{"id":244400,"date":"2026-08-11T07:04:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T07:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/244400\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T07:04:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T07:04:28","slug":"israel-on-campus-coalition-summit-proves-bipartisan-israel-support-is-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/244400\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel on Campus Coalition: Summit Proves Bipartisan Israel Support Is Possible"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Nearly 75 faculty leaders traveled to Washington, D.C. from across the country, to attend the Summit. The faculty coalition was organized by the Academic Engagement Network, which led programming focused on combating campus antisemitism, defending academic freedom, and building stronger faculty-student partnerships. (Courtesy of Israel on Campus Coalition)<\/p>\n

Andrew Bernard | JNS<\/p>\n

More than 1,000 pro-Israel students and professors gathered in Washington this week for the Israel on Campus Coalition\u2019s annual summit.<\/p>\n

Jacob Baime, CEO of the coalition, told JNS that two years after college campuses were rocked by anti-Israel tent encampments taking over quadrangles across the country, his organization remains focused on \u201cthe fight in front of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that we don\u2019t have encampments on campus doesn\u2019t mean that the problems don\u2019t exist,\u201d Baime said.<\/p>\n

The former national field director for AIPAC, Baime said that Israel\u2019s political adversaries in the United States have taken their campus activism into mainstream politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same folks who were Students for Justice in Palestine then started running for local office, and now look at the election results in Michigan,\u201d he said, of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed\u2019s victory in the Democratic primary for Senate.<\/p>\n

El-Sayed is one of the most vociferously anti-Israel candidates in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the same way that we saw on Oct. 7 and Oct. 8, the pro-Hamas protests \u2014 they started on the campuses and then they spilled out into the city streets and into the public square,\u201d Baime told JNS.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s place in American politics has shifted dramatically since Oct. 7, with a growing number of Americans expressing skepticism about the U.S.-Israel relationship. That includes both a rising faction of the Democratic Party calling for the United States to cut off aid to the Jewish state and Republicans, like U.S. Vice President JD Vance, accusing<\/a> elements of the Israeli government of trying to undermine negotiations with Iran.<\/p>\n

Conference-goers from 308 schools across 43 states and the District of Columbia heard from Israeli and American politicians, including both Republicans and Democrats, about where the U.S.-Israel relationship is headed.<\/p>\n

Ron Dermer, the former Israeli minister of strategic affairs and a former ambassador to the United States, said that people \u201cromanticize\u201d the U.S.-Israel alliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael has shared values in the United States. There\u2019s no question about it, but that\u2019s not what drives relations between states,\u201d he said at the event. \u201cValues are not what drives the alliance. It\u2019s actually the interests that make the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who care about Israel have to start defending Israel in terms of the interests in it for the United States of America,\u201d he told attendees.<\/p>\n

Other speakers at the conference included Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon and Martin Marks, director of Jewish engagement at the White House.<\/p>\n

Jewish and pro-Israel groups have struggled in recent years to navigate the shifting partisan perceptions of Israel among the wider American public, with \u201cAIPAC funding\u201d becoming a cudgel in intra-Democratic Party primaries and pro-Zionist organizations having internal disagreements<\/a> about whether \u201cZionism\u201d is an effective or persuasive label for supporters of Israel.<\/p>\n

Baime told JNS that his organization, which met under the tripartite slogan of \u201cAmerican, Zionist, proud,\u201d believes that being clear about values and embracing bipartisanship, rather than nonpartisanship, is an effective path forward for groups supporting Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of concern out there that can you even bring the Jewish community or pro-Israel community, Democrats and Republicans, together in the same room and have a constructive conversation due to polarization?\u201d Baime said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis summit is proof positive that it is possible,\u201d he told JNS. \u201cWe really want to encourage young Democrats, who are Zionists, to be leaders in the Democratic Party and young Republicans, who are Zionists, to be leaders in the Republican Party.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s going to work for us to play four-dimensional chess,\u201d the ICC head said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we have to be honest that this is who we are,\u201d he told JNS. \u201cThis is what we believe, and we\u2019re not going to shy away from it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 75 faculty leaders traveled to Washington, D.C. from across the country, to attend the Summit. The faculty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[22474,2922,7252,35825,30084,37,68091,11642,674,42,37832,81,39715,27885,2710,6393],"class_list":["post-244400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-abdul-el-sayed","tag-aipac","tag-american-jews","tag-american-politics","tag-bipartisanship","tag-israel","tag-israel-on-campus-coalition","tag-jns","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-oct-7","tag-politics","tag-pro-israel","tag-pro-palestinian-protests","tag-washington-dc","tag-zionism"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117075605657827422","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}