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Pro-Israel students on American campuses face record levels of hostility

Being pro-Zionist means increasingly being targeted by verbal and physical harassment.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The Ministry of Strategic Affairs has collected evidence over the last several months that attacks on Jewish students are breaking records for anti-Semitism on American college campuses, and it is increasingly linked to anti-Israel activity, reported Israel Hayom Wednesday.

Israeli and Jewish media have reported over the year of the abuse that students have suffered when expressing pro-Zionist opinions or attending Israel-themed events. They have been called “Nazis,” “baby-killers,” and “apartheid supporters,” as well as being told to “go back to the ovens” and that Zionists are as bad as white supremacists.

While such hostility only occurs in a minority of U.S. campuses, numbered at about 4,000, the ministry report called the attacks “the start of a trend, especially on progressive campuses.”

The ministry said that pro-BDS groups are leading the charge.

A Jewish American NGO, the AMCHA Initiative, which tracks anti-Semitism on U.S. college campuses, has documented over 3,000 incidents since 2015 at 450 institutions of higher learning. They include graffiti, physical harassment and intimidation, anti-Semitic speakers and rallies, and the disruption of pro-Israel events.

In a September report, AMCHA focused specifically on the incitement by faculty-sponsored BDS campaigns. The organization said that the number of Israel-related, anti-Semitic incidents rose 70 percent from 2017 to 2018, and linked the jump to professors who give BDS academic legitimacy.

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BDS promotion on campus, “particularly by faculty who give it academic legitimacy, is inciting an alarming increase in harassment against Israel’s presumed supporters, first and foremost Jewish students,” said organization director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin.

Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan told the paper that “rather than campuses serving as a safe learning environment, they have become a silencing mechanism that prevents Jewish students from voicing their support for Israel.”

In reaction to the alarming statistics, President Donald Trump signed an executive order two weeks ago stating that anti-Semitism would be covered under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin.

It contains the IHRA definition of Jew hatred, which includes holding Israel to a higher standard than the rest of the world and calling the state “a racist endeavor”  – common themes among BDS supporters.

Universities that do not stop such anti-Israel activities that fall under the IHRA definition will face defunding by the U.S. Department of Education.