Violence on campus

Editorial

For most of this decade, the overseas repercussions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have been felt most heatedly on university campuses in Europe and North America. Pretending to erect a rhetorical firewall between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism – as if Zionism, in the contemporary world, can be neatly excised from Judaism – attacks on Israel have grown grislier and more vile, with images of blood-fanged, hook-nosed Jews and shrill calls of "Jews back to the ovens."

At the University of British Columbia last month, the notorious Holocaust denier and Israel-basher Norman Finkelstein drew a huge crowd to hear his disordered, ahistorical interpretation of events. His encapsulation of Israel as a "satanic state" sums up his overall theme.

Was it only a matter of time before words turned to action? Last Saturday night, two Jewish students at UBC were assaulted, their Magen Davids ripped from their necks, in two separate but evidently related incidents being investigated by the RCMP and the provincial Hate Crimes Team.

How long can Israel's enemies pretend that their words have no impact on relations domestically? And when will they realize that such deplorable acts against Jews in the Diaspora, which we are seeing in physical assaults and vandalism, serve only to prove the necessity of Israel's survival and strength?

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