University of Vienna. Photo: website

A major European student organization this week issued a sharp statement against campus antisemitism and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, The Jerusalem Post reported on Wednesday.

“There are rising violent antisemitic attacks,” said the joint statement by the University of Vienna’s Green Party, Socialist Student Association and the Communists-Left List, “on, above all, American universities, which are connected to BDS and Israel Apartheid Week. Academic events from Jewish professors are regularly disrupted.”

Nor are American campuses alone in this, noted Camila Garfias, a member of the Socialist student group: “Antisemitic violence is part of daily life in Europe.” The joint statement asserted that Jews no longer felt safe in France, and that synagogues and business had been vandalized in Paris and in Germany.

Karin Stanger, a student from the Green Party, added, “As a student organization at the University of Vienna, we condemn every form of antisemitism … and antisemitism in the new form of BDS.”

The three student groups issuing the statement form the governing coalition in the student parliament at the University of Vienna.

The Jerusalem Post noted that this appeared to be the first significant European opposition to the growing anti-Israel and antisemitic climates on campuses in Europe and abroad.