aipac training

Last November, Rabbi Baruch Plotkin took a group of six Rosenblatt High School students to participate in AIPAC’s Schusterman Advocacy Institute High School Summit.  Together with high school leaders from throughout the country, Carly Cohen, Amy Freidus, Asher Gritz, Sharon Pedowitz, Allison Sherman, and Noam Tansman, learned how to advocate for American support of the State of Israel.  

In order to engage the high school community as a whole in the process of
pro-Israel advocacy, Rabbi Plotkin put together a Town Hall event on Friday, January 23.  During that event, Noam, Sharon, and Allison gave brief presentations about what they learned at the Schusterman Summit and how they had come away from it committed and energized to the cause of pro-Israel advocacy.   Asher talked about how the students were enthusiastically looking forward to participating in the upcoming AIPAC Policy Conference, which will take place in Washington, in March.   

Believing that effective pro-Israel advocacy must be based on a firm foundation of knowledge, Rabbi Plotkin asked Mr. Gary Friedman, a History teacher at Rosenblatt High School, to do a presentation about the history of the modern Arab-Israeli conflict.   In his presentation, Mr. Friedman explained the origins and results of the main Arab-Israeli Wars, especially the Israeli War of Independence, the Six Day War of 1967, and the Yom Kippur War of 1973.   Mr. Friedman also focused on the efforts that have been made to make peace between Israelis and Arabs, especially the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty of 1979 and the Israeli-Palestinian Accords of 1993.    

Hopefully, the students came away from Mr. Friedman’s presentation, and the Town Hall as a whole, with information that will both contribute to their understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict and help them to effectively advocate American support for Israel.