Anti-Israel messages including “Zionism is a death cult” and “Glory for Gaza” have appeared as graffiti and signage at universities nationwide, reflecting a surge in campus tensions following the conflict in Gaza that began with attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas.
Recent Rutgers University graduate Lillian Russ witnessed this hostile graffiti being removed and reappearing repeatedly on campus. “Yes, there is security, but I don’t think there’s enough security,” she stated, explaining her concerns about safety at Jewish organizations like Hillel and Chabad, and her nervousness about displaying Jewish symbols due to campus harassment.
Faculty members have also become targets. “There has been a professor who got doxxed, and he had to flee the country, even though that’s in regards to academic freedom,” Russ noted. “For a Jewish student, it doesn’t feel like there’s enough, and I don’t know if there will ever be enough. But it’s just important that every day I keep going outside and saying to myself, okay, I’ll be fine, I’ll be fine.”
Following months of vandalism, disruptive demonstrations, and what she characterized as a threatening atmosphere for Jewish students, Russ pursued federal civil rights action. She collaborated with Hillel to file a Title VI complaint against the university after witnessing repeated incidents, including what she called a “fake encampment” serving as a daily protest location, and demonstrators invading academic buildings and dining facilities. “Enough was enough, and I felt very unsafe,” she explained, remembering how narrowly a BDS resolution missed approval.
With help from a Hillel rabbi, Russ connected with lawyers at Arnold & Porter and started gathering student accounts and documentation. “Something needs to be done,” she told them. “It’s not acceptable having to live in fear and having to walk around and see graffiti everywhere.”
Her efforts to challenge campus antisemitism showed results: “The reaction, I feel the university has taken a step forward in addressing things.”
Russ credited recent administrative changes with moving the institution toward what she considers a more positive approach. “Our former president resigned, and we have a new one, President Tate, and I feel that he has addressed things in a very appropriate way.”
Government intervention proved significant in influencing the university’s actions. “The resolution from the government, the Office of Civil Rights, they clearly stated that there’s a poll outline that needed to be followed,” she explained, adding that she is “very happy that this outline has been implemented.”
At UC Santa Barbara, a sign reading “No Zionists allowed” was displayed and shared on a university social media account. After removing the sign, administrators issued a statement declaring that neither antisemitism nor Islamophobia would be permitted on campus.
Alan Levine, who leads the campus advocacy organization Hasbara Fellowships, criticized this response as downplaying antisemitism and weakening the message. He told The Media Line that administrators “had to condemn Islamophobia in the same sentence. Not on the same page, same sentence. … They couldn’t possibly say, ‘We condemn antisemitism,’ period. It had to be, ‘We condemn all forms of antisemitism and Islamophobia and all forms of hate.’”
The critique wasn’t merely about word choice in an official statement; Levine remembered that harsh criticism was directed at those who responded “All Lives Matter” to “Black Lives Matter” because they were diminishing racial issues. Yet, generalizing when confronting antisemitism and deflecting attention appears to be standard practice in some administrations.
As antisemitic incidents have reached crisis levels on campuses, Levine observes that many administrations have “not demonstrated any ability or desire to really help their students and clamp down on antisemitism.” Students meanwhile report harassment, intimidation, belittling, and even death threats. One approach is to empower students to advocate for Israel and address antisemitism on their campuses. This is where Levine’s Hasbara Fellowships serves an essential function.
Hasbara Fellowships operates as a North American nonprofit that prepares university students for Israel-focused advocacy. Working on more than 95 campuses, it conducts summer and winter educational trips to Israel featuring briefings, location visits, and workshops covering history, media literacy, and public engagement.
Program participants receive ongoing support, materials, and guidance when they return to their campuses. The organization’s declared goal is to provide students with knowledge and communication abilities to take on leadership positions and engage in pro-Israel advocacy during the academic year.
The Media Line interviewed multiple Hasbara fellows about difficulties they encountered on campus and before joining the Hasbara Fellowship.
A first-year student at Brandeis University says she anticipated finding sanctuary from antisemitism on a campus established with strong Jewish connections, but instead faced hostility, intimidation, and what she calls academic prejudice.
Ella Friedman, who is half-Israeli, states, “I’ve faced a lot of antisemitism, like the majority of the people on this trip. I faced death threats, lost friends, even had my own professors, who I thought I could trust, turn on me.”
A communications and Near Eastern and Judaic studies major from the Boston area, Friedman said she came to Brandeis hoping to “breathe and feel free of this and just study,” after experiencing harassment in high school, but she said the campus situation has also been disturbing.
“I wasn’t expecting to have this much at Brandeis,” she said. She described a student organization calling itself the “Jewish Bund,” a name she linked to Nazism, that she said organizes disruptive protests in libraries and once displayed a casket wrapped in a keffiyeh.
Friedman also reported experiencing pressure in academic settings. She claimed that some professors, including Jewish and Israeli faculty, incorporate anti-Israel perspectives into coursework. One Israeli professor, she said, “would get upset or take points out of your grade if you did not agree with his political ideas of Israel.” Consequently, she said, students feel “scared to speak up and say something because you know that your professor will take points off your grade.”
Gabriela Rubin, 21, from Bergen County, New Jersey, said conditions at Rutgers University in New Brunswick have improved somewhat but remain concerning. “No matter where we are, we just feel like we’re in constant danger on campus,” she said, describing protesters as “very violent” and “aggressive.”
