Christian, black pro-Israel advocate says Zionists must create their own narrative

Chloé Valdary

Chloé Valdary, 22, a recent University of New Orleans graduate, is the founder of a campus group called Allies of Israel, which promotes Israel advocacy.

Valdary has written articles for the Huffington Post, Tablet magazine, and the Jerusalem Post, served as a consultant for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), and worked as the assistant of directors for the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (ISBI).

Late last month, she was invited to a student leadership conference organized by Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies to speak about strategies to combat the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses.

Valdary, who is a Tikvah Fund fellow and the founder of a non-profit organization called Declare Your Freedom, which celebrates Zionism, spoke to The CJN about her mission to combat anti-Israel rhetoric.

Under what circumstances did you become an outspoken Israel advocate?

I started pro-Israel advocacy in college in great depth, but I was involved in studying Jewish culture in high school. I read a lot of Jewish literature, specifically books by Leon Uris, and when I got into college, books by Elie Wiesel as well. I also have an interesting cultural background. My family, which is Christian, observes all the Jewish holidays, and Shabbat and kosher style when I was growing up.

I became an advocate in college when I realized that anti-Semitism was rising globally.

What message did you bring to the FSWC conference?

I talked about my personal story, my philosophy when it comes to Zionism, specifically, what it is about and what it is not about. Namely, Zionism is not about the Arab-Israeli conflict, and neither is the story of Israel. The Arab-Israeli conflict is a part of the story, but it is not the fundamental story of Israel. Until we begin to understand the complexities and depths of what Zionism is about – and in my estimation, it is about, in part, a love story between a people and its land, the celebration of an indigenous people returning to their land, and Zionism is a political manifestation of the radical notion that Jews should be free – that’s what it is on a basic level.

For me personally, I don’t really feel compelled to explain everything that the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) does in a particular region. Once you understand that Zionism is not about the Arab-Israeli conflict, the actions of the IDF, whether they be good or bad, whether they be right or full of mistakes, which they are sometimes, does not threaten the legitimacy or Zionism, so therefore it is irrelevant to the conversation that we should be having on college campuses.

What is the biggest challenge for pro-Israel students who are faced with aggressive anti-Israel activists?

I think one of the biggest challenges is transcending the usual cycle we see within the pro-Israel world, which is that anti-Israel people define their narrative, and we base our advocacy on trying to correct it and on trying to answer their narrative, as opposed to creating an entire curriculum based on our own narrative.

I think this is one of the biggest challenges, not only for students who are outspoken and face aggressive anti-Semitic organizations on campus, but just in general. I think this is the biggest challenge for the pro-Israel community.

Until we transition from that to create our own narrative, we’ll be stuck, and we won’t make progress, in terms of winning the conversation on college campuses.

Does it make sense to ignore, rather than engage, the small minority of students who are making noise?

There are a number of campuses where no one cares what SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) is saying, and they are coming across as radical and too confrontational for mainstream students to actually care. But I would say that regardless of whether or not that was true, the pro-Israel world should be promoting their narrative anyway.

In my sophomore year and junior year, there was no SJP, but we were constantly promoting a certain narrative about Israel and Zionism on college campuses.

We understood that the validity and legitimacy of our narrative is not contingent upon the presence or the appearance of naysayers or dissenters. It is supposed to be sustained by itself.

Having been the subject of personal, and sometimes racist, attacks based on your views, do you feel that people feel more threatened by pro-Israel advocates who aren’t Jewish?

Yes, because we pose a certain threat, so to speak, to anti-Israel people because people claim that Zionism is exclusive or discriminatory or exclusionary, and so it fights against that if you have someone who is non-Jewish fighting against anti-Israel rhetoric.

What happens with me, when I talk to people who are anti-Israel about my love for Zionism, they start to say things that don’t make sense because they actually can’t wrap their heads around that concept. I have gotten threats, and stuff like that, so I think there is a more visceral hatred, in some cases as least, for people who are non-Jews who are Zionist and promote that, because it carries a lot of weight and it poses a huge threat to the anti-Israel movement.

Can you tell me about the piece you wrote that was critical of anti-Israel groups equating the black civil rights movements with the anti-Israel movement?

I wrote that piece for Tablet magazine last year, called To the Students for Justice in Palestine, a letter from an angry Black woman, and it addressed the fact that the language they were using was definitely and deliberately emblematic of causes of the civil rights movement. Historically, not only were many luminaries in the civil rights movement pro-Israel, but they were self-professed Zionists who came out against the Arab boycott.

It was ignorant and disrespectful to that history of the actual record of people involved in the civil rights movement and also it was like pilfering another people’s legacy for their own cause, which I thought was unacceptable.

This interview has been edited and condensed for style and clarity.