University of California-Davis Experiences Vandalism of Jewish Sukkah on Campus:

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Jewish religious booth vandalized

By: RICHARD PROCTER

Posted: 10/5/07

Student Programs and Activities Center representatives reported a hate crime yesterday, as graffiti was found defacing a small hut on the Quad being used for a Jewish holiday.

The booth, called a Sukkot or Sukkos, was set up on the east Quad as part of a weeklong celebration of one of three Jewish holidays known collectively as Shalosh Regalim.

The graffiti was discovered by SPAC and then reported to several organizations on campus, including the UC Davis Police Department and Hillel. Mike Amerikaner, program director of Hillel, said that the vandalism is unrelated to the holiday, though it made reference to Israel.

“This is a religious structure that has nothing to do with Israel,” he said.

Amerikaner went on to add that this case of vandalism is indicative of a larger problem on campus.

“This is not something that’s new. We’ve been dealing with anti-Semitism on campus for awhile now,” he said.

The UC Davis Police Department could not be reached for comment before presstime.
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This article was brought to SPME’s attention by Prof. Tammi Benjamin of UCSC with the following commentary.

Take a look at what happened to the sukkah on the UC Davis campus. (In case you can’t see the attached picture or read the graffiti on the sukkah’s walls, “END ISRAELI OCCUPATION” and “FREE PALESTINE” are scrawled in large letters). This is a perfect example of how the anti-Israel sentiment that students hear in their classrooms and at university-sponsored events easily translates into anti-Jewish action. Judging from the kind of discourse about Israel that has been accepted as academically legitimate by both faculty and administration on many university campuses — for example the anti-Zionist conference at UCSC last March, sponsored by 8 university departments, in which all five speakers concluded that Zionism was an illegitimate ideology and Israel a racist state — I believe we’re going to be seeing a lot more of these anti-Semitic acts on our campuses in the near future.

University of California-Davis Experiences Vandalism of Jewish Sukkah on Campus:

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