ end the speakers’ activities. The World Zionist Organization supported the UPZ, as did a group of 100 academics from Israel. Although the coalition's steering committee voted 9-0 against expulsion in January 2007, the issue resulted in a debate among major Zionist organizations. The American Jewish Congress threatened to quit the coalition out of dissatisfaction with the decision to allow the UPZ to remain.