Anti-Israel campus incidents nearly double in one year, ADL reports

Anti-Israel incidents on college campuses during the 2022 to 2023 academic year nearly doubled compared to the year before, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

The ADL tallied “665 campus anti-Israel incidents during the 2022-2023 academic year: zero instances of physical assault; nine instances of vandalism; 24 instances of harassment; 303 events; 326 protests/actions; and three [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] (BDS) resolutions. Many but not all incidents may be characterized as anti-semitic.”

“While assaults and vandalism dropped, the small increase in harassment could suggest that campus activists are becoming emboldened in other ways,” the ADL states.

The ADL attributes the increased number of incidents to “continued momentum-building in the anti-Israel movement generally.” 

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“Students for Justice in Palestine,” the largest and most active anti-Israel campus group in the United States, is driving the increase, the report states. Clubs exist on campus across the nation. Students for Justice in Palestine had “appeared to be less restrained in expressing support for U.S. State Department-designated terrorist organizations and individuals who are known to have killed Israelis,” the report states.

The report also indicates “an uptick in explicit promotion of violence against Israel, as well as a coarsening of rhetoric attempting to vilify and ostracize Zionism and Zionists.” Included in these rhetorical changes were calls for the “anti-normalization” of institutions and individuals in support of Israel’s continuing existence.

Several SJP clubs across the northeastern United States, including Tufts and George Washington University, founded The Mapping Project. It shows the exact locations of elementary schools, police stations, businesses, and various other entities across Massachusetts that all were selected due to some alleged ties to Israel. The site claims that these locations are responsible for the “colonization of Palestine” and other perceived harms and wrongdoings, including Zionism itself. 

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SJP chapters have also promoted the Resistance News Network (RNN), the ADL report states. RNN, a radical anti-Zionist, English-language channel on Telegram and Instagram, promotes violence against Israel, and frames attacks on Israel as moral crusades against occupiers.

“There’s plenty of room for criticism of Israel and its policies on campus, but we are concerned that a consistent, disproportionate, and vociferous negative focus on Israel may create a hostile atmosphere for Jewish students,” ADL told Campus Reform. 

”As our report notes, it is antisemitic when criticism of Israel verges into full-blown anti-Zionism, which demonizes Jewish students who support Israel and denies the Jewish people’s right to self-determination,” the group added. ”This is the second year we have employed statistical measures to track anti-Israel and anti-Zionist incidents on campuses, and we are hopeful that the data will help to inform understanding of these trends.”

Campus Reform has reported on multiple instances of campuses handwaving or endorsing anti-Israel sentiments. 

A Pennsylvania State University professor in 2022 required his students to write in an assignment why the Taliban is not a terrorist organization. 

Dickinson College in Pennsylvania also showed its anti-Israel bias when it banned Sabra Hummus products in 2019. 

In May, a Jewish student at the University of Connecticut could not get a meeting with the university’s interim president before graduation after being the target of anti-Semitism.

Campus Reform has contacted the ADL and SJP. This article will be updated accordingly.