For most students, the fall semester means opportunity. For Jewish students, it means preparing for battle.
As Canadian students return to university this fall, the atmosphere should be defined by excitement for new classes, late-night study sessions, and the connections that make campus life meaningful. Instead, Jewish students are once again bracing for an environment where safety, identity, and the right to learn are under constant siege. Campus should be about education. Yet for Jewish students, it has become about survival.
Last year was my first year at the University of Manitoba, and I arrived ready to learn, to grow, and to build friendships. Instead, I was confronted with open antisemitism. Last February, a candidate for student government openly compared Ashkenazi Jews to Nazis and accused us of considering ourselves the Aryan race, along with a series of other antisemitic posts and statements.
When I reported it, I expected accountability. Instead, the aftermath consumed my life. My name was shared with the candidate immediately after I filed my complaint despite my safety concerns as an openly Jewish student, and was later exposed again in communications from the elections appeals committee. This led to sleepless nights, constant anxiety, and a complete inability to focus on schoolwork, as I worried that the candidate’s knowledge of my identity and their ties to the SJP movement on my campus would be used to harass and maybe harm me.
Even after the issue was resolved, people wearing keffiyahs would point at me as I walked across campus as if I had a target on my back.
That ordeal made one thing clear: Jewish students often have to sacrifice their education and peace of mind just to confront antisemitism. And yet if we don’t, this hatred clearly will continue.
I hoped this year would be different. But within days of returning, that hope was shattered. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) launched an aggressive campaign for the student union to adopt the Anti-Palestinian Racism (APR) definition.
While it claims to oppose racism, the APR is in reality a weapon designed to silence Jewish students, casting any challenge to divisive Palestinian historical and political narratives as “racist.”
If passed, the result would be an environment where Jewish students are pressured to stay quiet, unable to defend themselves or Israel, question historical claims, or even discuss terrorism and security. Debates would be shut down, free expression stifled, and antisemitic bullying would continue to thrive.
The hostility that existed before the resolution and since has not been confined to online posts or debates.
This year is proving to be just the same. Literally the day after school started in September, our Hillel room, was attacked by someone screaming obscenities and trying to force their way inside before plastering a flyer on the door that read, “I love rape and genocide.”
This was not a lighthearted prank or a legitimate political expression. It was a direct act of hate to belittle Jewish identity.
I am reminded of this hostility almost every day with anti-zionist symbols and rhetoric. One cannot walk the halls or sit in class without noticing a keffiyah. To most Jewish students, the keffiyah has, from the Zionist Jewish perspective, justifiably become a symbol signaling allegiance to movements that deny Israel’s existence and celebrate violence against Jews. Its widespread display does not foster dialogue or diversity; it entrenches division and contributes to an environment where Jewish students are made to feel unsafe, silenced, and afraid to openly voice their opinions or identify themselves.
This is not only a Jewish problem; it is a Canadian problem. Universities are publicly funded institutions entrusted with educating the next generation of leaders, professionals, and citizens.
When they allow antisemitism to masquerade as social justice, the message they send is clear: some forms of hate are tolerated.
As a student, I did not come to university to be an activist. But I have repeatedly found myself compelled to defend my community against relentless campaigns that attempt to redefine our identity and incite violence against Pro-Israel Jewish students. This is not a student experience that anyone deserves. Nor is it the one Canada should tolerate.
Jewish students cannot fight this battle alone. We need parents, alumni, and community members to demand accountability from university organizations, to support students when they are targeted. Make it clear that silence is not neutrality. Every parent should be able to send their child to university without fear.
If we truly mean never again, it must include speaking out when antisemitism is excused, disregarded, or handled poorly. Our collective voice, as members of the Jewish community at large, carries significant weight, and it’s time we use it to pressure universities and student groups to address our concerns with action.
This article was originally published in TheJewishPost.
