Creating a voice for Israel

Reticence to defend against an attack on his ancestral homeland as a teenager spurred Benjamin Anthony to take unflinching action as an adult. He not only joined the Israel Defense Forces, for which he continues to serve as a reservist, but after the second Lebanon War of 2006, Anthony established Our Soldiers Speak, a nonprofit organization through which IDF soldiers speak to college and high school students at synagogues, churches, community centers and homes throughout the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, South Africa and Israel.

Anthony, 37, said that the speakers, and the organization’s Israel Education Initiative, a curriculum it describes as an “in-depth, critical analysis and rigorous study” of Israel’s history, are being introduced to high schools in North America to combat what is seen as a decline in pro-Israel sentiment on college campuses. The thinking is that when students who have studied the Israel in World Relations curriculum attend college, they can be effective advocates for the Jewish state.

Now a reservist sergeant, Anthony has served several tours of duty with the IDF, including the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, in which Palestinians suffered the largest number of civilian casualties since the 1967 Six-Day War, according to a United Nations report.

When Anthony, who grew up in the United Kingdom, was 14, he commuted to school with three of his brothers, Jonathan, Michael and Rafael. One day, after getting off the train, the boys were followed by a group of seven men, who threw rocks at the Orthodox Jewish boys, and then attacked Jonathan, the oldest, beating him severely.

“I did nothing, then I finally shielded him,” Anthony recounted at the Woodsburgh home of Seth and Dena Pilevsky during a fundraiser last Thursday. “They had beaten him, and he was a bloody mess. He’s alive today, but has struggled with his health. I resolved to never allow that to happen again.”