This may be one of the toughest years ever on campus for faculty members who yearn for a world in which Israel lives within safe and secure borders at peace with her neighbors and able to recognize their legitimate peaceful aspirations.

This will be the year when faculty must step up to the plate to share with colleagues, students, and the community, including Israel’s detractors some very painful truths.

This will be the year when faculty must tell students, their colleagues and the community a genocidal war has been declared on Israel and Israel must defend it citizens and sovereignty.

This will be the year that faculty must tell students, their colleagues and the community that Hezbollah is not pursuing the goal of an independent Palestinian state, nor is it engaged in a liberation struggle of the oppressed. Its goal is simply to destroy the “Zionist entity,” in other words, the state of Israel.

This will be the year that faculty must tell students, their colleagues and the community that here is no “disproportionality of response” when one is fighting for one’s existence against a continually genocidal enemy. Under such circumstance, once must kill or be killed.

This is the year that faculty must explain to our colleagues, students and the community that although mistakes are made in wartime, Israel did not declare the war and has fought as tactically ethical a war as can be fought under the circumstances.

This will be the year that faculty must educate our colleagues, students and the community that in the six years Israel left Lebanon, Hezbollah, with the support of Iran and Syria, has built a war machine that holds the Lebanese population and residents of Northern Israel hostage.

This will be the year that faculty will must point out that despite Israel’s unilateral withdrawal, Gaza has become a military staging area launching rockets and terrorism into Israel.

This will be the year that faculty will have to stand up to their colleagues and say we want peace as much as the next person, but Hamas, Hezbollah and their supporters seek Israel’s destruction and have given Israel no other choice but to respond militarily in order to protect its citizens and its sovereignty.

This will be to be the year that faculty will have to advocate for war crimes tribunals for political, religious and organizational leaders who fund military operations from civilian quarters and use citizens as human shields.

This will be the year when faculty members will have to stand up and advocate for academic freedom, integrity and excellence in the face of intolerance, propaganda and falsification.

This will have to be the year where faculty members will have to hold accountable those who abuse academic freedom to spread propaganda and hate.

This will be the year where faculty will be tested as they never have been tested before to make sure that the truth about what is happening in the Middle East gets fair representation on campuses to shape the hearts and minds of our future leaders.

This will be the year where each and every faculty member will be called upon to do more than ever before to insure that Israel survives and prospers within safes and secure borders at peace with her neighbors.

What will you do to answer this call?

Please affirm your commitment to these challenges by supporting SPME and getting involved.

Make sure your 2006-2007 contribution is in by going to spme.org/donation.html and sending in your dues and additional pledge to help us, as we are running out of money given the enormity of the challenges we face. You can send your check to SPME, c/o Susquehanna Institute, 624 Sandra Avenue Harrisburg, PA 17109-5816 USA

Form an SPME chapter on your campus.

Become involved in any of SPME’s many activities to address anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism on campus.

If there is something you would particularly like to do and want to do it, contact me, Dr. Ed Beck, at and together we will do great things.

In the face of great challenges can come great successes. We can and must do this together. No one can replace faculty in this important work…We must be the strongest leading links in this effort and we can be if everyone just makes a bit more effort than ever before.