http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/article/ProIsraelcampusac.html

NEW YORK, May 13 (JTA) – Israeli rock music filled the Greenwich Village basement where New York University students downed kosher hot dogs and chips for Israel’s 55th birthday.

Some flaunted their Hebrew-language skills in animated chatter around smoky grills, and a piercing Sephardi ululation rang through the room.

But despite the celebratory atmosphere, two students lamented what they see as the anti-Israel animus of the school’s Middle Eastern studies department.

Furthermore, “Jewish professors are afraid to take a clear stand for or against Israel,” Scott Dubin, an activist with Gesher, a Zionist group on campus, said. “Part of that comes from a desire to remain academically neutral, but at the same time, just like the rest of the world, they’re leaving the fight for Israel up to students.”

The glimpse of the NYU party reflects the broader picture on North American campuses, pro-Israel activists say: It capped a year during which pro-Israel students felt relief, pride and progress regarding Israel’s profile on campus, but the struggle is far from over.

Campus debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has lost a bit of its urgency during the past year, overtaken by activism surrounding America’s war against Iraq.

Anti-Israel activists found a home in the anti-war movement, but they made little headway in building support for the Palestinian cause, and even alienated some students who supported U.S. troops.

At the same time, Jewish groups and activists answered the call to defend Israel’s name.

Twenty-six groups, ranging from Aish Ha’Torah to the Reform outreach group Kesher, came together to form the Israel on Campus Coalition, a national coordinating body that provided high-profile speakers and advocacy training for students.

A movement to have universities divest from companies that do business with Israel garnered headlines, but it was roundly condemned by university presidents and sank under the weight of counter-petitions supporting Israel.

Dialogue even bloomed on several of the most heated campuses.

“Tides really have turned,” said Daniel Spector, 20, formerly president of Georgetown University’s Jewish Student Association. “Two years ago, American college campuses were really in a bad way for Zionist Jewish students,” who now “feel comfortable on the campuses again.”

But the pro-Israel activists aren’t declaring victory yet.

Some worry animosity will resume once Americans no longer are preoccupied with rebuilding Iraq.

Officials with Jewish campus groups fear anti-Israel forces will link America’s occupation of Iraq with Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

They also anticipate increased pressure on Israel as the world presses for implementation of the “road map” to rejuvenate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

“I don’t think” anti-Israel activists “produced any major results on campus in the second semester,” said Wayne Firestone, director of the Israel on Campus Coalition. “The question is whether they will regroup under this new banner of ‘End the occupation’ for the coming semester.”

The slogan already has surfaced at several conferences of anti-war groups, according to Jonathan Kessler, leadership development director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Anti-Israel activists never intended to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the war, Kessler said. Instead, they wanted to broaden their constituency within the anti-war movement, building alliances they could plumb for new supporters once the war ended, he said.

But activists say students are only part of the problem: Some of the most entrenched anti-Israel voices belong to professors, campus watchers said.

“In the 39 years that I’ve been teaching, this is the worst year,” Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor, told JTA. “The deliberate lies that have been put forward by distinguished professors has had no match in this country.”

While pro-Israel students have been louder than in the past, “the faculty still has been deafeningly mute,” he said, calling the silence of some pro-Israel faculty members a “great scandal.”

Barnard student Avigail Appelbaum, 20, agreed.

“I can’t take classes at my Middle East” studies department at Columbia “unless I’m willing to sit through diatribe after diatribe given by professors who are not willing to hear that Israel is legitimate,” she said.

Students are “afraid to be connected with Israel,” she said.

Appelbaum, who founded and chairs the North American Jewish Student Alliance, a new group on 62 campuses, said national Jewish groups “truly failed the students” by adopting a posture that was too defensive and not sufficiently aggressive.

But most Jewish students interviewed for this article lauded national Jewish organizations and resources, saying they had been instrumental in pro-Israel forces’ gains on campus.

With a grant from the Avi Chai Foundation, Neta Retter, 19, organized a “Got Israel?” campaign at the University of California at San Diego.

Activists from the school’s Hillel papered the campus with fliers inquiring “Got Genes?” or “Got AIM?” and then mounted a blue and white balloon arch on campus to publicize how Israeli research – on genetics and instant messaging, for example – personally affect students’ lives.

The activists also passed out condoms emblazoned with the slogan “Israel: It’s still safe to come.”

Like many other campuses, UCSD was more tranquil this year than last. Last spring, for example, anti-Israel students dressed as Israeli soldiers shot squirt guns at other students pretending to be Palestinians at a checkpoint. This year, a Middle East dialogue group formed.

At San Francisco State University – where anti-Israel protesters taunted Jewish students last spring by chanting “Hitler didn’t finish the job” – a comparative religion course on Judaism, Islam and Christianity is “filled to capacity,” said Marc Dollinger, acting director of the school’s Jewish studies program.

Major Jewish organizations have made noticeable inroads as well.

Student activists with AIPAC, for example, collected 55,000 signatures on pro-Israel petitions at 60 college campuses. The signatures were published in 50 campus newspapers with the sponsorship of campus groups such as the College Democrats and College Republicans.

Caravan for Democracy, a Jewish National Fund program highlighting Israel’s democratic values, brought high-profile Israeli speakers to about 20 campuses this year.

But the air of victory among many pro-Israel activists is tinged with tension.

When junior Daniel Frankenstein ran for student body president at the University of California at Berkeley last month, his peers spat on him and launched into anti-Zionist diatribes.

Frankenstein ascribes his loss partly to an anti-Zionist campaign against him. But he still thinks pro-Israel activists on campus have scored something of a victory this year.

“Despite these problems, we are crushing” the pro-Palestinian forces, he said.

“Last year we were simply trying to cover our asses,” he said, referring to the storm of activity that jarred Jewish students at Berkeley, site of some of the most intense campus anti-Israel propaganda.

Too afraid to sport his Israeli soccer jersey on campus last year, Frankenstein now proudly wears pro-Israel clothing, attributing his confidence to advocacy training provided by AIPAC.