By: Andrew Srulevitch
Hostility towards Jewish students on American college and university campuses has rightly been in the news. Physical and verbal assaults, death threats, and antisemitic slogans are intimidating these students and preventing them from getting the education and college experiences they deserve. Less known, but no less worrying, this same phenomenon plagues Jewish students at universities around the world.
In June, I met with British, Spanish and French Jewish student leaders and heard first-hand disturbing stories about their experiences with anti-Israel-related antisemitism, even before the current explosion of incidents. Today we are seeing an unprecedented level of antisemitic hate on campuses around the globe.
In the UK, the Union of Jewish Students reported over 400 calls were made to its student welfare hotline from October 8-November 8, more than all of last year. Among the incidents were a death threat to the president of the Union of Jewish Students, physical assaults, including on a student whose assailant tried to rip off her Star of David necklace, and eggs thrown at students wearing kippot (skullcaps). After the Jewish Students - set up a stall to distribute information about antisemitism and about the Israeli hostages, campus security shut it down due to a threatening mob.
And these incidents are occurring amidst a great feeling of abandonment by other students. The Union of Jewish Students sent a letter to hundreds of other student unions across the UK, asking them to sign a letter of support which condemned those who glorified Hamas’s attacks and who spread antisemitism. Only five student unions did. Edward Isaacs, the president of the Union of Jewish Students, characterized their situation as “a world of isolation, fear and intimidation.”
In France, many Jewish students are hiding their identity by taking off their kippot or Stars of David jewelry, because antisemitic threats and slogans and graffiti are defining their university experiences. A Jewish student heard a conversation between two students seated in front of him at a lecture. One said, “Those dirty Jews should all die,” and the other responded, “We have to kill them all.” At the Sorbonne University in Paris, “Death to Jews” was written on a wall. The head of the Jewish Student Union at a university in the south of France told ADL that Jewish students there have completely stopped going to class out of fear for their personal safety.
In Germany, students have suffered verbal attacks, physical threats, hearing their peers express support for terrorism, and the dissemination of antisemitic materials on campus. As a result, the German Jewish community’s psychological counselling center reported a massive increase of student and faculty requests for support. The President of the Jewish Student Union in Germany has concluded that “For Jewish students, the university is currently a space of insecurity instead of learning.”
In Austria, a sign at the entrance to the Jewish Studies Library at the University of Vienna was vandalized with “Kill ISRAHELL.” Austria’s Jewish student leadership described the situation on some campuses as “unbearable.”
In Spain, a poster for a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid called for “Zionists” to be kicked off campus. A soccer team at IE University in Madrid wore t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” advocating the destruction of Israel. The Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain released a standalone statement about the horrible atmosphere at Spanish universities and other educational institutions.
In the Netherlands, at the University of The Hague, on October 7 students distributed materials that glorified the Hamas massacre, calling it “exemplary resistance” and urging to “globalize the intifada.” That is just one example in a report by the European Union of Jewish Students, which listed many instances of students and professors who praised or justified the October 7 terror attacks.
The European Union of Jewish Students has described the situation on European campuses as “dramatic.” They wrote that “Jewish and Israeli students are being targeted by fellow students, professors and sometimes academic authorities.” Overall, they assess that “Jewish students do not feel safe on their campuses.” Some have even “stopped attending classes out of fear due to the extremely hostile campus atmosphere.”
Such antisemitic incidents and hostile campus atmospheres aren’t limited to Europe.
A student at the University of Toronto was arrested and expelled for threatening violence. At McGill University, police had to escort 200 Jewish students going from a Hillel house to a Chabad house for a Shabbat service the evening after a pro-Palestinian demonstration. During an altercation at Concordia University in Montreal, a professor from another university called a Jewish student a “whore” and told her to “go back to Poland.” A Hillel employee in Montreal said, “People have been very, very scared, profoundly worried in a way that I’ve never seen before.”
The Australasian Union of Jewish Students, representing students in Australia and New Zealand, said their members “unfortunately feel increasingly isolated on campus.” Acknowledging the threat to Jewish students, Monash University in Melbourne has allowed Jewish students to take exams remotely.
In South Africa, its Jewish Student Union reported that Hamas and Hezbollah flags were freely flown at the University of Cape Town. Yet, when Jewish students put up posters of hostages, they were threatened by a mob of about 30 people while campus security stood by and did nothing.
Jewish university students in Latin America feel vulnerable in environments where Hamas’s murders are normalized. The young Latin American Jews who study at U.S. colleges are experiencing the same fear and sense of vulnerability as their American peers. As a result, some Latin American Jewish families feel just as afraid to send their kids to American colleges.
The Jewish student unions and Hillels around the world do excellent work with Jewish university students, but the truth is that Jewish life on international campuses is much less prominent than on American campuses. By sheer numbers, Jewish students in Europe and elsewhere feel even more isolated and more helpless than their U.S. counterparts.
ADL is deeply engaged in pressing U.S. universities to ensure the protection of their Jewish students. We will ensure that these universities are informed about their international partner universities who are not doing enough to protect Jewish students. And we continue to call on all institutions of higher education – in the US and around the world - to take action to ensure Jewish students can avail themselves of all their universities offer, without hiding their identity, without looking over their shoulder, and without fear of joining other Jewish students to celebrate campus life.