Amazingly, a year has passed and our crucial annual August Fundraiser has once again rolled around again. CIJR has had a banner year. Its popular international daily e-mail Isranet Briefing (now in a French version as well), approaching its 1,000th consecutive edition, continues to roll up readership gains, and our printed ISRAFAX is widely distributed. Our students’ remarkable Dateline: Middle East magazine enters its sixteenth year, and international use of the Institute’s Website and unique Databank is also increasing.

In March, CIJR played a key role in initiating, and co-sponsoring (with the Quebec-Israel Committee) a major three-day International Conference on the New Global Antisemitism. Opened by Natan Sharansky, Israel’s Minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora, and attended by over 300 people daily, this remarkable conference, featuring papers and discussion by two dozen of the outstanding world authorities on antisemitism, gained broad national and international attention. Scholars included Robert Wistrich (Hebrew U), Ruth Wisse (Harvard), Shmuel Trigano (Paris), Daniel Goldhagen (Harvard), James Carroll (author), Fiamma Nierenstein, Phyllis Chesler, and Hillel Halkin (Jerusalem). (The Conference Proceedings are currently being edited).

In the course of the year, CIJR also sponsored outstanding speakers like Bat Ye’or (author of The Dhimmi), Prof. Asher Susser (Tel Aviv U.) and Ilka Schroeder (German member of the European Parliament and chair of a campaign to deny EU funding to Arafat’s Palestinian Authority).

Our long record of creative work with students remains a key part of the Institute’s activities. Dateline: Middle East magazine, edited this year by David Herz, remains unique in North America, and our ongoing and very effective Student Israel Training Internships program has been reinforced.

This evening’s Gala celebrating CIJR’s Sweet Sixteenth Anniversary as well as the 1,000th consecutive Isranet Briefing, features Distinguished Honoree Thomas O. Hecht, (internationally-respected pro-Israel community leader, and founder of the Begin-Sadat Center in Israel) Gala Lecturer Raphael Israeli (the outstanding Hebrew U. student of Islamic history), and Golden Magen David Award recipient Stockwell Day, the new Conservative Party’s consistently pro-Israel, Foreign Affairs critic.

CIJR remains an independent non-profit educational foundation–most of our staff are, like myself, volunteers, and we must raise our own funds. Our annual August Fundraiser and Campaign, which generates over three-quarters of our operating budget, is therefore crucial to our success.

Please, then, be as generous as possible in supporting CIJR. Our “Publisher for a Day” campaign, celebrating the 1,000th Briefing by recognizing donors front-and-center in the Briefing, remains open, and contributions are, generally, tax deductible. [Please e-mail cijr@isranet.org for more information on the “Publisher for a Day” campaign).

Finally, my personal thanks to all--Board Members, donors, staff, volunteers, student Interns, Briefing readers : you are what makes us a community organization in the deepest sense, and without you we could not do our crucial pro-Israel work.