How Our Model Works
MTF’s Israel trips are not the finish line. They are the catalyst for long-term campus impact.
Identify
We identify influential student leaders who shape campus culture, including student government officials, journalists, faith leaders, activists, campus organization heads, and other high-impact students.
Bring to Israel
We bring them to Israel for immersive educational trips that challenge misinformation, deepen understanding, and build real relationships with Israelis, Jewish peers, and one another.
Follow Up
After students return, we maintain engagement through reunion programs, coalition-building events, mentorship opportunities, leadership development, and continued campus support.
Activate
Trip alumni, Fellows, and student allies help organize coalitions, respond to antisemitism, challenge anti-Israel campaigns, and support Jewish students when campus tensions rise.
Lead
Over time, these students become leaders in student government, campus media, professional networks, and broader civic life.
The result: MTF does not simply change minds. We build networks of students with the influence to change campus outcomes.
Our Programs
MTF is building a campus leadership infrastructure that reaches students before, during, and after the moments when antisemitism and anti-Israel activism surface on campus.
Israel Trips
MTF brings influential non-Jewish student leaders to Israel for immersive educational trips that challenge misinformation, build relationships, and help students overcome the false and malicious narratives they’re subjected to on campus.
MTF Fellows
Our Fellows are student leaders on campus who build coalitions, recruit allies, organize programming, respond to antisemitism, and help sustain student engagement beyond the trip experience.
Post-Trip Engagement
The real work begins after the trip. MTF keeps alumni engaged through reunion programs, campus events, coalition-building opportunities, leadership development, and continued support.
Mentorship & Professional Networks
MTF connects high-potential students and young alumni with Israeli and Israel-connected professionals, helping them build lasting relationships with Israel through business, law, technology, medicine, public policy, and other fields.
International Campus Work
From England to South Africa, MTF operates in some of the most challenging campus environments in the world, developing courageous student allies in places where Jewish students often face intense hostility and where non-Jewish leadership can have an outsized impact.
Alumni Engagement
MTF’s work does not end at graduation. We are building long-term pathways for star trip alumni, Fellows, and student leaders to remain connected as mentors, speakers, advocates, professionals, and future leaders.
WHAT STUDENTS SAY
“Nothing I read in the States compared to hearing directly from Israelis on the ground. The trip forced me to confront how much of my perspective had been shaped by oversimplified and misleading narratives. If you’re serious about understanding Israel as it actually is, not as it’s portrayed, you have to see it for yourself. It's an incredible place filled with people seeking peace.”
MTF reaches the students who are often least likely to attend a traditional pro-Israel campus event and gives them the opportunity to encounter Israel directly. For many participants, the trip replaces slogans and assumptions with firsthand experience, real relationships, and a more accurate understanding of Israeli society.
“My MTF Israel trip experience was genuinely life-changing and by far the most transformative trip I have ever taken. Before visiting Israel, much of my understanding came from narratives I had absorbed on campus and online. Speaking directly with Israelis and Palestinians, and seeing the realities of the region firsthand, challenged many of those assumptions and helped me understand why Israel must exist. I also met individuals who had endured hardships I could barely imagine which gave me a new perspective on resilience and gratitude. I knew I couldn’t simply leave that experience behind when I returned to campus, which is why I chose to become an MTF Fellow and stand up for the Jewish community at Hopkins”
The Latest From @MacTaskForce
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša recently called for the international community to confront double standards in how it responds to global crises.
Speaking around the UN General Assembly, Janša criticized what he described as a disproportionate focus on Gaza while other crises receive far less attention, including Ukraine, the persecution of Christians, and rising antisemitism.
He also warned about the Iranian regime’s role in regional instability and argued that the Middle East must be understood in the broader context of Iran’s ties with Russia.
The Islamic Republic does not only threaten Israel.
It arms, funds, and directs proxies across the region, while also aligning itself with authoritarian powers hostile to the West.
Global security requires consistent moral clarity.
Leaders cannot claim to stand against aggression in Ukraine while minimizing or ignoring the regime that fuels Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other terror networks across the Middle East.
If the international community wants peace, it must confront the forces that make peace impossible.
Cornell’s Sage Chapel became the stage for Hasan Piker, a political streamer whose rhetoric about Jews, Zionists, Israel, and American foreign policy has repeatedly drawn condemnation from Jewish students and campus leaders.
The event, organized by the Students Not Bombs coalition, took place after Cornell Hillel and Cornellians for Israel publicly condemned the invitation. The Cornell Daily Sun reported that the event required heightened security, including ID checks, metal detectors, and Cornell police at the chapel entrances.
Universities should be places for serious debate, including sharp disagreement over Israel and U.S. policy.
But inviting a speaker means choosing whom to elevate.
