It happened during my first week of college in New York: Three students vandalized an Israeli flag that had been placed on a window in dorms next to flags from all over the world. "Jews are a nation of murderers," the vandals shouted. "Jews live in a country of murderers," they continued. The headmaster of the building told me I could choose another country's flag to put instead of the one that had been destroyed, saying she doesn't have any additional Israeli flags.
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Later, during one of the COVID lockdowns, I transferred to a new college that many Jews attend. I flew to Israel and upon returning from winter break I had an unpleasant surprise: I was expelled from a sexual-assault survivors' group along with another Jewish American student. The reason: We had the gall of sharing Instagram posts that describe the historical ties between the Jews and the Land of Israel. The group explained that we, as members, "shared posts justifying the Israeli occupation of Palestine" and that it was incumbent that the group made it clear that it "does not support imperialism, settler-colonialism, nor white supremacy." It added, "To fight against sexual violence, we must oppose all forms of oppression. This includes the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians."
Ever since, I have been too scared to walk on campus and tell others on campus what my name is. And I am not the only one: This troubling reality is what many Jewish and Israeli students in the US face every day. It is a wave of new antisemitism, a kind that violates the prohibition on discrimination under the Civil Rights Act. This form of hatred considers every jew as a proponent of white supremacy and every Zionist a killer.
Such sentiment has become prevalent in the University of California, Berkeley, and on campuses in every state. This wave of hatred is a 2022 version of the Salem witch trials, and its advocates try to hide it as support for Palestinians. Even as this continues to spread from one campus to the next, those who can do something about it have been reluctant to come to our defense. Perhaps they are in denial; perhaps they are too scared that they too will be accused of being Zionist; but the bottom line is clear: We, the Israeli and Jewish students in the US, have been left to our own devices, without support, and carrying a trauma that will be hard to overcome.
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