Hillel Study Shows Arab Propaganda is Not Making Anti-israel, Anti-jewish Inroads on U.S. Campuses

The national director of B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations took issue yesterday with the view that Arab propaganda, accelerated with petro-dollars, is making anti-Israel or anti-Jewish inroads on American college campuses. Dr. Norman Frimer told Hillel’s national commission at its annual meeting here that “such dire conclusions, already given credence by some spokesmen in the Jewish community are still unwarranted fears.”

Frimer said that a Hillel analysis based on a poll of its field directors at 120 major schools “does not show any significant shift in campus opinion which, by and large, supports Israel’s right to survival.”

Efforts by pro-Arab campus groups distributing literature, screening films, organizing exhibits and convening rallies with speakers hostile to Israel “may create a sense of discomfort among Jewish students and others on campus, but the extent of their productivity has been minimal,” Frimer said. The few exceptions, he added, are “scattered, isolated, and, for the moment, non-threatening.”

The 80-member commission, Hillel’s major policy body, unanimously elected Dr. Seymour Martin Lipset of Harvard University, sociologist, educator and author, as its chairman to succeed Dr. Marver H. Bernstein, president of Brandeis University, who completed two terms.

ARAB ACTIONS ARE ONE-SHOT AFFAIRS

The Hillel analysis, prepared by Rabbi Samuel Z. Fishman, the agency’s research and program director, said the “single evidence” of any recent Arab propaganda success was that Middle East debates on campus “now highlight such issues as Palestinian self-determination, the existence of an Arab diaspora and the question of refugee repatriation–circumstances more authentically identified with the Holocaust which the Arabs have begun exploiting for their own self-image.”

The field reports disclosed “little correlation” between rising student enrollments and anti-Israel activity, Frimer said, and no hard data emerge to support the notion that the anticipation of petro dollars by financially-pressed schools would make a profound impact upon the ethos and study program of the American university.

Campus appearances of a Moshe Dayan or Ephraim Katzir often evoke some form of pro-Arab counter-activity but these are generally “one-shot demonstrations” and few politically-minded Arab campus groups campaign “with staying power or sustained action,” Frimer said.

Lipset, in his acceptance remarks said that the task of interpreting the Israel situation to the campus community has been complicated by a widening of isolationist and anti-militant views brought on by the failure of American policy in Southeast Asia. “While few students or faculty, outside of the extreme left, identify the Israel situation as an American ally with that of South Vietnam, many take a pessimistic view of America’s capacity to play world leadership roles,” he declared.

The “positive side,” he added, was that “Israel, unlike Vietnam, has repeatedly demonstrated the capacity to defend itself” without involving Americans in military campaigns, a self-reliance that finds popular appeal.