On April 6th, 2014, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle Eastern Reporting in America, CAMERA, hosted their annual gala displaying incredible success over the past year. Considering that the entire staff is less than 40 people and the campus department consists of only three full time staff, its beyond amazing that CAMERA boasts 65,000 members across the nation and has a presence at about 50 universities.
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At the morning board meeting, the keynote speaker was Mr. Eric Trager, an expert on Egyptian politics and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt at the Washington Institute. Mr. Trager discussed the current situation in Egypt and the threat posed in the near future, should reality on the ground continue to destabilize.
Other speakers included Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Alan Dershowitz, and Nina Rosenwald.
Ilan Sinelnikov, who helped start the pro-Israel CCAP group at the University of Minnesota, Students Supporting Israel (SSI), is one of our award winners. For the accomplishments of his group in the 2012-2013 academic year, his group won the David Bar-Illan Award. We flew Ilan to our annual gala dinner this past April to accept the award on behalf of SSI.
Robin Cohen was our Fellow at CUNY Brooklyn during the 2012-2013 academic year. She was a recipient of our David Bar-Illan award this past April as well.
Some of the other speakers were Aviva Slomich, Samantha Mandeles and Gilad Skolnick of the Camera on Campus Department, Alex Safian, Masha Gabriel, Gilead Ini, and Dexter Van Zile of the CAMERA Boston Office.
All in all, the night was an incredible success, thanks to amazing planning and dedicated staff. We as a CAMERA community look forward to even more success in the 2015 year.