NEW YORK - Pro-Israel students on Columbia University’s campus have decided that this year, they will not be silent during the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement’s annual Israel Apartheid Week.
As anti-Israel activists opened a week of exhibits and lectures demonizing the Jewish state, pro-Israeli activists faced off with a counter campaign of their own. Just 250 meters from a BDS exhibit, the World Jewish Congress and pro-Israeli students set up the photo exhibition “Faces of Israel,” to show students susceptible to Apartheid Week messaging the true face of Israel in a respectful and quiet way.
The Faces of Israel exhibit was created by Baruch College students Amit Gutin and Orr Izkovich in 2016, as the winning proposal of the Campus Pitch Initiative, a joint project of the WJC and the Israeli Consulate in New York to change the discourse of Israel on campus. Gutin and Izkovich received a $5,000 grant to implement their proposal, and the exhibit has since been displayed across the country and abroad.
