By Leyna Krow, Assistant Editor, JTNews
The last time Ra’anan Gissin, former senior political advisor to Ariel Sharon, spoke at the University of Washington, (in the spring of 2003), he was greeted by several dozen student protestors.
“At the time, I was the spokesman for the army, for the foreign press. I was stationed in Jerusalem and I covered that same area,” Gissin said during an interview with JTNews. “So they had big banners that said ‘Washington University [sic] does not welcome the chief occupation spokesman.’ That was my title, apparently. I enjoyed that very much.”
When he returned last week to give a talk at Hillel at the University of Washington however, this time not as the mouthpiece for the Israeli army, but as a private citizen, the charismatic Israeli received a much more subdued reception.
About 40 students, faculty, and community members gathered at Hillel on the evening of November 28 to hear Gissin give a talk titled “Israel at 60: A Winning Society.” The talk was sponsored by Caravan for Democracy, an arm of the Jewish National Fund.
Sarah Persitz, the Grinspoon Israel advocacy intern at Hillel and a fourth year student at the UW who was largely responsible for organizing the event, said she was pleased by the turnout.
“I was definitely very happy with the number of people we had. It was a good mixture of people from the university and the community,” Persitz said.
Gissin’s talk at Hillel came just one day after President Bush met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Annapolis, Md; however, Gissin’s presentation made little mention of the peace talks, or the peace process in general. Instead, Gissin focused on the ways in which Israel has proved itself to be a strong, successful nation in its 60 years of independence. His goal for the talk, he said, was to motivate young people to become activists for Israel.
“I see this as a training session rather than lecturing them,” Gissin said prior to last Wednesday’s event. “And at the same time, I try to solve the perennial problem that Jewish people have always had: back problems. They are always hunched over. I come with a remedy for this. The remedy to Jewish back problems is a winning Israel. Israel wins, we don’t have back problems anymore. That’s better than Pilates.”
Gissin offered several examples of how Israel has grown over the last 60 years, including economic progress and advancements in science, medicine and education. He held these accomplishments up for comparison against those of Israel’s neighbors, evoking a kind of us-against-them rhetoric rarely heard in politically correct Seattle.
“What it comes down to is, they are losing. We are winning,” Gissin announced at one point during his talk.
Gissin credits Israel’s success, which he charts in terms of the country’s gross domestic product, military strength and quality of education, to the determination of the Jewish people to create a state of their own and to see that state thrive despite hostility from much of the rest of the region.
Persitz acknowledged that, in his presentation, Gissin voiced a number of opinions not commonly shared by speakers who come to Hillel. However, she said, she believes it is important for members of the local Jewish community to hear from a wide variety of sources about the issues facing Israel.
She said that she would not hesitate to invite Gissin back to Hillel although she admits the Israeli visitor was not quite what she had expected.
“I don’t think I was quite prepared for his level of enthusiasm,” she said. “He was a very engaging speaker, and I think he was able to give an accurate representation of Israel. Of course, you have to take into account that everyone has their own opinions about things. He represented one of many.”
It was only at the end of his talk, while fielding questions from audience members, that Gissin addressed Israel’s security concerns and the Annapolis peace summit.
When asked what he thought about the summit, Gissin replied, “I’m not optimistic that out of Annapolis will come peace, but I am optimistic that if we retain a winning spirit, peace will come.”
Until the winning spirit emerges victorious however, Gissin said that Israel has every right to protect itself from the hostility of the region around it, and that if this approach garners criticism from the rest of the world, so be it.
“When people say Israel is an apartheid state, I tell them, it is not a state yet,” he said. “We would like one day to be a normal state with open borders, but right now, we are a national park. We are a national park for an endangered species and as long as there are hunters who want to destroy this endangered species, we have a right to build fences, to protect ourselves.”