Pro-Israel coalition seeks to shift USAC focus back to campus issues
By Joseph Vescera
Nov. 14, 2014 7:31 a.m.
More than 100 students met at Hillel at UCLA Thursday to discuss a strategy to persuade the undergraduate student government to shift its attention away from political and international issues.
Student leaders from Bruins for Israel, Hillel at UCLA and J Street U at UCLA led the meeting of pro-Israel students and unveiled a new pro-Israel strategy called Students First. The strategy aims to encourage the Undergraduate Students Association Council to only work on student and campus issues, not political and international issues that sometimes come to the council table, said Tammy Rubin, former president of Hillel at UCLA and a fourth-year human biology and society student.
The strategy is in response to a new USAC divestment resolution authored by Students for Justice in Palestine that council will vote on during its weekly meeting Tuesday. The resolution calls for the University of California to divest from companies that some students say profit from the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Rubin said the goal is to show USAC that many students experience issues that she thinks USAC ignores, like campus access, in order to focus on non-UCLA-related issues such as divestment.
Pro-Israel students are seeking student signatures on a petition with the same message, which they will present at Tuesday’s meeting during public comment.
However, Ayesha Khan, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine and a fourth-year microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics student, said her organization thinks that the divestment resolution is something USAC should be concerned with because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict affects many students. She added that Students for Justice in Palestine thinks UCLA has a moral responsibility to not invest in violence.
On Tuesday, pro-Israel campus organizations will also hold an alternative meeting in Ackerman Union’s Global Viewpoint Lounge at the same time as the USAC meeting in an effort to delegitimize the divestment debate, Rubin said.
A coalition of pro-Israel student groups will send some students to the USAC meeting to explain the petition and state the coalition’s discontent with the divestment debate and what it says are the debate’s negative effects on the campus climate, she added.
The coalition will announce a new campaign to strengthen the Jewish community on campus at the alternative meeting.
Compiled by Joseph Vescera, Bruin contributor.
