‘Radical’ Movement to Place Anti-Zionism at Center of US Collegiate Life is Growing: ADL Report
by Dion J. Pierre
A mock Israeli checkpoint set up during a past ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ at the University of California at Los Angeles campus. Photo: AMCHA Initiative.
Anti-Zionism is becoming one of the “core elements of collegiate life” in America, according to the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism’s annual report on anti-Israel activism on college campuses.
Released on Thursday, the report, titled “Anti-Israel Activism on U.S. Campuses, 2021-2022,” said that while not all incidents were intended to be antisemitic, many, “in effect,” were.
“This antisemitic vitriol directed at pro-Israel students is deeply unsettling and makes our colleges and universities feel less safe and secure for Jewish students,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said on Thursday. “University leaders must learn how to recognize and adequately respond to antisemitism whenever it arises, including when anti-Israel activities cross the line into antisemitic hatred.”
The report cited, for example, the graffitiing of anti-Israel propaganda on Hillel centers. Last December, University of Oregon’s Hillel office was vandalized and tagged with a message that said, “You genocidal rasist [sic] f***s.” In another incident at Michigan State University on September 10, 2021, someone graffitied “Israel Forget 2,977 Lives” on a 9/11 memorial, referencing a conspiracy theory blaming Jews for staging the terrorist attacks of that day.
Jewish students also experienced harassment and assault, including when a caravan of anti-Israel activists pulled up to the house of Rutgers University’s Jewish fraternity and cursed and spat on its members. In April, a student pelted a rock at Jewish students during a Students for Justice in Palestine protest at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has since been charged with a hate crime.
The report also discussed the expulsion of Jewish students from campus groups, a discriminatory practice that is now the subject of an investigation by the United States Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR).
In response to its findings, the ADL is expanding online resources for reporting antisemitism and supporting its victims. The group is also developing a training module on antisemitism for students and on November 10 is hosting “Never is Now,” which it describes as “the world’s largest annual summit on antisemitism.”
