{"id":705,"date":"2019-04-20T14:31:24","date_gmt":"2019-04-20T14:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/ship\/?p=705"},"modified":"2019-04-20T14:34:08","modified_gmt":"2019-04-20T14:34:08","slug":"kate-knight-attends-the-2019-aipac-policy-conference-in-d-c-march-24-26-blog-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/ship\/2019\/04\/20\/kate-knight-attends-the-2019-aipac-policy-conference-in-d-c-march-24-26-blog-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Kate Knight Attends the 2019 AIPAC Policy Conference in D.C. (March 24-26) Blog 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caravan for Democracy & AIPAC Policy Conference: Blog #2<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before traveling to Israel with Caravan for Democracy, I was earnestly skeptical in my support of the Israeli state. As a MENA minor, I have spent years studying the numerous human rights violations that Israel has committed against the Palestinian people. When I spent seven months studying abroad in Jordan, I lived with a Palestinian homestay family. The grandmother of my homestay family told me stories of when she was forced to leave her home in Palestine in 1950; she walked all the way to Jordan with her family. What is more, I spent my junior and senior year researching Christian Zionism in the U.S. and its subsequent impact on the livelihood of Palestinians hoping for a two-state solution.<\/p>\n

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Based on these experiences, I was adamantly against the political and military foundations of the Jewish state. This mindset started to change when I took the classes \u201cJewish Life & Thought\u201d and \u201cJerusalem: Religion, History, and Politics\u201d with Dr. Yudit Greenberg. Dr. Greenberg, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, taught me about concepts such as Jewish diaspora, global anti-Semitism, and the Jewish people\u2019s historical claim to the land of Israel.<\/p>\n

These classes, in addition to my time spent in Israel, showed me that the Jewish people have a powerful tie to their homeland that cannot be ignored. Nonetheless, that does not excuse the various atrocities that they have committed against the native Palestinian population.<\/p>\n

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Being a participant in the AIPAC Policy Conference helped me to mitigate my understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the conference, I sat in on break out sessions regarding topics such as the BDS movement, the state of life in the Gaza Strip, and the military strength of Israel\u2019s neighbors. I got to listen to distinguished speakers from both sides of the political aisle, demonstrating that their allegiance to Israel is truly bipartisan.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caravan for Democracy & AIPAC Policy Conference: Blog #2 Before traveling to Israel with Caravan for Democracy, I was earnestly skeptical in my support of the Israeli state. As a MENA minor, I have spent years studying the numerous human … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conferences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/ship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/ship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/ship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/ship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/ship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/ship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":710,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/ship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/ship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/ship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/ship\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}