In the news
3 stories that AIC ran, co-sponsored, or was called on for.
Lead story
The World Zionist Organization gave Cheryl Dorchinsky its 2023 Zionist Legacy Award for the work she began in 2018, when she founded AIC to unite Atlanta's pro-Israel community. The award recognizes what this coalition built together.
Atlanta News First on the Atlanta Israel Coalition's drive to collect equipment for Israeli soldiers in the first weeks after October 7.
The Forward covered Georgia's passage of its antisemitism law and quoted Cheryl Dorchinsky, who was in the chamber for the vote, on the rise in antisemitic incidents across the state — including a swastika found at a public school with "Die Jew" written next to it, and police calling the swastika a sign of peace.
In our own words
Pieces AIC wrote and an outlet ran — our argument, in their pages.
Cheryl's Chanukah message, written after she went to volunteer in Israel weeks into the war. She writes about the bomb shelters, the families of hostages walking from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and a country she found more united than divided, and signs as founding executive director of the Atlanta Israel Coalition.
Cheryl's Rosh Hashanah message for 5784 in the AJT's holiday issue, on taking the risk, believing in yourself, and lifting the people around you while you do it. The paper runs her as founding executive director of the Atlanta Israel Coalition.
Cheryl's Passover message for the AJT holiday issue, on what the Exodus asked of our ancestors and what this moment asks of us with antisemitism climbing again. She calls for one voice against anti-Zionism and hate, and signs as executive director of the Atlanta Israel Coalition.
Also following
Reporting on Jewish Atlanta and on Israel that AIC did not run, kept here because it is the context our work happens in.
Nazi Germany and its collaborators ran 44,000 camps in twelve years. The Atlanta Jewish Times set that record beside the antisemitism that surfaced after October 7, because Holocaust education in Georgia is a live subject, not a settled one.
Hillels of Georgia walked seven university campuses in support of Jewish students weeks after October 7. Georgia campuses are where the fight over Israel reaches our students first, and no student should walk one alone.
MIT suspended students who occupied a building for a pro-Palestinian “die-in,” with its president calling the protest a defiance of university rules. Whether administrators enforce their own rules is the question Jewish students at Georgia schools keep asking.
Three weeks after October 7, JVP recited Kaddish for terrorists and blamed 75 years of conflict on Jewish religious supremacism. We name that for what it is: antisemitism delivered in Jewish vocabulary.
Former CIA operative Darrell Blocker spoke at an Atlanta synagogue about terrorism in the weeks after October 7. Our community reached for someone who had done counterterrorism work professionally, rather than for another round of commentary.
First Baptist Atlanta had 240 travelers from 21 states booked for ten days in Israel before the war grounded the trip. Christian support for Israel runs deep in Georgia, and that roster is one measure of it.
WSB-TV covered how metro Atlanta reacted in the first week of the war, when families here were still counting who they could not reach in Israel. We talk to local press because that coverage reaches Georgians nothing else does.
The Hebrew Order of David set the 2023 Atlanta Kosher BBQ Festival for Brook Run Park after the 2022 festival drew some 4,000 guests. Public Jewish gatherings at that scale are how metro Atlanta meets its Jewish neighbors.
11Alive covered rival demonstrations in downtown Atlanta days after the October 7 attack. Cheryl Dorchinsky is quoted at the pro-Israel gathering in Woodruff Park on why she turned out.
AJT's preview of the 2023 Atlanta Kosher BBQ Festival at Brook Run Park lists the Atlanta Israel Coalition among the organizations the festival's proceeds have gone to over the past several years.
A Holocaust survivor spoke at the Holocaust Education Symposium in Marietta in June 2023. Firsthand testimony reaches Georgia audiences that statistics never will, and the window to hear it in person is closing.
Neo-Nazis demonstrated outside a Cobb County synagogue, and Jews and non-Jews answered them in person and online. Metro Atlanta has its own antisemitism problem, and it shows up on the sidewalk in daylight.
Lee Tanenbaum turned a career in public health and speech pathology into volunteer work for a string of Atlanta nonprofits. Grassroots organizations run on people who give their second act to the community.
A family commemorated a fallen Israeli soldier by handing out Bamba and Coca-Cola. Small, particular acts of memory carry further than ceremony, and Atlanta families keep finding their own versions of them.
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AIC is a registered 501(c)(3). Gifts are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law; membership gifts are deductible beyond the value of what the membership includes.
January mission to Israel
Cheryl and Kirsten will be in Israel from 11 to 22 January, delivering aid. What they bring depends on what we raise.
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