We may never know what motivated Faisal Mohammad’s stabbing spree at UC Merced. We do know that whatever hatred filled his heart found expression in the brutal stabbing of innocent victims.
We also know that the freshman’s rampage and the massive tragedy in San Bernardino, where one of the assailants did his undergraduate and graduate work at California State University as recently as 2014, have caused students across California to feel vulnerable.
This is particularly true for many Jewish students who are struggling with an escalation of hateful anti-Semitic acts at UC. This past fall, swastikas and “F— Jews” were carved into multiple cars, and a female Jewish student was followed and harassed by a male member of the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine. Last year, swastikas were spray-painted on a Jewish fraternity, and “grout out the Jews” defaced the Hillel House at UC Davis; “Zionists should be sent to the gas chamber” was scrawled at UC Berkeley; fliers blaming Jews for 9/11 were posted at UC Santa Barbara, and a candidate for the UCLA student judicial board was challenged that her Jewishness rendered her ineligible.
Frighteningly, these are not isolated incidents. A survey conducted recently of 229 Jewish students on UC’s 10 campuses revealed 70 percent of the respondents had experienced anti-Semitism. The respondents said hostile actions are directly linked to virulently anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaigns. As some describe:
- I’m in a Jewish interest sorority, and during divestment we’re encouraged not to wear [our sorority] letters.
- During BDS I actually avoid Hillel, the quad and even my sorority because I just really don’t want to have to deal with how unsafe campus feels.
- Any time a BDS activity occurs on campus, the amount of swastikas found in libraries has gone up.
- When our divestment motion passed, two days later there were swastikas on our AEPi house. I actually didn’t feel safe wearing my star or my [fraternity] letters.
- As a result of BDS, I don’t feel comfortable showing my faith anymore.
The reality on UC campuses today is that almost every anti-Semitic act can be directly linked to BDS. And every BDS campaign has resulted in Jewish students reporting feeling threatened, harassed, bullied and unsafe.
It’s not hard to understand why. BDS is steeped in hatred.
Coordinated internationally by Palestinian groups committed to the elimination of Israel, including terrorist organization Hamas, whose charter calls for the murder of Jews worldwide, BDS campaigns routinely employ hate-filled rhetoric and imagery intended to deny the only Jewish state’s right to exist and promote murder of Israelis and Jews.
Pro-BDS student groups not only seek to vilify Israel but engage in fomenting hatred toward all of Israel’s presumed supporters. BDS groups routinely attempt to shut down Jewish student events and urge their members to avoid interacting with students in Jewish organizations such as Hillel, Chabad or AEPi.
Commendably, the UC Regents have recently acknowledged that the university must address its serious anti-Semitism problem. They have formed a task force to do just that. At the Regents meeting next week, it’s imperative that they acknowledge the painfully obvious connection between BDS and anti-Semitism.
UC must acknowledge and condemn not only blatant acts of anti-Semitism, such as swastikas and assaults, but instances of hateful anti-Israel expression that incite these despicable acts — before it is faced with another tragedy.
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin is faculty at UC Santa Cruz and founder of the AMCHA Initiative, a nonprofit that combats anti-Semitism on college campuses.
