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"I think it's despicable, cowardly, and highly hypocritical—after all the U.W. administration's efforts to supposedly address antisemitism on campus... just to tear down our sukkah?" said one student.
Some U.S. universities have torn down solidarity sukkahs that Jewish students opposed to Israel's war on Palestinians have built in recent days to honor the Sukkot holiday and to "protest as the Israeli military continues to invoke the Jewish tradition as fuel for the destruction of Gaza."
Sukkahs are temporary booths erected for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, an eight-day celebration of the fall harvest and the ancient Israelites' escape from slavery in Egypt.
To honor the holiday, students from Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and other Jewish-led organizations constructed Gaza solidarity sukkahs on campuses including Northwestern University; University of Chicago; Brown University; Columbia University; University of Washington; University of California, Berkeley; Stanford University; Yale University; University of North Carolina; University of California, Los Angeles; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Rutgers University; University of California, San Diego; and other schools.
"For the past year, we have witnessed the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and even administrators at our university distort our thousands of years-old Jewish tradition to justify genocide," University of Washington student Talia Braester said in a statement.
"We will not allow our tradition to be exploited by those who seek death and destruction," Braester added. "Our ancestors, many of whom endured genocide and ethnic cleansing, taught us never to be bystanders in the face of injustice. We call for an arms embargo and divestment from the Israeli military out of a commitment to life itself."
According to JVP:
In alignment with Jewish tradition, Jewish students intended to spend eight days dwelling in the sukkah—a ritual in remembrance of Jewish ancestors forced to live in temporary structures in the desert while fleeing slavery. This year, students could not separate their observance from the fact that tens of thousands of Palestinians are forced to live in temporary shelters due to the Israeli military's mass destruction of homes in Gaza. And this week the world witnessed Israeli forces bomb Al-Aqsa Hospital, burning alive Palestinian patients, including 19-year-old Sha'ban al-Dalou, who was recovering from an operation in his tent with an IV still in his arm. Jewish students across the country are observing Sukkot and hung banners from their sukkahs saying, "Stop Arming Israel" as Israeli forces murder tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza.
According to the Gaza Ministry of Health and United Nations agencies, Israel's 382-day assault and siege of the enclave has left more than 152,000 Palestinians dead, injured, or missing, and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, and sickened. Israel's conduct in the war is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case. Meanwhile, thousands more Palestinians have been killed or wounded in the illegally occupied West Bank. Thousands of Lebanese have been killed or maimed by the Israeli bombardment and invasion of Lebanon, according to officials there.
The U.S. supports Israel's war effort with tens of billions of dollars in
military aid and diplomatic backing including vetoes of multiple United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolutions.
On several of the campuses where sukkahs were built, university administrators destroyed the sacred structures—in some cases, throwing them in dumpsters. Some students said they now face disciplinary action, even though in years past they were allowed to sleep in their sukkahs.
"Many of the sukkahs were adorned with plants and gourds from local farms as a way to honor the harvest," said JVP. "In a callous display, the administrators discarded these as well."
"Many administrators cited draconian policies passed in the wake of the Gaza solidarity encampments that forbid students from camping overnight," the group noted, referring to protests during the last academic year. "The students explained that sleeping in sukkahs is an essential part of this holiday and part of their religious rights, but administrators choose to disregard the students' pleas."
Another University of Washington student, Roza Fernandez, said that "I think it's despicable, cowardly, and highly hypocritical—after all the U.W. administration's efforts to supposedly address antisemitism on campus... just to tear down our sukkah?"
"It shows the truth: Admin does not care about antisemitism and is not afraid to wield it to silence criticism of Zionism and their complicity in genocide," Fernandez added.
JVP media coordinator Liv Kunins-Berkowitz said that "these universities desecrate these students' Jewish practice because their faith is intertwined with their solidarity with the Palestinian people."
"A university has no right to dictate what types of Jewish practice are legitimate," Kunins-Berkowitz added. "Anti-Zionist Judaism is a long-standing and rapidly growing expression of being Jewish."
The U.S. students' campaign of solidarity sukkahs stood in stark contrast with the sukkahs erected by far-right Israeli settlers during this week's "Preparing to Settle Gaza" conference, which was backed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin's ruling Likud party and featured speakers including Cabinet ministers and several members of the Knesset, Israel's parliament.
"Each of you will witness how Jews go to Gaza and Arabs will disappear from Gaza," one prominent settler and advocate for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians told the audience at the event.
"What the administrators have clearly failed to grasp is that repression cannot kill the student movement," one coalition said, promising "new and more creative forms of resistance."