Sara Weinstein, a senior at the University of Maryland studying international relations and global terrorism, said serving in student government has positioned her at the center of repeated anti-Israel initiatives that she believes have transformed the campus climate for Jewish students.
Multiple Jewish student representatives, she noted, withdrew from student government because the environment felt too hostile. Weinstein observes divisions within the Jewish student community. “There’s pro-Palestinian Jews, there’s indifferent Jews, and then there’s the advocates for Israel,” she said, arguing many students lack deeper understanding of why Israel matters beyond religious connection. As a result, she said, many withdraw into Hillel rather than confronting what she calls misinformation.
On some campuses, antisemitism may appear more subdued, but the silence can be overwhelming.
Tehila Bendaat, a 19-year-old sophomore at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, said there are no large protests and relatively little open antisemitism. Instead, she sees what she views as a different problem: silence. “I think silence is worse,” she said. “Jews being silent, people being silent.” She noted that an October 7 memorial on campus attracted only one student.
While she describes the general atmosphere as positive, Bendaat said students often feel uncomfortable discussing Israel—even within Hillel. “I have a friend who feels uncomfortable talking about the fact that she’s Israeli at our Hillel,” she said, adding, “If we’re going to keep on being silent, then something God forbid can happen.”
Michael Eglash, co-founder of Israelambassadors.com and a longtime campus activist, said the surge of antisemitism after October 7 pushed student advocacy into what he called “an unbearable situation” across North American universities, but also motivated pro-Israel students to respond more forcefully.
“I’ve always been involved in Israel activism,” Eglash said, recalling his own days as a student activist in Milwaukee, a city he associates with Golda Meir through family connections. After October 7, long-standing campus hostility toward Jewish students intensified everywhere. “Even if there aren’t Jews on campus, you’re going to find antisemitism,” he said. “On October 7th, everything was elevated and amplified.”
He described the post-attack encampments as the most troubling development. Students who denied the events of October 7, set up protest camps, creating a climate that was “very intimidating” for Jewish and pro-Israel students. Still, he said, “the pro-Israel students did fight back, and now we’re at an advantage on many of those campuses.”
Eglash said the Hasbara Fellowship, in partnership with his organization, equips student leaders with “the tools, the techniques, the knowledge, and the content” to return to campus prepared. During a 10-day program in Israel, students visit sites such as Kibbutz Be’eri and the Nova festival grounds, meet survivors, hear from soldiers, and travel north to understand the security threats from Lebanon and the Golan Heights. “They can tell what they’ve seen,” he said, rather than rely on secondhand narratives.
The challenge, he noted, is countering what he called misinformation. “A refuted lie is a difficult thing,” he said, describing how students struggle to answer claims they see as distorted or false.
Over decades of work, Eglash said he remains in contact with alumni who now serve as community and business leaders. “That seed was planted within them,” he said. “It’s never going to get out of their system.”
He also advises students facing campus dilemmas, from swastikas on dorm doors to BDS votes and professors making anti-Israel claims in class. Strategies range from filing complaints to mobilizing alumni and community pressure.
Levine said his group focuses on bringing student leaders to Israel to counter what he called widespread misinformation online. “We have 80 students here now meeting with October 7th survivors, meeting with hostage families, released hostages,” he said. “We live in a world of lies. … You just step on the ground here, and it empowers you so much.”
For example, Levine cited the 2021 campaign surrounding Sheikh Jarrah. Social media portrayed the neighborhood as “an occupied Palestinian village,” amplified by celebrities and activists. But when students visited, the reality was different. “You get off the bus, and in one second you realize, wait a second … there’s an ancient Jewish holy site here,” he said, referring to the tomb of Shimon HaTzaddik, where Jews have prayed for centuries. “It’s five minutes from the Old City of Jerusalem. It is Jerusalem, it is Israel, it is Jewish.” While Arab families live there, he argued, describing the area as a Palestinian village from which residents were being expelled “is a lie.”
Levine said the program, which has brought more than 3,000 students from the US and Canada since 2001, trains leaders to counter BDS efforts, build alliances, and respond to campus hostility.
“The core issue really goes beyond campus,” Levine said. “There’s a propaganda war against Israel. … I think it’s time for really all Western societies to wake up.”
After attending the fellowship, Bendaat reported that she recently helped start a Students Supporting Israel chapter and, as the incoming vice president of social action at Hillel, plans to apply what she learned on the trip.
Friedman said that participating in a Hasbara Fellowship trip to Israel helped her develop knowledge and communication skills to address what she observes on campus. Visiting locations discussed in class, she said, allowed her to “see for myself” what she had previously learned through opinion-driven lectures. “I definitely think skill-wise, it taught me how to be a better advocate, better with social media, better with talking communication.”
Simone Schwartz, a 20-year-old student at Washington and Lee University, said the trip helped her understand places often portrayed differently in the media. “I came here to learn the truth about the land of Israel,” she said. Meeting families in Judea and Samaria, visiting Hebron, and speaking with journalists, soldiers, and survivors from Kibbutz Be’eri, she said, provided a perspective she could not gain from afar. “These are just regular people trying to raise a family in their homeland.”
The experience, she said, strengthened her resolve to be “an Israel advocate on campus and … in my life.”
