As a Jew, I felt pride in knowing that in 1948 Ben-Gurion and Meir had achieved national independence for the Jewish people – my people – in our indigenous homeland, Israel. And yet, as a white South African, I knew that Mandela and Sisulu were confined behind bars on Robben Island, and that the racist Nationalist government was denying them and all black South Africans independence in their indigenous homeland, South Africa.

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Later, as an immigrant to the United States, I observed with fascination as Mandela, Sisulu and Oliver Tambo became known world-wide through song lyrics, and as my own childhood memories, plagued with images of apartheid, came to life in literature. When the anti-apartheid movement swept across the globe, I had no doubt that the people of the world were heeding the call of their black brothers and sisters on the southern tip of Africa – as was I.

Today, 25 years after voting in South Africa's first democratic election, I am hearing the term "apartheid" being used once again. Unlike the noble anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s, however, the term has been brazenly appropriated and falsely applied to Israel by the leaders of the BDS movement, who are seeking to isolate and condemn the Jewish state due to their anti-Semitic sentiments and thinly veiled Islamic extremism.

Many BDS leaders in the United States are college professors, who pursue these goals by preying on American students to recruit them into the movement. Their professional malpractice often begins when they persuade their students of the myth of "Israeli apartheid" and that they are heeding the call of "Palestinian civil society." It continues as they replace academic rigor and critical thinking with anti-Semitic rhetoric and anti-Israel indoctrination, which, unfortunately, many of their students are ill-equipped to resist.

Despite only a generation having passed since apartheid ended in South Africa, most American students know little about it. They know even less about Israel, and, therefore, remain vulnerable in their relative ignorance. Because not all public schools are teaching critical thinking skills, students arrive on college campuses with an additional vulnerability, which makes them soft targets for indoctrination.

Indeed, students who have been taught to simply memorize information that they can access on the internet without delay are more likely inclined to accept the words of a professor in an American classroom who says, "Israel is an apartheid state," than to study and analyze the history of apartheid or Zionism or the Arab-Israeli conflict. Rare is the professor who would encourage such study and analysis.

To encourage students to join the BDS movement, pro-BDS professors also persuade them that they are responding to a call for help from "Palestinian civil society." According to the BDS website, the call to boycott Israel comes from "170 Palestinian unions, refugee networks, women's organizations, professional associations, popular resistance committees, and other Palestinian civil society bodies," who were "inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement."

However, just as there is no evidence of "Israeli apartheid," the website provides no information on the members of these unions, networks, or organizations that are supposedly calling for the world to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. Additionally, nowhere does the BDS movement provide the names of its leaders. And nowhere does the BDS movement provide evidence that it has done anything to help the Palestinian people.

Just as people across the world showed their support for South Africans, it is perfectly appropriate for American students to express their empathy and support for Israelis and Palestinians who are seeking peace. They should be hearing the voices of people like Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid, who spent decades living in a Palestinian refugee camp and who vehemently opposes the BDS movement because it creates further suffering for his people.

They should hear him describe BDS as a moneymaking scheme and its leaders as completely dissociated from the Palestinian people, operating "out of their warm houses in New York and Los Angeles and Frankfurt," far from the West Bank and Gaza. They should listen to him note Palestinian resentment for the BDS movement and explain that when Palestinian workers lose their jobs and health insurance due to boycotts against Israel, the BDS movement does nothing to help them.

All students have the right to learn about their world within an academically rigorous educational program that requires them to obtain knowledge from a variety of sources. All students have the right to learn how to think freely and independently and deeply, asking critical questions such as "Whose voices are we hearing?" "Whose voices are missing?" and "Where can I obtain additional information?"

And all students in American classrooms, including American Jews, Israelis, and Palestinians, have the right to feel pride in their identities and to be justly represented.

However, a systematic assault on all three fronts is well underway by proponents of the BDS movement, who are using American university classrooms as their staging grounds. The result is the erosion of academic rigor and analysis within American higher education, the demonization of Israel and of American Zionists, and the indifference toward the will of the Palestinian people.

American educators, particularly professors with tenure, must find the courage to address the propaganda and the other unethical tactics being employed by the BDS movement. In addition to teaching their students how to think and how to question, those who teach first-year undergraduate students, in particular, have the additional right and responsibility to prepare their students for the political indoctrination that may be awaiting them in their next class or in the next semester.

Simply put, they should identify it as a possible occurrence, periodically ask their students if they have encountered it, and position themselves as trusted advisers who can approach the administration, when it occurs.

Academic freedom does not grant academics the right to dilute higher educate in an effort to indoctrinate students, and it is up to those "with boots on the ground" to make every effort to ensure that they cease doing so.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Sadly, however, at various times throughout American history, those with power and authority have facilitated the cultural destruction of groups of people that were under their control. At the end of the 1800s, for example, the American government created "Indian" boarding schools that promoted the motto "Kill the Indian: Save the Man."

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The government believed that Native Americans were "savages" who needed to be Americanized, and so they took Native American children away from their parents and instituted a policy of forced assimilation. They cut their hair, put them in American clothing, forbade them from speaking their tribal languages, and forced them to pray to the Christian god.

