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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/20988/full/20988/in-ohio-pro-palestinian-jews-take-lead-in-organizing-anti-israel-conference/ <br /><br /> <b>In Ohio, pro-Palestinian Jews take lead in organizing anti-Israel conference</b> <br /> Friday, November 7, 2003 | by <br /><br /><p>columbus (jta)  |  Pro-Palestinian activists from around the country will flock to Ohio State University this weekend for the Third National Conference on the Palestine Solidarity Movement.<br /><br /> And the man who helped bring them here is a Jew. In fact, Joseph Levine, faculty adviser to the Committee for Justice in Palestine, the local group hosting the event, says he grew up steeped in Judaism as a yeshiva student in Los Angeles. Levine nearly immigrated to Israel in the early 1970s.<br /><br /> But after reading more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Levine says he came to feel that the Israel he had learned about as a child was “mythology.”<br /><br /> Today he is an atheist and a professor of philosophy at Ohio State.<br /><br /> “We have a hard time seeing ourselves as the white men” oppressing supposedly indigenous Arabs, Levine says.<br /><br /> Levine shares that feeling with other Jews mobilizing on behalf of the Palestinians. Ora Wise, 22, head of the New York-based Jews Against the Occupation, worked with Levine to create the Committee for Justice when she was an Ohio State student.<br /><br /> The daughter of a Cleveland rabbi and a Jewish educator, Wise says her community and, at times, her family, accused her of being a “traitor or self-hating or brainwashed” when she “started extending my concept of social justice to include Palestinians and to hold our state accountable for its actions.”<br /><br /> According to Wayne Firestone, director of the Israel on Campus Coalition, an umbrella group for 26 Jewish organizations, there’s a clear difference between Levine and people who criticize Israeli policy but still support the Jewish state.<br /><br /> “Anyone who is a critic whose intention is to legitimately strengthen an Israel living in secure and recognized boundaries is a legitimate critic,” Firestone says. “The problem with the position taken by a lot of these organizations is that they only seek to condemn Israel.” </p> <p> </p>

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