Fighting the anti-Zionist push on world campuses

Activism. Not re-activism. Education. Preparation.

These are just a few of the mantras a new pro-Israel organization uses to encourage participation. Students Supporting Israel (SSI) was founded in 2012 at the University of Minnesota. Today, it has 43 chapters across four countries. Last month, SSI held its first-ever national conference, which was attended by 50 pro-Israel leaders from 28 college campuses.

SSI’s founder, Ilan Sinelnikov, believes that student-led grassroots efforts are more effective on college campuses than the campus arms of larger Jewish non-profit organizations. He also believes that one unified brand and message has the ability to go viral, and that only then will pro-Israel activities have the impact students are hoping for.

In 2012, Sinelnikov—then an undergraduate student at University of Minnesota—founded SSI in response to “seeing people speak so badly all over campus about our country and no one responding” during “Israeli Apartheid Week,” the annual global anti-Israel showcase on college campuses.

The first thing he did was register a student organization. He trained two others to work with him, and the team quickly grew to 10, 15, 20, and more. Today, there are more than 240.

“When people think of BDS (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement), they think it is all happening in areas like California. They forget there is a lot of hostile activity in Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas, Chicago,” says Sinelnikov.

Indeed, SSI has focused much of its efforts on what some might consider less-obvious hotspots for campus anti-Zionism.

“Being pro-Israel and supporting Israel should not be in response to anti-Israel sentiment,” says Chantelle Moghadam, co-founder and president of the SSI chapter at the University of Missouri. “We don’t see that much anti-Israel sentiment on our campus, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still have things to do.”

Amit Boukai, a neuroscience student at Indiana University, quickly got on board. When Boukai opened a Facebook page for Indiana University’s SSI chapter in 2014, it had more than 100 likes within the first day.