Since Oct. 7, 2023, antisemitism and intimidation have been rife on campuses, including the University of British Columbia, where there have been numerous incidents of graffiti and personal attacks on the university’s president, among others. (photo from Hillel BC)
Jewish university students and their allies are reflecting on a challenging year at British Columbia’s postsecondary institutions. Activists continue to make life difficult – but leaders at the campus organization Hillel BC are emphasizing the resilience of students and the unity of the community.
The first full academic year since the Oct. 7 terror attacks and the ensuing war wrapped up recently. In some ways, it was less chaotic than the previous year, but more intense, according to Ohad Gavrieli, executive director of Hillel BC.
“If we could summarize this year,” Gavrieli said, “it would be that there were fewer fires but they blazed with greater intensity.”
Last year, campuses across North America, including at the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria and Vancouver Island University, were occupied by anti-Israel protest encampments.
“Last summer, the encampment occupied the campus, literally and figuratively, for months, demanding responses and counter-narratives that detracted from our primary work,” said Gavrieli.
Those disruptions ended before the new academic year, but 2024-’25 began with a flurry of hostility from anti-Israel activists. UBC’s main Point Grey campus seems to be the locus of the activism, with other campuses showing similar but reduced agitation commensurate with their size, he said.
At UBC, the activists’ scattershot tactics have been honed into more targeted protests, boycotts and campaigns, he said. At the same time, Hillel, Jewish students and a significant group of allies are more prepared than they were when the explosion of anti-Israel – and often overtly antisemitic – activism roiled campuses beginning in October 2023.
The 2024-’25 school year opened with vandalism, including a pig’s head being mounted on a gate near the home of the university’s president in a protest that apparently targeted the RCMP, Israel and the UBC administration. The head was accompanied by a sign reading “Pigs off campus.” The incident, for which anti-Israel activists took credit online, was an apparent reference to the surname of UBC’s president, Benoit-Antoine Bacon, but, in online discourse, Israelis, Zionists and Jews are often depicted as pigs.
The UBC campus, and others, were swathed in anti-Israel graffiti as students returned to school last September.
In October, a conference featuring an Israeli archeologist had to be relocated from UBC’s Green College after the facility’s windows were smashed and hateful messages were spray-painted on the building during the night before the scheduled event.
In November, a coordinated “Strike for Palestine” was organized, including an occupation of UBC’s Global Lounge, the office where students access international academic exchanges. Anti-Israel groups also gathered outside the Buchanan Building, the main arts complex, demanding UBC’s financial divestment from Israel.
In December and January, the campus was blanketed with posters accusing UBC’s board of governors of supporting genocide. Graffiti and harassment continued, with some students reporting they no longer felt safe in class.
In February and March, UBC saw a student referendum campaign calling for divestment from Israel. This was followed by another “Student Strike for Palestine.”
When Vancouver and Whistler, including UBC, hosted the Invictus Games, an international adaptive sports competition for wounded, injured and sick military personnel and veterans, protesters homed in on the presence of Israeli soldiers and veterans, causing disruptions and engaging in further extensive vandalism.
As the school year ended, convocation ceremonies were targeted, with protesters and some graduates wearing keffiyehs or other symbols and carrying or unfurling signs, disrupting numerous graduation events throughout the province.
Despite these and many more challenges, Gavrieli said, Hillel continued to serve as a refuge of safety, belonging and Jewish pride.
“We continued to host weekly Shabbat dinners, hot lunches and holiday celebrations across our campuses, including new programming at UBC Okanagan and Thompson Rivers University,” he said.
The campus organization has seen significantly increased interest in their programs and expanded involvement over the past two academic terms, as students, faculty and staff converged on Hillel for emotional and practical support. These programs include significantly enhanced mental health services, said Gavrieli, as well as building organizational capacity empowering students to advocate for themselves and their community.
The achievements of Jewish students and their allies were marked at a Night of Resilience, held at Hillel UBC on March 27.
Looking back at the year past, Gavrieli emphasized the high points, especially the strength of Jewish students who have “risen with courage, dignity and pride.” He also cited continuing healthy dialogue with university administrators and other stakeholders, though he expressed the wish that university leadership were more vocal in condemning hate-motivated language and acts, and addressing abuse of podium. Many professors and teaching assistants have pressed their personal political opinions on students, Gavrieli said, including instances in which the subject matter was not remotely related to the instructors’ disciplines.
Relations with campus security and the respective police services have been universally positive and constructive.
“We have received nothing short of exemplary cooperation from all areas of security and policing,” Gavrieli said.
Other achievements include a “We Are Here” toolkit, an online resource that helps students file formal complaints and access support. This technological response systematized reporting procedures to make intelligence gathering more effective and to ensure easy and immediate access for students needing supports.
Hillel staff successfully assisted several students in navigating institutional processes, according to Gavrieli, including challenging biased grading. They condemned the disruption of academic spaces, voiced concerns to the administration and stood with students who felt abandoned.
Gavrieli expressed gratitude to individual and organizational allies in the Jewish community, who have ensured that the campus organization has the resources it needs to respond as best as they can to the situations arising on campuses province-wide.
Roman Chelyuk is one of a small but increasingly visible group of non-Jewish allies who have coalesced around Hillel in recent years. Growing up in Ukraine, Chelyuk had Jewish peers and family friends, and has traveled twice to Israel. He was supposed to travel there again last month with the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee but the conflict canceled that mission.
He first connected with Hillel when the Ukrainian students’ club did a joint program with the Jewish students and he hung around, partly motivated by the isolation he was seeing among his new Jewish friends.
Chelyuk, who just graduated in international relations, was treasurer and, for a time, interim president of the Israel on Campus club.
One of the clearest signs he sees of the changed situation on campus is that Jewish students are challenged in making connections with other affinity and interest groups like the one through which he was first introduced to Hillel. Joint initiatives with other student clubs have largely dried up.
“That was easy to organize before Oct. 7 and it was not after,” he said. “It’s generally heartbreaking.”
Sara Sontz, who expects to graduate next spring in sociology, was president of UBC’s Jewish Students’ Association this past year.
“It’s definitely still been challenging,” she said, citing protests on campus, professors derailing topics by discussing the Israel-Hamas conflict when it is unrelated to the discipline, even singling out students with Jewish names and asking for their opinions on current events.
“I find it really frustrating because students are there to learn on a specific topic for their degree and it’s frustrating when Jewish students are then forced to almost hide their identities because they don’t want to be called on or put into an awkward position within the class,” she said.
“We haven’t let all the hate and all the protests affect how strong we feel about ourselves and our community. I think that’s the most important thing.”
– Sara Sontz
“I’ve always been open about my Jewish identity,” said Sontz, “but, after Oct. 7, I and many other Jewish students stopped wearing our Magen David necklaces or, for some, they stopped feeling comfortable even going to class – and some stopped going to class – just because of the safety concerns and the emotional discomfort.”
There are silver linings, Sontz said.
“I always try to look for the bright side,” she said. “The one thing I found is that the community got stronger after Oct. 7, due to the necessity of having to have a unified front, to have a community to go to when you have such difficult problems and having your fellow Jewish students, or Hillel and Chabad on campus, really provided that safe space.”
She hopes for better things in the new academic year, though her optimism has limits.
“It’s constant,” she said. “It’s never-ending.… But we haven’t lost hope. We are a really strong community.… We haven’t let all the hate and all the protests affect how strong we feel about ourselves and our community. I think that’s the most important thing.”
