North American Students Visit Israel to Learn Effective Tools to Combat Rampant Antisemitism

JERUSALEM, Israel – It's widely acknowledged that students in the Western world are facing more antisemitism on their campuses and in their lives than maybe ever before. Well, where better to learn how to fight it than right here in the Jewish homeland?

Several dozen students recently visited Israel for a course on how to counter hatred of Jews and the Jewish nation. CBN News joined them to find out what they've experienced and what they learned about the battle against antisemitism.

The Jewish students from the U.S. and Canada traveled across Israel to attend a day-long seminar. 

They learned how to more effectively address the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activism.

Angelina Palumbo experienced it on her first day at college.

She told CBN News, "It started against my beliefs and targeting how I felt about Israel, but then quickly became comments about my appearance – 'Use that dirty Zionist money to get a nose job. 'Leave some oxygen for the rest of us.'"

David Lederer witnessed it at Columbia University, a center of possibly the most radical anti-Jewish activism on an American campus.

Lederer recalled, "Me walking to class, someone yells at me, 'Zionist b-word.' And just like, yelling at Jewish people. I have a friend, personally, who, just walking to a dining hall, and he got an 'F you, Jew.'  Very explicitly anti-Jewish. Even though they'll try to say it's just about Zionists and Zionism, it's very explicitly been a very hostile environment for Jewish students on campus."

Michael Eglash helped organize the seminar and trip through a group called hasbarafellowships.org and an organization he founded, israelambassadors.com.

"Anti-Zionism is antisemitism, right? If you don't believe in the right for the Jewish people to have a homeland in their ancient homeland of Israel, then that's antisemitic. Because all people should have the right to go back to their ancestral homeland and live, and the right to prosper, and what have you. So those people who are telling you they're anti-Zionists are antisemites."

Canadian Amanda Yakobovits declared, "And I have definitely experienced it."

Yakobovits worries about a more subtle antisemitism, such as when a fellow student questioned just how Jewish the Holocaust was.

Quoting the student, Yakobovits said, "''Ya know, the Holocaust – so many people died.'  And he was very much – what he was saying was negating the actual Jewish connection to the Holocaust."

Eglash added, "Jewish students are under attack on the campuses, and are made to feel very insecure and uncomfortable."

He first experienced it as a student in the 1990s.

He recollected, "Organizations that were out there, that were putting up swastikas, equating it with the Star of David. Or at times they were intimidating students. So that if you wore a Star of David, they would come up to you and say, 'How can you wear that symbol? You must support Israel."

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When in Israel, the students experienced realities much different from the propaganda spouted on their campuses.

Palumbo told us, "So a lot of the remarks we hear is that October 7th either never happened or (that) in Israel we face apartheid, colonialism, ethnic cleansing. And walking around the streets and seeing the street signs that are in English, Arabic, and Hebrew automatically disproves that claim.  Seeing the kibbutzim that were destroyed and seeing the Nova Music Festival site and all the people taken from us early, it's hard not to acknowledge the facts when you see them firsthand.

Lederer insisted, "It's nothing at all like what they're talking about on campus, and it's important to see it."

Natan Sharansky has been one of the world's leading fighters against antisemitism. He's founded an organization called combatantisemitism.org. He told the students that the best way to battle it is to proudly stand up for their Jewish identity and the Jewish nation.

"There is no way in today's world to keep your proud identity without understanding that Israel is the heart of this identity. It's so obvious: anti-Zionism and antisemitism go together. And I have to say, as in the past, everything depends on you," he exhorted.

Yakobivts says she's certainly on board for that.

"For me, I wear it on my sleeve. Within five minutes of knowing me, you know that I'm Jewish, I'm Israeli, I speak Hebrew and I'm so excited about it."

Lederer had a special message for Christians,

"Jewish students have been forced out of the clubs, out of student government, out of various sectors of the university. And the only allies we have who can understand us and who can talk to us are the Christian students. I just want to say thank you to my Christian neighbors. Hope you had happy holidays."

Most of these students were already Jewish activists. But now they return to their states and provinces with more weapons to fight antisemitism when they get there.