The National Union of Israeli Students (Hebrew: התאחדות הסטודנטים בישראל, Arabic: إتحاد الطلاب في إسرائيل) is the national representative body of university students in Israel.
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The Union is an umbrella organization that unites local student unions from different universities and colleges in Israel. Among its members are: Student unions of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, Ben Gurion University, Haifa University, The Technion, Tel-Aviv-Jaffa Academic College, The Arab Academic College for Education in Israel - Haifa and more.
The Union is active in a variety of areas. Some of its official goals are:[1][2] representing all of the students in Israel, empowering of the students in Israel, Support of Education and higher education in Israel, Empowering of people who live in the periphery of Israel, empowering of people of low socio-economic status, increase of social activism among students, democracy, transparency, empowering of different student unions in Israel, relations with students and students organizations abroad, promotion of research, promotion of human rights, promotion and empowering of Arab students in israel, Gender equality and more.
The Union attracted international attention in 2010 when its president, Boaz Torporovsky, announced a plan to send a Kurdish Freedom Flotilla "to deliver much-needed humanitarian assistance to the Kurds of Turkey."[3] Torporovsky describes the plan as a reaction to the Free Gaza flotillas. He told a reporter that, "There’s a lot of hypocrisy in the world. Turkey, which leads the campaign against Israel and makes all sorts of threats, is the same Turkey that carried out a holocaust and murdered an entire nation of Armenians, and oppresses a minority larger than the Palestinians – the Kurds – who deserve a state, who have demanded a state for longer than the State of Israel has existed." [4][5]