As the school year begins, one thing is certain: There will be anti-Semitic outbursts and incidents at campuses of the University of California.
We know this because of a long history of such episodes at campuses like Berkeley, Irvine and UCLA, where Jewish students have been subjected to everything from physical obstruction and attempted intimidation to questions by Palestinian students and their sympathizers about whether their faith allows Jews elected to student government posts to make objective decisions.
It’s safe to say that if such obstacles were placed before black, Muslim or gay-lesbian-transgender students, campus administrators would have come down hard on the perpetrators. But nothing has happened to the anti-Semites, who act under the guise of criticizing Israel. It is, of course, fine to scrutinize or criticize any government’s behavior, but the anti-Israel protests, mostly led by a group called Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), question Israel’s very right to exist. They even deny that Jews have any historical link to the Holy Land, despite copious archeology and Biblical references to that strong connection.
These protestors question no other nation’s right to survive, only that of the world’s lone Jewish state, created as a refuge after history’s most murderous genocide claimed half of all Jews. No one suggested Japan should cease to exist after it conquered half of Asia, enslaving millions in the process. No one suggested Russia should disappear when it seized big chunks of Ukraine. No one even suggested there should be no Germany after Germans systematically killed more than 12 million persons before and during World War II.
Only the Jewish state’s existence is ever questioned by campus demonstrators. That kind of singling out constitutes one of the U.S. State Department’s definitions of anti-Semitism.
UC regents last spring responded to this clear-cut prejudice with a policy declaring that “Anti-Semitism…and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California.” The regents did not, however, spell out punishments for students caught in such acts. They left that to campus administrators, led by the top official at each locale, the chancellor.
