Activists Gather at Hillel Conference

Top lobbyists, analysts and politicians urged close to 100 Boston-area college students to get involved in local politics at yesterday's day-long conference titled "Boston, Israel, and YOU!"

The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the leading pro-Israel lobby in the United States, and the Harvard Students for Israel co-sponsored the leadership-training seminar at Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel.

The speakers encouraged attendees, who came from 12 Boston-area colleges and universities, to participate in politics at a local level and to think of themselves as America's leaders.

Local politics is often neglected by student activists, said Steven Grossman, former Democratic National Committee chairperson and current member of AIPAC's Board of Directors who spoke at a panel on citizen lobbying.

He said pro-Israel students should

follow the example of five Brandeis students whom he helped start a successful political organization.

"They concentrated much more on local races because they can get their arms around local races. I strongly urge people to get involved in local races," Grossman said.

In her remarks closing the conference, AIPAC Leadership Director Jill Rider said that acting in local politics is also a way to lobby politicians before they become powerful.

Grossman made a similar point. "Something like 65 percent of congressmen used to hold some local office," he said. By concentrating on such activities, he said, "you'll have an impact on the next generation of leaders."

Robert A. Riesman '40, who spoke about citizen lobbying, said student activists are much more effective today than they were in the 1930s.

Riesman, a member of AIPAC's executive committee, told a story about early pro-Jewish campus activism at Harvard.

After finding out about Kristallnacht--the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938, in which members of the Nazi regime committed acts of violence against Jewish persons and property--Riesman said that he and other students petitioned Harvard to invite German Jewish students and professors to America. Harvard's dean responded reluctantly, saying he would "make haste slowly," Riesman said.

The speakers encouraged attendees to expand their activities further. Grossman said that student activists should think of themselves as leaders of their peers. "Students are not AIPAC's future but its present," he said.

Grossman said that some statistics show a decline in student political activism. "There's a lot of reason to be concerned about apathy," he said. "But you...are an eloquent refutation of those statistics."

Grossman's comments echoed those of Vice President Al Gore '69, who said at an AIPAC conference this May that "you [college students] are not the leaders of tomorrow, you are the leaders of today."

One speaker said students should follow his example and get involved young.

Boston City Councilor-elect Michael Ross, 27, said that young people shouldn't be discouraged from

campaign work. "Don't say you need to study, don't say you need to sleep, just get involved," he said.

Ross, the first Jewish city councilor since 1951, recently won an election against an established politician through a quirky, volunteer-driven campaign.

Other speakers discussed the progress and problems of the Middle East peace process.

"I believe that Israel has reached a point of no return," New England Consulate of Israel Consul General Itzhak Levanon said in a speech titled "Israel in the New Millennium."

"There is only one way to go, and that is straight forwards. We have set up two target dates [for accords], and we believe we can meet these dates," Levanon said.

But, Levanon said, the Palestinians need to align their words with their actions. "The Palestinians cannot play a double game. If you would like to reach peace, you have to talk peace.... We would like to stop this dual standard," he said.

AIPAC is one of the most influential lobbies in Washington, second only to the American Association of Retired People, AIPAC Northeast Field Organizer Rachel Murov said. The 55,000-member organization is bipartisan and does not directly fund political campaigns.

Harvard Students for Israel has a similar orientation, Co-President Benjamin A. Flusberg '01 said. "We don't have a political stance, even though people think we do. AIPAC itself doesn't have a political stance." It just follows the Israeli government's position, he said.

Rachel L. Brown '01 is one of the three students primarily responsible for organizing the conference. She is also one of only four students in the nation who are members of AIPAC's executive committee.

Brown said that until she visited Israel last winter break, she hadn't felt much connection to it. But in Israel, she said she was moved by a sense of history. "I was able to touch stones that had been touched by millions of Jews over thousands of years," she said.

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) had been scheduled to speak at the event, but cancelled the appointment this weekend.