“Jewish rights are also human rights!”, 96 year old Holocaust Survivor Nate Leipiciger speaking at 2024 March of the Living ceremony
In recent days, since the tragic events of Oct. 7, 2023, a veritable virus of one-sided condemnations of Israel have swept across university campuses all over the world.
In almost all cases, sole blame for the current war in Gaza is assigned to Israel, along with demands by student groups for a boycott of all academic ties with Israeli institutions and divestment from Israeli companies.
Yet, there is no condemnation for the vicious and unprovoked Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th, no condemnation of Hamas for continuing to attack Israel, and no demand for Hamas to end their imprisonment of some 100 innocent Israeli hostages – children, women, men and the elderly – being kept under the most inhumane conditions, without any outside access or proper food or medical care.
Nor is there any objection to Hamas repeatedly rejecting the right of Israel to exist, its call for genocide and denying the possibility of ever living in peace side by side with Israel.
Indeed, it seems the world needs to be reminded of the profoundly moving words uttered by 96 year old Holocaust survivor Nate Leipciger at the 2024 March of the Living ceremony in Auschwitz-Birkenau on Yom Hashoah. “Jewish rights are also human rights!”, he pleaded with the world to remember, repeating his remonstration twice, his voice marked by righteous anger, so his message would all the more resonate in the ears of his listeners.
Regrettably these resolutions seen at universities all over the world seem sadly reminiscent of the tragic manifestations of pre-WWII antisemitism, especially in universities, where student university bodies were exceptionally cruel to their Jewish students, where Numerus Clausis was prevalent throughout Europe, as well as the US & Canada.
We note with bitter irony that the infamous Wannsee Conference held on January 20, 1942, fifteen senior German government officials codified Hitler’s plans for the Final Solution in less than 2 hours. Two-thirds of the participants at the Wannsee Conference had attended university – over half had been awarded doctorates.
Sadly, this singling out of the Jewish State is part of a much larger global wave of the demonization of Israel and BDS advocacy that has been sweeping across campuses around the world for decades. Israel continues to be the “Jew among the nations” and this resolution further bolsters that malignant phenomenon.
These university student led efforts are another example of antisemitism morphing from targeting individual Jews, barring them from an equal place in society, to targeting the single Jewish nation state, excluding it from an equal place in the family of nations. This new strain of anti-Zionism, the negation of Israel’s right to exist, is yet another malicious form of the ever-mutating virus of hatred, one that is reflected in IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism.
We urge all universities in North America, Europe and around the world, to reconsider their one sided resolutions, and work together to engender respect for all nations, peoples and religions.
We also hope and pray for a day when all people in Israel and the surrounding region will live in peace.
But resolutions only condemning Israel, ignoring the atrocities Hamas commits against Israeli citizens, citizens of other countries, and their own people, are certainly not the way to achieve this goal.
