Beginning at the University of Toronto in 2005, the Anti-Israel Hate Week, also deceitfully known as “Israel Apartheid Week,” is an annual event held in March and April on campuses across 55 countries. In the United States, this hateful event will be held this year from March 21 to March 28. It is an anti-Israel and anti-Semitic week of events centered around the demonstrably false libel that Israel is an apartheid state. The series of events has led to Jewish students being targeted with abuse, intimidation and threats. . For instance, in one prior year’s Hate Week stunt, Emory Students for Justice in Palestine (“SJP”) displayed official-looking “eviction notices” on Jewish students’ dormitory and apartment doors. The action violated a university policy against posting flyers on the doors without student consent and targeted Jewish students for threats based on their ethnic and religious identity – simple discrimination. An SJP leader at the University of California, Berkeley was arrested for assaulting a pro-Israel student with a shopping cart. At Columbia University, SJP displayed anti-Semitic imagery – an Israeli soldier with horns on his head. At Brandeis University, anti-Israel activist Ali Abunimah conflated the Holocaust with Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, conduct that the International Holocaust Remembrance Association recognizes as anti-Semitic. SJP students at the University at Illinois at Urbana-Champaign spat at Jewish students while calling them “Nazis” and “white supremacists.” . Other events range from one-sided lectures about Israel and the erection of “apartheid walls” and fake security checkpoints to staging macabre “die-ins” where participants pretend to be dying Palestinians. These shock-and-awe tactics are intended to gather support for falsified claims that Israel is an apartheid state. The student groups that host these events often urge their universities to engage in discriminatory and unlawful boycotts of Israel – and themselves often boycott or attempt to exclude any Jewish organizations or students that support Jewish self-determination in Israel. . Some have argued that the impact of events like Hate Week was initially underestimated. Today’s generation of Jewish and Zionist activists take the threat seriously and feel it is their job to resist it. In 2012, three Israeli college students at the University of Minnesota responded by forming the group Students Supporting Israel (SSI). Its founders were fed up with the anti-Semitic attacks on campus that were promoted by Hate Week. In the ten years since its formation, SSI has spread to nearly 200 campuses across the US and has almost 1,000 active members and 400 alumni. Jewish on Campus has grown from a breakout Instagram account sharing anonymous experiences from Jewish college students into a vital organization analyzing campus anti-Semitism. “Anti-Semitism on campus is a crisis that must be immediately addressed,” said Jewish on Campus CEO Julia Jassey. “We….make sure that Zionism doesn’t turn into taboo, into a bad word,” said SSI co-founder Ilan Sinelnikov. “If students aren’t getting our message, they’ll hear it from SJP.”.Jewish students and their allies have passed dozens of resolutions in student governments across the country, calling for investment in Israel, increasing study abroad programs in Israel, and calling for the adoption of the IHRA Working Definition of anti-Semitism. They have also helped defeat anti-Israel student government proposals. . In combating the anti-Semitic events of Hate Week, SSI sent official complaints to Columbia University administrators against SJP for displaying anti-Semitic imagery as part of their events. Columbia University’s SSI chapter has also held Hebrew Liberation Week, countering Hate Week. Students promote Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and share the long history of the Jewish people and the land of Israel. “When you talk about Israel here at Columbia – and unfortunately in many other universities – the question is not if Israel is good or bad,” said Ofir Dayan, president of Columbia’s chapter of SSI. “The question here is: Does Israel have a right to exist? So, what we are doing here is mainly answering that point.” . Supporters of Israel on campus continue to counter-protest anti-Israel stunts and slander. CAMERA on Campus launched their annual Apartheid Week Exposed campaign, debunking across social media the myths perpetuated by IAW and encouraging the use of its hashtag #apartheidweekexposed. SSI promotes its own panels of discussion about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Organizations including StandWithUs, ADL, Hillel International, and the Zionist Organization of America continue to document anti-Semitic events, and some have filed complaints regarding Hate Week. . Nonetheless, activism that demonizes or excludes Israel has moved beyond the campus. Corporations face mounting pressure to boycott Israel. The most prominent recent example is Ben & Jerry’s and its parent company Unilever. The longtime manufacturer and distributor of Ben & Jerry’s in Israel, American Quality Products (AQP), is now suing Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s for unlawfully terminating their business relationship. Two of AQP’s attorneys are LDB’s L. Rachel Lerman and Alyza D. Lewin. NGOs publish false claims that Israel commits apartheid, ignoring its robust protections for minorities and attempting to misuse and coopt core concepts in human rights law to demonize the Jewish state. . The Brandeis Center is pushing back against this alarming rise in anti-Semitic and anti-Israel activity. Aside from the Ben and Jerry’s case, the Brandeis Center has stood up for students targeted for harassment and demonization based on their Jewish identities and fought against the discriminatory exclusion of Jewish Zionist organizations. While all students are entitled to free speech, the Brandeis Center stands ready to protect Jewish students’ rights to be free from discrimination and harassment during Hate Week and throughout the year.