Anti-Semitism on UC Campuses

We are 23 organizations representing hundreds of thousands of supporters who are deeply concerned about the safety and well-being of Jewish students at the University of California.First, we acknowledge and appreciate your statement strongly condemning the recent antisemitic incidents at the University of California that have included swastikas drawn on a Jewish fraternity house at UC Davis and the inappropriate questioning of a candidate for student judiciary board about her Jewishness and Jewish affiliations at UCLA.  We are also extremely pleased that in response to the escalating antisemitic activity on UC campuses, the student senates at UCLA and UC B

erkeley have each unanimously approved resolutions condemning campus antisemitism.

What these recent antisemitic incidents have in common is that they are an inevitable consequence of pervasive anti-Israel activity, particularly Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaigns, being promoted on UC campuses.  For example, the swastikas drawn on the Jewish fraternity house at UC Davis appeared less than two days after a contentious vote in the student senate on an anti –Israel divestment resolution sponsored by the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).  Just after the vote, an SJP-affiliated student council member who had sponsored the divestment bill wrote on her Facebook page: “Israel will fall insha’Allah  #UCDDivest”.  And the four student senators who challenged the candidate for the judicial board based on her Jewishness and Jewish affiliations were authors, sponsors and supporters of the most recent anti-Israel divestment bill at UCLA.There is a well-documented relationship between BDS and acts of anti-Semitism, particularly on college campuses. At schools where BDS campaigns are promoted, Jewish students have routinely reported being harassed, physically and verbally assaulted, threatened, vilified, and discriminated against. Jewish students’ property and the property of Jewish student organizations have been defaced, damaged, or destroyed, while Jewish student events have been disrupted and shut down.Student leaders have themselves recognized the clear connection between virulent anti-Israel expression and these recent antisemitic incidents, and it is for this reason that the UCLA student senate included in their unanimously-approved resolution language from the U.S. State Department’s definition of antisemitism which acknowledges that antisemitism may manifest itself with regard to the state of Israel by, for example:

Sincerely,