8 | DECEMBER 15 • 2022 

column

It Takes a Village to Fight Jew-Hatred
I

t takes a village to fight 
hatred.
It can take even more to 
fight Jew-hatred. Particularly 
on a college campus.
College 
is where 
tomorrow’s 
leaders find 
their voices. 
The newfound 
freedoms they 
discover while 
pursuing an 
undergraduate degree are 
as addictive as they are 
intoxicating — freedoms that 
unlock untold passions and 
abilities as yet unexplored 
during their young lives.
College is also where a 
group of teens who believe 
themselves infallible come 
together, jockeying for the 
top rung on the academic 
ladder, the caring ladder, 
the activist ladder or on any 
number of other ladders 
suddenly laid out before 
them.
The debates can turn ugly 
and headline news can draw 
lines of division too tall to 
surmount. Nineteen-year-
olds are universal experts, 
and they’re not shy about 
saying so.
College campuses can 
explode over the weather. So, 
you can imagine the inferno 
when actual controversy 
comes knocking, like the 
Boycott, Divestment and 
Sanctions (BDS) movement. 
Campuses that are otherwise 
harmonious houses of 
learning can turn into 
warring camps dug in behind 
lines of fire when someone 

starts talking about Israel or 
Jews.
At the University of 
California, Santa Barbara 
(UCSB), lines have become 
an actual wall. Students for 
Justice in Palestine (SJP) 
built an “Apartheid Wall” 
featuring anti-Zionist and 
antisemitic content as part 
of a renewed campaign in 
support of BDS. Similar 
efforts to push through BDS 
legislation and an agenda 
of Jew-hatred are sweeping 
college campuses across the 
country. 
That’s why End Jew Hatred 
decided it was time to build 
our own village. Not just to 
fight the vitriol and venom 
spewing from groups like SJP, 
but also to educate Jews and 
non-Jews alike about what it 
means to be Jewish and the 
significance of fighting for 
our own civil rights; about 
how to empower ourselves as 
a minority community; and 
how we all have the same 
hopes for a better tomorrow.
Not to say that we 

are naïve. We’re also on 
campuses to respond to 
crises.
We are boots on the 
ground when a school 
administrator brings in a 
speaker like Leila Khaled, 
a convicted hijacker and a 
member of U.S.-designated 
foreign terrorist group, 
the Popular Front for the 
Liberation of Palestine. 
Or when a student senate 
votes to boycott products 
made in Israel. Or when 
the University of Toronto’s 
Scarborough Campus 
Student Union passed a 
motion pledging to only 
order from kosher caterers 
who “do not normalize 
Israeli apartheid.” End 
Jew Hatred not only fights 
fires; we also work to build 
or rebuild what the fires 
of hatred have destroyed. 
Sometimes we used lessons 
learned from other successful 
civil rights movements in 
order to do so.
And we endeavor to pre-
vent fires before they ignite. 

In addition to our education 
and mobilization efforts, we 
follow trends on social jus-
tice and antisemitism, identi-
fying potential conflagrations 
before they can even be lit.
We have battened down 
efforts to institutionalize 
BDS on campuses. We use 
our own wall of defense to 
deflect the usual litany of 
charges hurled against us 
— “All Jews are white set-
tlers.” “Zionism is racism.” 
“The wall in Israel is similar 
to Trump’s wall along the 
Mexican border.” It is an all-
hands-on-deck effort to push 
back against the mantras 
that have been shouted at 
Jews for hundreds of years. 
And it draws lines between 
friends. People who agree on 
everything but BDS suddenly 
paint one another as mon-
sters.
Yet even small advances 
are major victories. 
Changing one mind, win-
ning one vote, knocking 
down one unwritten rule. We 
learn lessons today that will 
seem like unfair advantages 
tomorrow.
It’s hard. It’s depressing. It’s 
discouraging.
It’s thrilling. It’s fulfilling. 
It’s meaningful.
It’s what we do. Jew-hatred 
is not an option.
Let’s end it together. 

Yehuda Jian is the End Jew Hatred 

campus coordinator. A graduate 

of University of California, Santa 

Barbara (UCSB), he was previously 

an Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) 

Fellow, and the president of the 

UCSB chapter of Students Supporting 

Israel (SSI).

Illustrative: Muslim students at an anti-Israel protest at the University 
of California, Irvine, in 2006.

MARK BOSTER/LOS ANGELES TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES/JTA

PURELY COMMENTARY

Yehuda Jian
JNS.org

