Since the intifada broke out a couple years back, there’s been a surge in anti-Semitism on campuses across the continent:

• April ’02: An article in Rutgers’ Daily Targum served as a mouthpiece for Pro-Palestinian demonstrators without allowing any counter-argument on behalf of Israelis or Jewish people, despite echoing allegations of attrocities committed against Palestinians by Israel. This type of biased reporting has occured on several campuses throughout the country.
• May ’02: Soon after a poster charging Jews with blood libel surfaced on campus at San Francisco State University, students a pro-Israel rally were surrounded by a pro-Palestinian contingent and verbally accosted with epiteths such as “Hitler didn’t finish the job,” and “Get out, or we’ll kill you.”*
• September ’02: Pro-Palestinian activists at Concordia University rioted when former Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu was to speak at the school. Concordia’s Student Union later banned the campus Hillel.
• December ’02: Israeli academics were targetted with a boycott that was deemed “hypocritical, cynical and unfair” by the ADL.

While the ADL may oft be full of it, this type of scenario seems to be becoming the norm these days.

In response, Jewish student groups are now organizing to combat the proliferation of this anti-Semitism-masked-as-anti-Zionism across the nation’s campuses. One byproduct of this effort offered by the Jewish Agency for Israel, in collaboration with the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is “The Ambassador” online training course which will “empower [students] both in the facts of the conflict, the tools to understand Palestinian propaganda/media bias and the means to advocate Israel.” I believe the general idea is to make it easier for Jewish students to jump down the throat of anyone they catch rocking a kaffiyeh or a Palestinian flag lapel pin.

Mmmm… Zionist propagandist training. Just what we needed. Chas v’shalom we should be offered courses in conflict resolution or something progressive like that.

*Update 4/26 1:30 pm More indepth coverage of this incident can be found here. Nods to Meryl.