Campus anti-Zionism incites anti-Semitism

A survey released Monday offers data backing up the argument that anti-Israel activity — by student groups, academics, and advocates of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement — contributes directly to incidents of anti-Semitism on campuses.

More than 300 incidents of anti-Semitism took place in 2015 at 100 public and private campuses examined in the AMCHA Initiative study.

AMCHA Initiative (AMCHA is Hebrew for “our people”) investigates, documents and educates around issues of anti-Semitism on campus.

The study confirmed incidents compiled from media reports and eyewitness accounts. The campuses selected to be surveyed have the largest Jewish undergraduate populations in the country.

According to the study’s executive summary, three different kinds of activity were analyzed: “anti-Semitic expression,” meaning incidents with language or imagery that used one or more of eight tropes included in the U.S. State Department definition of anti-Semitism; “targeting of Jewish students,” meaning incidents involving behavior that targeted Jewish students for particular harm including physical assault, harassment, destruction of property, discrimination, and suppression of speech; and “BDS activity,” meaning the promotion or endorsement of an anti-Israel boycott, divestment, or sanctions effort.

“No student should ever be targeted for harm because of his or her perceived religious or ethnic identity, and yet, at far too many schools, Jewish students are routinely threatened because of their identity,” said Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, AMCHA’s director.

Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., was found to have the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents in the study, with 16 in 2015. A slew of California schools followed, as University of California (UC), Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and UCLA rounded out the five schools with the most anti-Semitic incidents. San Diego State University, UC Santa Barbara, Stanford University, Northeastern University, and the University of Michigan completed the top 10.