It’s Israel Apartheid Week, when college campuses across America are overtaken by paper-mache walls, cardboard tanks and a whole lot of criticism of the Jewish state. Do you know where the voices speaking up for Israel are?
They’re all over the map.
Tonight, a film called “Israel Inside” is having its premiere at the Writers Guild of America theatre (7000 West 3rd Street, 7pm). The film follows a former Harvard professor who moves back to Israel and explores all that is good about his country.
The film was produced by Rabbi Raphael Shore, formerly of Aish HaTorah and the founder of The Clarion Fund and directed and edited by Wayne Kopping. Judging from the trailer, “Israel Inside” seems like a bright and happy companion piece the Clarion Fund’s earlier films about radical Islam. Think “Start-Up Nation” with a brightly surging soundtrack. Expect a lot of talk about high tech innovation and little about conflict—any conflict.
One day later, a few miles to the West and occupying the opposite end of the pro-Israel spectrum, Uri Zaki, the director of the United States arm of the Israeli human right group B’Tselem, will be speaking to the UCLA chapter of J Street U (Dodd Hall, Room 146 from 4:30-6 PM). According to a flyer for the event, he’ll explain “how human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza undermine Israel’s democracy and its future.”
Self-described pro-Israel Jews working to support the Jewish state in radically conflicting ways? Maybe Apartheid week isn’t all that different from the rest of the year.
“Israel Inside” is also airing on KVCR at 8:00 pm on Thursday, March 1.
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