Student Discovers Advocacy through Two-Year Program

The summer before Claire Cohen’s junior year, she fell in love, and as love has a tendency to do, it changed the course of her life.

That summer, Claire, now a senior, joined 40 other family members on a trip to Israel for her brother’s Bar Mitzvah. While there, she “fell in love with the country,” and that, combined with her love for writing led her to apply for the two year Write On For Israel (WOFI) program, sponsored by The AVI CHAI Foundation and The Cleveland Jewish News. The program gives selected Jewish junior and seniors opportunities to refine their skills as future generation Israel advocates within a unique and mixed framework of guest speakers, seminars, and editorial opportunities. It culminates with a free 10 day fact finding trip to Israel. Along the way, students hone skills in journalism, media relations, public speaking and debate.

They also learn, as Claire explains, that advocacy means more than blind support.

When asked the most surprising thing she has learned from the program, Claire replied, “The most unexpected thing I have learned is that Israel does make mistakes. As an advocate, you cannot paint a perfect picture, you must acknowledge those mistakes.”

During her WOFI Israel trip, Claire spent an afternoon with Arab high school students from an all Arab village, and “realized we are not that different.”

She also learned the power of the internet in conveying influential images, and cited one site’s use of a picture of what appeared to be an elderly woman being taken out of an ambulance, surrounded by IDF soldiers, at an Israeli border check point. The accusatory caption noted what appeared to be unnecessary and cruel treatment by the Israelis.

What the image and caption did not reveal were the bombs found on the ambulance underside, and the fact that what appeared to be an ill woman was in reality a volunteer in a mission to use the ambulance for terrorist purposes in a populated portion of Israel.

Claire recently attended The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Conference in Washington, where she heard speeches by Israeli President Shimon Peres, and President Barack Obama. Her experience was captured on her blog on the WOFI website. This year, she worked on writing and editing the WOFI magazine, which will be published and distributed by The Cleveland Jewish News in May.

Along the way, she learned what it means to be a successful advocate of any cause.

“I learned,” Claire commented, “that there are different types of advocacy, and you must use the method best for you and best for the person you are talking to in order to succeed … This carries over to general advocacy, as I learned about the importance of understanding the other side of the argument.” Claire will attend Kenyon College next fall where she will major in religious studies and/or international relations.

“WOFI made me much more interested in Israel, its politics, the relationship between the United States and Israel, and the Middle East in general,” she said.

And so, what started as a trip for her family became actually the first step on a more distinct path to her future, and a more sophisticated understanding of the complexity of what it means to be an advocate.