The Anti-Israel Effort Increases in Politics and on Campus

Antisemitism is being aggressively promoted in Britain and on American Campuses. Jewish students in American colleges face ostracism or worse.

Quote—“The growing advocacy of BDS and anti-Zionist activists has contributed to a continued deterioration of conditions for Jewish students. A report from John Jay College noted that BDS leaders actively orchestrated the ostracizing of Jewish students, blacklisting other groups who might co-host events with Jewish organizations and harassing individual Jewish students. Some Jewish students feel pressured to denounce Israel and Jewish organizations in order to participate in campus social life”.

“A new report from the AMCHA Initiative discusses these patterns. Among other conclusions, it shows that “nearly all of the Israel-related incidents in 2017 involved behavior intended to suppress pro-Israel expression and/or that specifically targeted pro-Israel individuals or groups for ostracizing or discriminatory behavior intended to exclude them from fully participating in campus life.” While the number of anti-Israel events remained fairly constant, behavior aimed at ostracizing pro-Israel individuals and groups expanded in 2018”.

The Anti-Israel Effort Intensifies in Politics and On Campus

By Dr. Alex Joffe

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Anti-Semitism continues to be aggressively promoted in the guise of anti-Israelism in two highly influential arenas: politics, particularly in Britain; and on campus. In the US, the BDS movement is doing all it can to ostracize Jewish students.

August’s major BDS issue was the continuation of the British Labour Party’s anti-Semitism crisis, which began more than two years ago. It was revealed that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had formally endorsed BDS in 2015, had laid a wreath at the graves of the Black September terrorists who orchestrated the 1972 Munich massacre, had met Hamas leaders in the West Bank during an undeclared trip in 2010, and had participated in a 2012 conference in Qatar with Hamas members responsible for numerous terrorist murders.

Corbyn’s preposterous excuse that “I was present at that wreath-laying, I don’t think I was actually involved in it” was excoriated by the British press, British Jews, and many Labour Party members. His later comment that “Zionists” do not understand “English irony” compounded the problem.

But these and other outrages were followed by an explosion of anti-Semitic abuse directed at Corbyn’s critics, including accusations that false claims of anti-Semitism are being used to smear Corbyn and wreck the party. Corbyn’s divisive leadership and the anti-Semitism crisis are among the issues leading some observers to predict a permanent split in the party.

The sources of Labour’s crisis — which originated on college campuses — should be emphasized. Campus politics in Britain have long been incubators for national politics, mirroring such national trends as “intersectionality” and identity politics in progressive circles.

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