When a campus gives a prestigious platform to someone accused of using antisemitic and inflammatory rhetoric, Jewish students are right to ask what message that sends about their safety and belonging.
Free expression matters.
So does moral judgment.
And universities should not treat hateful rhetoric toward Jews or Zionists as just another form of campus entertainment.
At the chuppah of Ohad Ben Ami’s daughter, a profoundly powerful moment unfolded. Hamas captivity survivor Elkana Bohbot, who endured the horrors of Gaza alongside Ohad, stood before the bride to share a deeply intimate memory of her father from their darkest days.
Elkana revealed that the last time he and Ohad cried together was in the depths of Hamas captivity. Amid unimaginable terror and uncertainty, Elkana held firm, reassuring Ohad that he would survive the nightmare, make it out alive, and one day be there to see his daughters get married, one after another.
To share this memory at a wedding canopy is a staggering testament to the unyielding resilience of the Jewish spirit, choosing life and holding onto hope in the absolute darkness.
This miraculous occasion is also a devastating reminder of the fractured families and the agonizing pain that continues to overshadow what should be moments of pure joy.
The milestones of those who survived move forward, but they remain permanently scarred by the absence of those who did not. We cannot look away, and we cannot ever forget the lives who never made it to these milestones.
Israeli security forces have eliminated Saher Nidal Latfi Sakr, a terrorist who was filmed kidnapping Noa Argamani from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023.
Sakr was identified by the IDF as affiliated with global jihadist organizations in Gaza. He also supplied Hamas with weapons throughout the war and advanced attacks against Israeli troops and civilians.
His elimination was carried out in a joint operation by the IDF, Shin Bet, and Lahav 433’s elite Gideonim Unit 33.
Noa was rescued during Operation Arnon in June 2024.
Almost 3 years after October 7, Israel continues to hold those who participated in the massacre and the kidnapping of Israeli civilians accountable.
At a press conference on Parliament Hill, Kate Blumberg of McMaster University and Livia Mamane of Université du Québec à Montréal described what Jewish students are facing on Canadian campuses.
Blumberg spoke about Jewish students being singled out in tutorials, excluded from groups, and left wondering where they can turn when campus no longer feels welcoming.
Mamane described finding “Death to Zionists” and “Israel should burn” written inside university washrooms, meaning students can walk into a bathroom and be confronted with threats and messages targeting Jews and Israelis.
These are not abstract political debates for Jewish students. They represent the reality these young people encounter in classrooms, student organizations, washrooms, and across campus.
A recent Canadian government-commissioned study found that 95.7% of Jewish postsecondary students surveyed had experienced or witnessed antisemitism in the previous year, while 71% reported antisemitic vandalism.
Macklemore has announced a new “Free Palestine” tour. For MTF National Spokesperson Taryn Thomas, those words once meant something very different.
Two years ago, Taryn stood at her college’s encampment chanting “Free Palestine.” That changed after she joined an MTF Fact Finders trip to Israel, visited the Nova Festival site, and listened to survivors describe Hamas terrorists throwing grenades into bomb shelters while they hid and played dead to survive.
Hearing those firsthand accounts from the site where they happened made Taryn confront what the slogan she once saw as a call for justice could mean to the people on the other side of it.
Now, as Macklemore takes “Free Palestine” back on tour, Taryn is asking people to stop and think about what those words actually mean, and what they can mean to the people who lived through October 7.
Just one day after French President Emmanuel Macron minimized Hamas control in the West Bank at the UN General Assembly, Israeli forces uncovered a tunnel being excavated in Qalqilya, Judea and Samaria, often referred to as the West Bank.
Israeli police said the tunnel was approximately 25 meters (82 feet) deep and still under construction, with a second tunnel excavation also discovered. Forces arrested four suspects and seized an M16 rifle, a sniper rifle, ammunition, and materials used to produce explosives.
France has since said Macron meant that Hamas does not govern the West Bank. But Hamas does not need to govern an area to maintain terrorist infrastructure there.
The reality on the ground is that terrorist networks continue to operate in Judea and Samaria, including underground infrastructure and weapons capabilities.
Ashley Smith, the wife of Constable Jeff Smith, has shared a deeply moving message after her husband was critically injured while protecting worshippers outside the Sons of Jacob Synagogue in Belleville, Ontario, on Yom Kippur.
She thanked the paramedics, police officers, neurosurgeons, trauma teams, doctors, nurses, and community members who have stood beside Jeff and their family, describing the support as “real-life miracles” carried out through human hands.
She also had a message for the Jewish community “We love you, we see you, we pray for you.”
Jeff remains in critical but stable condition and has a long road ahead. Ashley says he is not walking it alone.
We continue to pray for Constable Jeff Smith, his family, and the Jewish community he put his life on the line to protect.
