This piece was featured on Israel Campus Beat on Thursday, April 28, 2011.  It was written by Elianna Mintz.

Courtesy: Israel Campus Beat

When members of Columbia University’s pro-Israel and African American student groups accepted an invitation to hear two leaders of the Vanguard Leadership Group (VLG) speak on campus recently, they assumed it would be an interesting program, but they had no idea they would be a part of a groundbreaking event.

As they RSVP’d for the program, they could not have known that the event would herald significant change at Columbia. Once they arrived, however, they realized just how potent the unification of the campus’ African American and Jewish American students could be.

Most were unfamiliar with VLG, an Atlanta-based honor society for high-achieving African American students at the nation’s historically black colleges and universities. Established in 2003, VLG is committed to instilling a global mindset within their students and as such has had been engaging the pro-Israel community since 2007.

VLG founder and executive director Jarrod Jordan traced the history of the group’s strong embrace of Israel to the 2008 AIPAC Policy Conference, where members were in the audience when then-presidential candidate Barack Obama stressed the importance of the historic relationship between African Americans and Jewish Americans.

“Obama explained that together African Americans and Jewish Americans are pushing America forward,” Jarrod recalled. “He expressed gratitude to AIPAC for their continuance of that relationship, which inspired us to pursue that relationship as well.

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Congratulations to the new LionPAC Executive Board!!  Here’s the list:

President – Eric Schorr
Vice President – Rachael Schulder
Secretary/Treasurer – Ilana Yablonovich
Hillel Liason – Cory Doliner
Research & Response – Ron Shapiro
Public Relations – Jonathan Huberman
Campus Affairs – Seffi Kogen
Academic Affairs – Ari Brickman
Political Affairs - Seren Gedallovich
Cultural Affairs – Jill Meltzer
Marketing – Tamara Roth
Past President – Michael Shapiro

Deputy Director of Research & Response – Hanna Flesh
Deputy Director of Academic Affairs - Nikki Press
Deputy Director of Political Affairs – Yael Wilner
Deputy Director of Cultural Affairs – Zach Javitt

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A recent article in Hadassah Magazine discusses the recent trend of anti-Israel activity on college campuses across the United States, and details efforts by pro-Israel students to combat such events and groups. LionPAC and Columbia are featured prominently throughout the article.

The article can be found here.

Courtesy: Columbia Daily Spectator

This piece was featured in the Columbia Spectator on Friday, March 4, 2011.  It was collaboratively written by Jonathan Huberman, LionPAC Director of Public Relations, and Roxanne Moadel-Attie, President of Columbia Iranian Students Association.

In light of the recent political instability in the Middle East, Iran, like many other countries in the region, has become a centerpiece of American attention and media. However, very few have focused on the spirit and culture of the Iranian people. This week, the Columbia Iranian Students Association and LionPAC are hosting several events that analyze the geopolitical questions surrounding Iran within the context of Iranian culture and nationalism.

Despite Iran’s rich culture, Iranians all over the world are negatively stereotyped based on the actions and behavior of their unpopular government. The word “Iranian” has become a loaded term used only in association with “nuclear weapons,” “Islamic fundamentalism,” and “terrorism.” These media hot topics have overshadowed the long-standing ethnic and religious diversity within Iran, spotlighting overgeneralizations and negativity about Iranians on the whole. Contrary to common misconceptions, Iranians belong to a variety of ethnic groups, including Persians, Kurds, Azeris, Arabs, Armenians, etc., and practice many religions, such as Shi’ite and Sunni Islam, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and the Baha’i faith. The beauty of the mainstream Persian culture lies in its ability to interweave many ethnic and religious beliefs and traditions, while also honoring ancient customs and rituals.

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On Friday, Justice Richard Goldstone, Chair of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, wrote an article in the Washington Post, discussing how recent information that has been released by Israel would have changed the outcome of the Goldstone Report from September of 2009. Below are a couple interesting quotes from the report:

“While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.

“Although the Israeli evidence that has emerged since publication of our report doesn’t negate the tragic loss of civilian life, I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes.”

-Richard Goldstone
Chair of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict

The full text can be read here.