By Michele Alperin

Special to The Jewish State

In Israel, debate is a way of life, and potential solutions to the bitter struggle with the Palestinians and surrounding Arab nations are argued constantly in the Knesset, on television, in cafes, and probably with strangers on the street. Because the stakes are so high, emotions often boil over -- yet all of the options are always on the table.

Within the Jewish community in the United States, however, debate on Israel often evokes fear for the survival of the Jewish state as well as concern that any disagreement within the Jewish community will bolster the arguments of Israel's enemies.

Especially since the second intifada, which started in September 2000, that fear has pushed even many liberal Jews to place support for Israel at the top of their political agendas and to adopt a united position on Israel's future.

In this context parents and community leaders in California observed the consequences of the intifada on college campuses and realized that neither they nor their children were equipped to respond in defense of Israel. They created a new organization, StandWithUs, spearheaded by Roz Rothstein, who is now its executive director.

"Its purpose is to educate people about what is happening and teach them how to respond," says Avi Posnick, who joined the organization in January as the outreach coordinator in the New York office. "We want to make sure that Israel's side of the story is told." StandWithUs's main office is in Los Angeles, but it also has offices in New York, Chicago, Buffalo, West Bloomfield (Michigan), and Israel, and it is hoping to open an office soon in Europe.

StandWithUs is holding a community-wide educational event for high school students and their parents on Sunday, Oct. 14, 7:30 p.m., at Congregation Ahavas Achim in Highland Park. Its goal is to share what is happening with regard to Israel on college campuses and to prepare students to advocate effectively for the Jewish state.

Educational materials will also be available, including a 44-page booklet called "Israel 101" that reviews the history of Israel, the wars, the United States-Israel relationship, and Israel's contribution to the world in terms of advances in technology, energy, and medicine.

A typical event such as the one planned for next week might be something like the following, according to Posnick.

"There will be an anti-Israel speaker, say Norman Finkelstein, a known speaker who does not tell the truth about Israel, saying, for example, that Israel is the aggressor and is oppressing the Palestinians." Finkelstein is a political scientist, with a doctorate from Princeton University, who has written "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History," "The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering," and "Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict."

Posnick explained that students can find information about "known anti-Israel speakers" like Finkelstein on StandWithUs's "StandForFacts" Web site, which is password protected. Material on the site, he said, describes these people's arguments and how to question them.

Posnick challenges one argument by Finkelstein, who is the son of a Holocaust survivor. Finkelstein, he said, claims that Jews use the Holocaust to get sympathy and money from the world. StandWithUs might suggest that students ask Finkelstein, "Why aren't you equally critical of the Palestinians for the aftermath of the war they started in 1948?" Posnick believes that it is not the Jews who are exploiting the Holocaust but the Arabs who are exploiting the 1948 war "for sympathy and money, even though they were the ones who started the war."

StandWithUs maintains a speaker's bureau, added Posnick, and has on its staff of about regional campus coordinators who help students advocate for Israel on their campuses. "We can send a speaker to refute what another speaker says, and we can send people to run a pro-Israel event," he said.

StandWithUs was one of the main organizers of the protest at Columbia University against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Posnick maintained that the talk should not have taken place and the fact that Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, had to scold Ahmadinejad for his beliefs, "shows he was someone who shouldn't have been invited."

Posnick believes that people like Ahmadinejad shouldn't be honored by allowing them to say what they want at a distinguished American university. "By inviting him you're honoring someone who has American blood on his hands, denies the Holocaust, and has called for another country's destruction," he said.

"Obviously he has right to say what he wants," said Posnick of Ahmadinejad. "Free speech grants people the right to say what they want. But just because someone has the right to say what he wants doesn't mean we have to provide a podium for him to say it from."

 Posnick recently graduated from Yeshiva University with a degree in political science. He got involved in Israel advocacy when he was at the Rambam High School in Lawrence, New York, motivated by the Zionism class taught by his principal, Yotav Eliach, "that really goes through the history and teaches you how to respond to Israel's critics." At Yeshiva University he ran clubs and programs to help mobilize students for both Israel and Jewish advocacy and worked with a wide range of organizations, including StandWithUs.

When Posnick was questioned about whether StandWithUs's approach might not be allowing the open airing of different perspectives on Israel's future, he disagreed. claiming that his organization was simply presenting "the facts of Israel." He explained: "We welcome debate. We have no problem debating; we try to make it as balanced as we can. If we have someone from the left putting a different spin, we have no problem debating with them and showing our side."

Ori Nir, the spokesperson for Americans for Peace Now, saw the activism of StandWithUs in a somewhat different light. He congratulated any efforts to respond to anti-Israel events on campuses but at the same time worried that initiatives like those of StandWithUs may limit in the United States the kind of healthy debate that exists in Israel. "There is nothing wrong with the initiative," emphasized Nir, who has been a reporter for Haaretz and the Forward, and has had viewed closely student life on one campus, the University of California at Berkeley, where he taught journalism. "What I would wish is that, in the very positive and blessed enthusiasm to protect Israel and its reputation, the baby would not be thrown out with the bathwater."

Although Nir recognizes that Israel is fighting some terrible vitriol in the public domain, he maintained "the best weapon to fight it would be exposing Israeli society as an open, democratic, and pluralistic one rather than stifling the debates on Israel and Israeli policies."