Israel Week
So this week has been Hillel's Israel Week and it's been amazing. My friend Avia is the Israel chair on board and has done such an amzing job putting all these events together....jelly doughnuts to her as we say at the end of board meetings. (jelly doughnuts= good stuff and horsradish= bad stuff) So the week started out with an event sponsored by Caravan for Democracy (thanks to Aviya with a y and Marc). David Olesker, an Israeli Advocate, came to speak to us about standing up for Israel. He was great to listen too and had some good insite. He was raised in England and had lived in Israel so he has the British humor and the Israeli experience. Great guy. Tuesday was amazing....it was deemed Israel Day and we went out to the MLK plaza which is basically the center of campus and set up various tables related to Israel. Other organizations including Pride Alliance, Feminist Student Alliance, and the Catholic organization on campus came out to table about how their groups had a relationship to Israel....very cool....plus we had free falafal and humus and pita and cake.....and you could make a bracelet or necklace with your Hebrew name or english name in Hebrew letters if you don't have a Hebrew name. lol. We also had hookahs set up for people to smoke and israeli music....it was a very successful event. Wednesday was awesome...we had bedouin night and just layed out blankets and tapestries and pillows and bean bag chairs outside of Hillel and set up some Hookahs, put on some Israeli music and ate the leftovers from Tuesday....very chill and relaxing...it was wonderful. We also had a belly dancer come perform and instruct. Tonight I enjoyed the most I think. We had another amazing speaker.....a very unique individual. Walid Shoebat....he is a former PLO Terrorist turned pro-Israel. He had the most amazing view points on the Arab-Israeli conflict and Islam since he used to be a believer....he is now christian, but is fairly well educated on Judaism. Funny man. He seems to have an idea for a solution to the problem, but I don't see it happening anytime soon. He thought that what Israel needed to do was act like America....say hey, if you wanna live here in peace, cool, you can stay, but if you have any record whatsoever of violence toward Jews....your gone....send them to the surrounding Arab countries. We've shipped out people who have been found to be terrorists, why can't Israel do it? It's a view I never thought about....but it's probably because I'm Jewish, and therefore what he calls a "peace freak" lol. He was astonished to find that there are no Hebrew war songs at all....not one.....whereas in Islam there are many many songs speaking of war and violence. All and all....there's no way to say everything he said as well as he said it...but it was amazing and I only wish more people would get to hear his ideas. He actually has a book out I think called something like why I left Ji-had. He wrote it for a christian audience, however there is supposedly no preaching in it, rather he wrote it in a way to show christians why it is important for them to also support Israel. Very interesting man....sad story. But tomorrow is the conclusion of Israel week with Shabbat services and an Israeli style dinner along with a special program not related to Israel. YAD (young adult division) is a group of young jewish professionals who is coming to speak with us about our majors and it will be an opportunity to make professional contacts with people in our intended fields. So that'll be fun. But I'm super happy that I managed to do my entire paper, which luckily only had to be two pgs, tonight when I got back at 11pm and finished it all by 2am. I had done nothing but find my article with an ethical dilemma and some supporting material. Yay. Now, I need to get what little sleep I can.