On Shabbat morning, January 31st Jason Bernhard, a member of the AEPI Jewish fraternity at UC Davis had just left his frat house when he saw the hated symbol spray painted on the side of the building, he turned to see another Swastika painted blood-red on the ground. The Thursday before, Jewish students on the same campus were taunted with shouts of Alahu Akbar (Allah is great) after a resolution to boycott the Jewish state led by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had passed the student senate.
This past August, Daniel Vessal, a Jewish student at Temple University was allegedly assaulted while subjected to a barrage of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel epithets, reportedly by an associate of members of SJP. At Loyola University this past September, SJP activists linked arms preventing students from accessing a pro-Israel educational display. These incidents are not anomalies, a study released by the Israeli government in January reported that anti-Israel activity has increased on US campuses along with an over 400 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents on US campuses over the previous year.
Meanwhile what had been a trickle of anti-Israel boycott resolutions being approved by college senates, has become a deluge. Anti-Israel resolutions were passed most recently at UCLA and UC Davis – campuses that had previously fended off such efforts.
While the chance of such boycott resolutions being implemented by university administrators is zero to none, disinvestment is not the goal. The struggle at hand is for the hearts and minds of the next generation of leaders. Working to make the very notion of supporting Israel anathema on campus, SJP and their allies invest relentless effort towards alienating and intimidating pro-Israel, usually Jewish students from expressing public support for the Jewish state (see video below).
On most US campuses the pro-Israel response to anti-Israel efforts emanates from within the over 500 branches of Hillel International. Founded in 1922, Hillel serves as a cultural oasis for the tens of thousands of Jewish students in higher learning, providing social activities, classes, speakers and always lots of comfort food. Envisioned as a safe, welcoming space for Jewish students of all opinions and backgrounds, controversy and polarization serve counter to Hillel’s core mission. Yet controversy and polarization are the inevitable baggage that comes with Israel advocacy in the 21st century.
Hillel is not designed for full-time combat, yet as the hot battle for Israel rages at our colleges, it is Hillel that asserts itself as the clearinghouse for Israel’s defense. In contrast to SJP whose raison d’être is the full-time demonization of the Jewish state, Hillel’s mission is much wider than the resource and time depleting effort to fight the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel movement (BDS). As Hillel UW director Rabbi Oren Hayon lamented in an article in Seattle’s JTNews, the BDS fight “distracted us from spending time doing thoughtful, engaging, meaningful, fulfilling programming for our constituents, because when stuff like this emerges on campus it sucks everyone’s time and energy into it,”.
Under Eric Fingerhut’s leadership Hillel has proclaimed itself absolutely pro-Israel and firmly opposed to the BDS movement. Hillel chapters across the country have expended great effort and resources towards countless impressive pro-Israel activities and programs. Many Hillel chapters have taken the lead in fighting and often defeating anti-Israel resolutions on campus. That having been said, Hillel serves a constituency that is widely polarized when it comes to the Jewish State. Hence Hillel leaders must invest exhausting hours, long days and late nights trying to cobble together a student consensus-driven response to anti-Israel efforts. The areas of agreement amongst the diverse body of Jewish students are often so sparse as to make a robust, limber defense of Israel near impossible.
Every Hillel branch operates semi independently, each with their own director and board. This results in a wildly inconsistent approach to Israel advocacy from chapter to chapter. While Hillel’s national policy precludes partnerships with anti-Israel Jewish groups, chapters at Swarthmore and Vassar have declared themselves to be “Open Hillel” which means they welcome groups that are openly anti-Zionist. On the other end of the spectrum, Hillel at UC Berkeley has placed restrictions on J Street U and their ability to sponsor anti-Israel events using the Hillel name.
There are no such conflicts hampering the efforts of Students for Justice in Palestine activists. The students who affiliate with the organization are fully sympathetic to the group’s mission and tactics. The group is ideologically unified, single minded, unapologetic and undistracted by conflicting goals or responsibilities.
Sometimes working in tandem with Hillel, other times independently, there are a small multitude of Israel advocacy organizations of varying size and scope peppered across the college landscape. While their methods and morals differ from SJP, these pro-Israel groups share SJP’s singularity of purpose. And yet groups like StandWithUs, Camera on Campus, The Amcha Initiative, The David Project and many others, more often than not, feel compelled to defer the campus leadership role to the hamstrung Hillel.
To further complicate matters, students associated with anti-Israel groups like J Street U, Jewish Voice for Peace and Open Hillel exploit the certificate of entry granted by their Jewishness. These Jewish groups undercut and even sabotage pro-Israel efforts at Hillel, the internal squabbles creating a time-wasting distraction and another impediment to meeting the challenges at hand.
Thus Hillel, a group restrained by a diffuse mission, a need for consensus and a conflicted student base, finds itself on the front lines in a battle not of their choosing and for which they are ill equipped.
There has not been a time in decades, if ever, that it has been so dangerous to be an openly pro-Israel Jew on campus.
SJP and their anti-Israel allies are wreaking havoc across the US campus universe. Jewish and pro-Israel students are routinely mocked, derided, intimidated, sometimes even assaulted for supporting the Jewish state. With Hillel holding the reigns there has not been a time in decades, if ever, that it has been so dangerous to be an openly pro-Israel Jew on campus. Late last year at UCLA Jewish students were so hopelessly outmaneuvered that they chose to boycott the BDS resolution debate rather than face the angry mob. Last month pro-Israel students at UC Davis walked out midway through the verbal pogrom masquerading as a campus BDS debate (amid taunts and shouts of “Alahu Akbar!”).
Pro-Israel students are getting pummeled, and are desperately in need of a national organization dedicated solely to the robust defense of Israel.
Pro-Israel students are getting pummeled, and are desperately in need of a national organization dedicated solely to the unapologetic, robust defense of Israel and the pro-Israel student community. While such groups exist in certain regions and campuses, they are unlikely to take the lead until Hillel and the organized Jewish community gives them the green light.
The frightening repercussions of this Hillel takes the lead strategy is evident from campus to campus. Is now the time for a new model? For many college students the time is past due.