Simply put, the children had their Indian-ness stolen from them. The children's cultural bonds with their parents and ancestors were severed – never to be recovered again.

Today, we are seeing a different type of cultural destruction – a slow and steady attempt to fragment American Jewry and, in turn, dilute its support for the State of Israel. This assault is being led by young, dynamic "progressive" academics in some of the country's finest colleges and universities, who support the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) – the American chapter of the international BDS movement that calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.

The decision to recruit American academics as the leaders of this assault was well reasoned. Professors, particularly those with tenure, are some of the most privileged and powerful members of American society. They have lifelong job security that grants them the freedom to say and write what they believe to be true. They also have access to hundreds of thousands of Jewish adolescents during the latter's most intellectually formative years.

Indeed, it is at colleges and universities with large percentages of Jewish students that we see some of the most egregious assaults being enacted – Oberlin College, Columbia University and New York University, to name just a few.

Native American children were stripped of their rituals and behaviors as the conduit to the destruction of their peoplehood. The cultural assault we are seeing today is similar in its target: Jewish peoplehood. The goal is to destroy the State of Israel. The method is slightly different as the target of today's assaults is not Jewish religious rituals, but the feelings and behaviors that link all Jews together and the underlying source of those feelings: the emotional and spiritual connection that all Jews have with their homeland.

It is important to note, however, that in the case of the Jews, the distinction between religious ritual and peoplehood is nominal. The two are inextricably linked. In fact, Jews were a people before the religion took form. Individuals who convert to Judaism are required to say the words, "Your people are my people." When Jews pray, they face east, toward Jerusalem. Jewish community members comfort their mourners with the words, "May God comfort you with the mourners of Zion." And when Jews conclude their Passover seders, they say, "Next year in Jerusalem."

Nevertheless, with Jewish peoplehood as their target, these young, seemingly hip professors manipulate the feelings and beliefs of their Jewish students and persuade them that the land they believed was their birthright actually belongs to another – that it was stolen from the Palestinians by racist colonizers – and that it is up to them to see that it is returned. In many cases, they identify themselves as Arab, or people of color from other backgrounds, and skillfully personalize their revisionist accounts of history, making these emotional presentations extremely difficult for Jewish students to challenge.

(On a national level, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) engages in the same practice. Despite being a congresswoman in the most powerful country in the world, she presents herself as a forlorn granddaughter of an old persecuted Palestinian grandmother – one she chose not to visit when granted the opportunity.)

The "scholars" who are engaging in this attack on young American Jews are also adept in exploiting the power structure of the professor-student relationship in which grades and letters of recommendation lie in the balance. They might offer extra credit for attending a lecture by a known anti-Israel activist, like Marc Lamont Hill. They might take students on an anti-Israel propaganda tour through Israel and the West Bank (as is the case with professor Sa'ed Atshan at Swarthmore College). Or, they might present a syllabus with readings by Jasbir Puar and other anti-Israel propagandists and offer no counter-arguments, as was the case when Meredith Raimondo taught courses at Oberlin College, and many others.

To seal the deal, these faculty members then intensify their assault by mentoring student groups like Students for Justice in Palestine – the student arm of the international BDS campaign. Indeed, on campuses across the country, chapters of SJP engage in a relentless campaign to persuade Jewish students that Israel is a "colonial" country built on "stolen" land, and that it is their duty – as Jews who believe in justice – to fight for the right of Palestinians to "return" "home."

Evidence that students have internalized the core message aimed at destroying American Jewry is ubiquitous. In Vassar College's student newspaper, after harassing Hen Mazzig as he spoke, SJP students write, "Palestinian activists have articulated their right to live freely in the entirety of their homeland." (Emphasis added.) In the same article, the SJP protégés argue that it is possible to separate a Jewish person from the Jewish people. They write, "We believe it is both possible and necessary to stand against anti-Semitism and to stand with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the Palestinian fight for freedom." In other words, we object to swastikas on the door of a Jewish person, but not on the flag of the Jewish people.

In a recent article in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian at the University of Massachusetts, student Anna Ben-Hur echoes the same message and writes, "I reject claims of Judaism having one unanimous voice supporting Israel"; "Israel is not my vision of Jewish liberation," and "Many Jews at UMass desire a Jewishness that doesn't come attached to ethnonationalism."

In another illustration of the effectiveness of this insidious campaign, I recall speaking to the Jewish parent of a student at Swarthmore College. After taking a course with professor Sa'ed Atshan, her son refused to attend the synagogue in which he was raised because of its close affiliation with Israel. As she explained, the professor had persuaded the young man that Israel was an illegitimate country built on stolen land, and that no good and decent person would support it in any way.

The professors who are engaged in this assault are attacking the Jewish people, the Jewish religion, Judaism and the Jews. The distinctions are meaningless – being made by the perpetrators as an attempt to obfuscate their sinister mission and to avoid accusations of anti-Semitism. Furthermore, their actions are systematic.

It is, therefore, incumbent on all concerned stakeholders in the American Jewish community to familiarize themselves with the professors and institutions that are leading this campaign to harm our children and to initiate legal action against them. If they do not, this assault against the Jewish people may, in fact, succeed in severing a generation of cultural ties – never to be recovered again.

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