March 3, 2009

NEW, ORIGINAL MATERIALS EXPOSE LIE OF ISRAELI APARTHEID CHARGE

(Los Angeles) — StandWithUs, the international Israel education organization, has just distributed tens of thousands of fact-based, well-designed materials to students who requested help countering the latest anti-Israel campaign on campus: Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) March 1-8. This 5th annual IAW, which will continue throughout the month of March at campuses worldwide, threatens to be bigger and more hate-filled than its predecessors. It will be especially ugly on European campuses, where incidents of anti-Israel, anti-Semitic agitation are escalating.

The IAW’s goal is to demonize Israel by equating it with racist Apartheid South Africa, and to justify demands for the same cultural and economic boycotts imposed to end Apartheid. It is an effort to lynch Israel through a free-for-all of misinformation and wild exaggeration that often crosses the line into traditional anti-Semitic libel applied now to the Jewish State. StandWithUs has been helping students and community members challenge such defamations for eight years.

StandWithUs urges the public to spread the word to their communities that the SWU materials can be easily accessed through our website, http://www.standwithus.com, and click on Apartheid Response Materials.

StandWithUs’ new materials expose the lies in the IAW charges. One 12-page booklet, “Apartheid South Africa vs. Democratic Israel,” juxtaposes photographs of Apartheid South Africa with Israel to demonstrate that the pluralistic, open, democratic Jewish State is, in fact, the diametric opposite of Apartheid’s legal system of oppression and discrimination based on skin color.

Another 12-page booklet, “Apartheid Today,” shifts the focus to where it should be: on the Apartheid that does exist today in Middle Eastern countries that systematically practice gender, sexual orientation, religious, and racial Apartheid. The booklet hopefully will galvanize human rights activists to fight against this real, modern Apartheid instead of squandering their energies fighting an Apartheid that exists only in the fevered imaginations of Israel’s enemies.

The recent Hamas-Israel war also figures prominently in the IAW campaign, with counter-factual accusations of Israeli misdeeds. The new StandWithUs booklet, “Israel’s Military Operation Against Hamas,” sets the record straight with a clear, documented analysis and photos.

Other materials in the series include one-page educational flyers and grids that refute the anti-Israel lies and distortions.

The StandWithUs materials will also be available for community members world-wide because, unfortunately, the IAW campaign is part of a larger international effort by Israel’s adversaries to demonize the Jewish State. Arab countries and Iran trumpet the false “racism” and “apartheid” charges at the UN Human Rights Council, and plan to use them to condemn Israel at the UN’s Durban II conference this April.

The Obama Administration hoped to moderate the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish clauses in the Durban II document, but found the document “unsalvageable.” The U.S. State Department announced that it will boycott the Durban II conference unless the document is significantly altered. Canada and Israel have already announced that they will boycott it. But the IAW and its supporters have not yet been affected by President Obama’s moral stance against the lynching of Israel through libelous accusations.

Parents with college students should inform their sons and daughters, and students should encourage their peers to use the materials. All people of conscience should use these new materials and join in the battle against the lies and distortions used to justify intolerance and hatred. They threaten to undermine the West’s best and most fundamental values. StandWithUs remains staunchly committed to the belief that education is the only road to understanding and peace.

StandWithUs, an international, non-profit Israel education organization hosts speakers and conferences, offers website resources and creates brochures and materials widely distributed in universities, libraries, high schools, churches and communities that teach about Israel. Based in Los Angeles, the organization has offices in New York, Michigan, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Orange County (CA), Israel and the UK. SWU was founded in 2001 in response to the second Intifada and the misunderstandings about the challenges that Israel faces. StandWithUsCampus helps college students fight anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias on campuses. http://www.standwithus.com and http://www.standwithuscampus.com.< /o:p>

StandWithUs runs several websites with relevant information:
www.Standwithus.com– the main website
www.standwithuscampus.com– resource for students on campus
www.LearnIsrael.org - materials for librarians, and teachers and a free, downloadable curriculum for high school teachers
www.stand4facts.org– password-protected site is a database of information on anti-Israel speakers.
www.standwithus.co.il– based in Jerusalem, this details international operations
www.united4freedom.org - speakers bureau