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