As Accuracy in Academia has documented, many campuses have a long-standing bias toward the latter half of the Israeli-Palestinian debate, with some textbooks going so far as to insinuate that Israel was created primarily because of “Zionist terror tactics” toward the British.
Pastor John Hagee, founder of the pro-Israel lobbying group, Christians United For Israel (CUFI), expressed his own concern about the obstacles facing pro-Israel students on campus at this year’s CUFI summit.
“For pro-Israel students, college campuses can be extremely lonely places. These students go to classes where professors teach them that Israel is the great evil of our time,” Pastor Hagee said. “They walk past protests on their way to class by fellow students who are saying that Israel is a modern Nazi Germany.”
He continued,
“When these students leave college, they will go into the world and change our culture and our politics. If our campuses remain strongly anti-Israel, then how will America ever become pro-Israel?”
But America is already strongly pro-Israel, as indicated by a Gallup polltracking American views on the Middle East since 1988. For 2008, 59% of respondents said they sympathized more with the Israelis, while only 17% sympathized with the Palestinians.
However, when asked which side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the United States should politically support, 74% of respondents in 2008 said that the U.S. should “not take either” side.
CUFI sponsors a program called CUFI on Campus, in which chapters organize students to express their support of Israel and explain the “biblical” reasons why Christians should do so also. Both Pastor Hagee and his organization have been the subject of much controversy in the last months, be it for Hagee’s (now resolved) conflict with Catholic League President Bill Donohue or the inflammatory comments which caused presidential candidate John McCain to renounce Hagee’s endorsement.
“We have with us tonight over 200 CUFI on campus delegates representing over 150 colleges and universities from across the nation,” said Pastor Hagee at this year’s Summit banquet. However, these numbers may be based on the number of student receiving student scholarships to the national CUFI summit; their attendance, therefore, is not predicated on membership in a CUFI on Campus chapter.
The CUFI on Campus web page provides little information as to the size or scope of the organization.
CUFI did not respond in time for this article.
Bethany Stotts is a staff writer at Accuracy in Academia.
