This post was updated April 10 at 10:02 a.m.
I can’t believe I’m watching history repeat itself in front of my eyes.
It’s been half a year since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, and repulsive antisemitism continues to infect UCLA and other college campuses. I am terrified that I could be witnessing the beginning of a modern-day Holocaust in which Israel could cease to exist, and Jews could be attacked or killed for no reason other than being Jewish.
On Feb. 8, Students for Justice in Palestine, alongside the UC Divest Coalition at UCLA, organized a rally urging the university to divest from corporations linked to Israel. They charged the UC with genocide, chanting phrases such as, “UCPD, KKK, IDF, you’re all the same.” On Feb. 20, the Undergraduate Students Association Council passed a resolution to support the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel.
Bella Brannon, a Jewish third-year public affairs student and editor in chief of Jewish Newsmagazine Ha’Am, said BDS essentially undermines and vilifies the State of Israel. She emphasized that while critiquing the actions of the Israeli government or specific companies’ operations is legitimate, hyper-focusing on Israel as the ultimate evil, distinct from all other states, is antisemitic.
“There is nothing that the decision will do to actually help the Palestinian cause,” Brannon said. “Maybe there will not be coffee – like Starbucks coffee – at a couple of events, but it’s really silly and self-righteous to position USAC as the moral authority of Israel-Palestine, when Jewish students, Palestinian students, Muslim students, Israeli students have been living and experiencing this all their lives.”
Anti-Zionism and antisemitism on campus become intertwined when Jewish students feel excluded because of the denial of aspects of their Jewish connection to Zionism, such as indigeneity to Israel or the belief in the existence of a Jewish state, said Tessa Veksler, a Jewish student and the president of Associate Students at UC Santa Barbara.
On Feb. 26, anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist signs were posted at the Multicultural Center at UCSB, reading “Zionists not welcome” and “When people are occupied, resistance is justified.” Another sign attached to the center targeted Veksler, which read, “You can run but you can’t hide Tessa Veksler.”
The rhetoric of this sign was reminiscent of the sexual violence against women on Oct. 7, Veksler said.
“‘You can run but you can’t hide’ – these people were running for their lives,” Veksler added. “There’s a lot of elements that I feel are meant to invoke Jewish pain and Jewish suffering and to really hit a nerve.”
That same week, Jewish students at UC Berkeley were evacuated from a lecture hall after anti-Israel protestors broke glass doors, and there was alleged battery against attendees expecting an Israeli speaker.
I am appalled by this new normal.
How am I living in a world in which blatant antisemitism continues to be dismissed as political protest? A world in which people can ignore the terror of hostages being tortured underground?
Jewish students are heartbroken and angry. The painful truth is that we cannot afford to remain silent when antisemitism is rampant in our community and nobody is being held accountable.
It is crucial to understand that Hitler didn’t annihilate approximately two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population overnight. Rather, the Nazi agenda to ostracize Jews from society – with the goal of forcing Jews out of Germany – began in the early 1930s. In 1933, Nazi leadership enacted an economic boycott against Jewish-owned businesses. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 revoked Jewish citizenship rights and banned Jews from universities. Jews were forced to carry identity cards, and in 1938, their passports were confiscated and marked with the letter “J.”
These were all steps, alongside the establishment of the concentration camp system and the growing prevalence of antisemitic violence exemplified by Kristallnacht, toward genocide. But the Nazis did not make industrialized mass murder a formal state policy until 1941.
I may be living in Los Angeles in 2024, but the exclusion, intimidation and violence I’ve witnessed and experienced on campus resemble the antisemitic fervor that preceded the Holocaust.
“The hope is that there will be no Jewish students to take classes, that there will be no Jewish students to vote for student council, that there will be no Jewish students to sit on committees,” said Ron Hassner, a political science professor and the Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies at the UC Berkeley. “And then Jewish Studies programs will collapse, and Israel Studies programs will collapse. And campus will be, to use a German word, judenrein – clear of Jews.”
To be absolutely clear, the Nazi “Final Solution” had just one goal: to ensure European Jews no longer existed. That being said, it should be unsurprising that Jewish students are alarmed when we hear chants accusing the university of genocide on our campus.
“It’s Holocaust inversion, which is what makes it really painful,” Veksler said. “For that accusation to be flipped on its head and to be then thrown back in our face is horrifying and diminishing and demonizing.”
According to the United Nations, genocide is defined as “acts committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part.” Unlike Hitler’s goal to eliminate the entire Jewish population, Israel’s goal is to destroy Hamas, not to eradicate the Palestinian people.
Despite South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, the Israeli government continues to state its intention to destroy Hamas, and the military has taken measures to protect civilians of Gaza, such as airdropping flyers with warnings of upcoming attacks and calling civilians’ phones to tell them to exit certain buildings.
Even so, determining from international laws of war what level of force is “reasonable” or “proportionate” in defending against the atrocities of Hamas’ attacks is complex. The Israel Defense Forces remains in a difficult position considering that Hamas continues to hide in tunnel networks connected to civilian spaces. This brutal war and the considerable number of civilian casualties are truly devastating, but they are not a reason to blame an entire nation and people for a crime they are not committing.
Oct. 7 was a horrific day where thousands of innocent Israelis were murdered, women were brutally raped and hundreds were taken hostage.
It is unfathomable how that day, for which Hamas alone is responsible, could trigger student activist groups to target Jews instead of uplift Palestinians, rather than a united effort to defeat Hamas and bring our hostages home.
“I think all of the Jewish community understands where people are coming from when they see the immense suffering in Palestine and Gaza and want to advocate,” Brannon said. “It’s very hard when that advocacy is rooted in either the endorsement of the loss of lives of our friends and loved ones on Oct. 7 or antisemitic stereotypes.”
This evolution of antisemitism has nothing to do with Jews themselves and everything to do with the desire to subordinate Jews as eternal scapegoats. It’s ironic to paint Jews as oppressors considering our history of pogroms, genocide and expulsions. Israel is the only place we could ever call home, and it’s the only place that embraces our Jewishness wholeheartedly.
I urge students to think critically about the sources of their beliefs about Israel’s actions in Gaza. Demonizing Israel and Jews undermines the Palestinian cause for self-determination and perpetuates a narrative that delegitimizes Israel’s existence and Jewish history.
Now, more than ever, the Jewish people need Israel. It is the only place we will ever truly be safe. To my fellow Jewish students: be prouder, louder and more confident in your Jewish identity and the future of the Jewish people than ever before.
We aren’t going anywhere.
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