Dear Incoming Freshman: Brace Yourself for Insane Anti-Semitism

From openly anti-Semitic professors to swastika graffiti, the campus can be a hard place for Jews, and is certainly a hard place for Zionist Jews. The hype is true: anti-Zionism is alive and well. But my experiences at Brown University have taught me there is also hope to be found in pro-Israel activism.

My first serious experience with anti-Zionism on Brown’s campus occurred during my first semester, before I had completely outed myself as a Zionist activist. I noticed the lack of conversation on campus around Syria and other Southwest Asian issues. I tried to generate some dialogue, toying with the idea of starting a student group, but the leadership for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and others identified me as a Zionist and discouraged our peers from engaging with me, even on an issue unrelated to Israel.

Following the widely reported and emotionally photographed death of the three-year-old Kurdish child Alan Kurdi, who drowned during summer 2015 while trying to flee Syria, the Syrian refugee issue finally saw some attention in the U.S. I seized the opportunity to start a student group that would address it while there was enough sympathy on campus to do so. My effort initially took the form of an interfaith coalition, which was almost disrupted as SJP appealed to the Muslim Student Association to withdraw support for the organization and block a fundraiser for the White Helmets (the same group that would later rescue the four-year-old Omran Daqneesh, whose picture has become so famous recently, from the rubble). Fortunately, the Muslim Student Association at Brown did not cave to the pressure. Later, SJP and their allies cut my interfaith group out of a campus-wide effort to organize a counter-demonstration to an anti-refugee rally, unwilling to unite around the Syrian refugee issue despite (and because of) my leadership on it.

I am not the only one whose refugee-related work has been curtailed by SJP. Last year, they protested an Amnesty International fundraiser because it was to take place at Ben & Jerry’s, which apparently is connected with a company that produces ice cream in Israel. Syrian refugee children, including Palestinians, will not have coats this winter because members of SJP cares more about optics than the lives and health of the Syrian people.

For SJP, nothing has a higher priority than pushing to obliterate the Jewish State and attach a high personal price to Zionism (or, in some cases, Judaism) on campus. In March, SJP circulated a petition against a talk by activist Janet Mock, who is a leader on issues of trans rights, racial justice, and more, because the group that had organized her visit to campus was Jewish (although it had no affiliation with or position on Israel). I had many friends who, as LGBTQIA+ people and/or people of color, were excited to hear her speak, and all were bitterly disappointed when SJP successfully pressured her into forfeiting the opportunity for engagement.

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