After cracking down on anti-genocide campus protests this spring, New York University is under fire this week for its new policy equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism as Israel continues its U.S.-backed assault on the Gaza Strip.
The Anti-Defamation League—which has also been criticized for conflating the two—defines Zionism as "the movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel."
NYU's Nondiscrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy and Procedures for Students (NDAH), updated last week, states in part that "using code words, like 'Zionist,' does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH Policy. For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity. Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists."
"For example," the document details, "excluding Zionists from an open event, calling for the death of Zionists, applying a 'no Zionist' litmus test for participation in any NYU activity, using or disseminating tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracies about Zionists (e.g., 'Zionists control the media'), demanding a person who is or is perceived to be Jewish or Israeli to state a position on Israel or Zionism, minimizing or denying the Holocaust, or invoking Holocaust imagery or symbols to harass or discriminate."
The policy—seen as a potential model for other universities, as the next academic year begins—was blasted by critics of the Israeli slaughter of over 40,000 Palestinians, which is being investigated as genocide by the International Court of Justice, and the U.S. campus administrations that have invited violent law enforcement oppression of anti-war protests.
NYU Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) said Sunday that it was "alarmed" by the guidance, which "sets a dangerous precedent by extending Title VI protections to anyone who adheres to Zionism, a nationalist political ideology, and troublingly equates criticism of Zionism with discrimination against Jewish people. Furthermore, the new guidance implies that any nationalist political ideology (Hindu nationalism, Christian nationalism, etc.) that is integrated into some members of that group's understanding of their own racial or ethnic identity should be entitled to civil rights protections."
The "deeply disturbing" development "will legitimize far-right and ethnonationalist ideologies under the guise of protecting students from racial discrimination," the group continued. "This weaponization of the Title VI apparatus openly threatens the university's commitments to academic freedom and to nondiscrimination, and we insist that the administration reconsider these changes for the good of the university community."
The policy change "represents an intensification of NYU's yearlong effort to censor criticism and criminalize protest of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza," NYU FSJP added, noting that "equating criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism has been roundly critiqued by scholars of antisemitism, by Israeli human rights groups, and by our own group."
In a joint Instagram post, NYU FSJP, the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, Writers Against the War on Gaza, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and PYM New York City declared that "NYU ADMINS CHOOSE GENOCIDE."
"Under the guise of 'campus safety' and 'community values,' they informed the student body that speech against Zionism may be deemed antisemitic and a violation of civil rights law," the groups said. "This conflationary logic is not simply an effort to chill pro-Palestine speech on campus, not merely revanchist pushback for the spate of encampments and other actions that NYU students organized last spring, but a deliberate attempt to dissolve student and faculty efforts to protest a genocide that is approaching the one-year mark, with a death toll rising into the six-digit range."
"What the administrators have clearly failed to grasp is that repression cannot kill the student movement," they added. "Every attempt to silence, to punish, to quell, will be met with new and more creative forms of resistance. The students have chosen to stand with Palestine and against the racist, colonial, and expansionist ideology of Zionism. Together we will struggle alongside them, until liberation."
Several organizations are planning a National March on New York City for Gaza, scheduled for noon on Labor Day, September 2.
Conflating free speech and hate crimes will not make Jewish students any safer on campus. This bill would stifle First Amendment rights to free speech and distract from the need to confront real antisemitism that exists.
Editor's Note: The following is a statement by the Congresswoman following her vote, alongside nearly 70 Democratic colleagues, against the Antisemitism Awareness Act on Wednesday, May 1, 2024.
As a Jewish woman, I’ve experienced antisemitism all my life. I’ve been called a kike while I was waiting for a drink at a bar when I was at college. I’ve heard too many ‘jokes’ to count about my frizzy hair and my big nose. I remember my classmates who thought it was funny to say people were ‘being Jewed’ when someone was being frugal.
Conflating free speech and hate crimes will not make Jewish students any safer.
I know the hatred and ignorance that lie behind all these comments, and how they can quickly escalate into violence—and I’m deeply concerned about the rise of antisemitism in San Diego and across the country.
But I do not believe that anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitism. I support Israel’s right to exist, but I also know many people who question whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state who are deeply connected to their Judaism.
Today, I voted against H.R. 6090, because it fails to effectively address the very real rise of antisemitism, all while defunding colleges and universities across the country and punishing many, if not all, of the non-violent protestors speaking out against the Israeli military’s conduct. Conflating free speech and hate crimes will not make Jewish students any safer. This bill would stifle First Amendment rights to free speech and free assembly. And it would distract from real antisemitism and our efforts to address it.