Over at the Legal Insurrection blog they’ve uncovered a pretty serious threat to Jewish kids attending camp in America. The far-left, anti-Israel group “IfNotNow” are planing on infiltrating as many of their members as they can into camps as counselors.
In one of its boldest moves, IfNotNow is planning to train camp counselors to “teach” campers at Jewish summer camps about the Israeli “occupation.” Given IfNotNow’s politics, described below, the teaching without a doubt will be anti-Israel. Parents who are sending their children to Jewish summer camps, motivated in part by establishing their children’s connection to Israel, will be undermined without knowing it and probably without the camp administration’s knowledge.
Founded in 2014 to protest Israel’s military operation against the Hamas terrorist organization that governs Gaza, INN presents itself as a hip left-wing group of young Jews who want to “transform the American Jewish community’s support for the occupation into a call for freedom and dignity for all Israelis and Palestinians.”
According to a recent statement, the group now has over 1,700 members and chapters in more than a dozen American cities. It’s also a growing presence on campus, as demonstrated by its hosting ‘anti-occupation Passover seders’ at a number of universities this past week.
Maybe INN is growing because its sister organization—Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—has become so tainted by charges of antisemitism. That is, maybe INN is becoming increasingly popular because people mistakenly see it as a legitimate player on the Zionist political left in a way that JVP isn’t.
This is the brazen tweet about their plan:
Legal Insurrection has a ton more detail on the background and funding of the IfNotNow group, what their stated and concealed aims are.
If you’re sending your kids to camp, you should be calling up the organisers right now and asking them if they will allow this kind of hateful anti-Israel indoctrination in their camps. Ask them if they’re aware of infiltration attempts and what steps they’re taking to screen camp counsellors. At the very least camp organisers should be checking the social media profiles of anyone they’re employing.
Also: warn your kids to contact you if they feel they’re being steered in directions that are one-sided or only given information about how bad life is for Palestinians. That’s their schtick: heavy on the negative consequences without any establishing background as to WHY security measures are necessary for Israelis.
This is a very real danger.
