{"id":219039,"date":"2026-07-23T00:20:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T00:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/219039\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T00:20:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T00:20:12","slug":"anti-zionism-still-ravages-ucla-some-non-jewish-students-seek-answers-in-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/219039\/","title":{"rendered":"Anti-Zionism still ravages UCLA. Some non-Jewish students seek answers in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of college students shuffled into a hotel conference room in Jerusalem on a recent Monday evening, settling in to hear a lecture about modern Israeli history after a long day visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and the Mount Herzl military cemetery.<\/p>\n

Three days into what was for most students their first visit to Israel, they had already taken in a lot.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of us were surprised to learn how deeply ingrained IDF service is within Israeli society,\u201d said Noah Schranz, a Jewish student leader on the tour. \u201cAfter all the accusations we\u2019ve heard that Israeli soldiers are \u2018baby killers,\u2019 our group spoke with normal 20-year-old kids who look just like us, and many of them have friends who were killed by Hamas.\u201d<\/p>\n

There would be many more eye-opening lessons for the 15 non-Jewish student leaders from the University of California, Los Angeles, who came on the 10-day visit sponsored by the Maccabee Task Force. The trip was designed to help the school\u2019s estimated 3,000 Jews build allies on a campus that has been one of America\u2019s most high-profile flashpoints for protests following the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know much about the conflict before I came,\u201d said Daniel Diercks, a UCLA senior majoring in psychology, who said he now plans to organize outreach events with Jewish students next year at the campus ministry he works with. \u201cNow, I feel really invested in the issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In addition to the anti-Israel rallies<\/a>, encampments<\/a>, and the recent student council condemnation<\/a> of a talk by former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov,\u00a0many of UCLA\u2019s 31,000 undergraduates feel a constant and overwhelming pressure to pick a side in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, according to Dan Gold, executive director of UCLA\u2019s Hillel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest thing that changed on campus after October 7, beyond how ugly, intimidating and violent things got, was the fact that, almost overnight, Jewish students didn\u2019t know who had their backs anymore,\u201d said Gold, who estimated that about 10% of the student body is Jewish.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tUCLA student Noah Schranz on a Maccabee Task Force trip to Israel, July 6, 2026. (Zev Stub\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe anti\u2011Zionist movement is basically telling people, \u2018You\u2019re either with us or against us.\u2019 That\u2019s a hard thing for 18- and 19\u2011year\u2011olds to deal with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

MTF is a nonprofit founded in 2015 by the late billionaire philanthropist Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson, to build alliances with non-Jewish students on campuses steeped in anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment. Alongside partnerships with campus partners such as Hillel and Chabad, the organization is best known for bringing non\u2011Jewish student leaders on trips of 8-10 days to learn about the complexity of the conflict from both sides.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that trips to Israel are a powerful tool to connect young Jews and even young evangelicals to Israel,\u201d said MTF founding executive director David Brog. \u201c[We\u2019ve] found that most anti-Israel student leaders are not antisemites. They\u2019re typically good people who believe the ugly false narrative about Israel that dominates their spaces. When we destroy that narrative, we change the student.\u201d<\/p>\n

UCLA, one of the country\u2019s highest-profile centers of anti-Israel activism, was among the first to host an MTF trip, Gold said, adding that the results have proven themselves.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tUCLA campus police cycle around the perimeter of a pro-Palestinian encampment on the UCLA campus April 26, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo\/Damian Dovarganes)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most basic types of wins are when participants come back to campus and decide to run programs to promote dialogue between Jewish students and other groups,\u201d Gold said. \u201cIt could be a program about a holiday, or food, or politics \u2014 just the willingness to organize such programs is a big step.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some have taken bigger steps. One participant, Aaden Poyuzina, created a campus organization called Common Ground Collective to create community events for dialogue between students of different faiths.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is the only student leader that I know of who has gotten a Jewish student and an Arab student to be in the same room talking about their backgrounds,\u201d Gold said.<\/p>\n

Losing friends over a free trip to Israel<\/p>\n

But even getting students to come on a free trip wasn\u2019t easy, Gold said. In addition to the uncertainties surrounding the US-Israel war with Iran in March, many started to face intense scrutiny from their peers when they said they were going.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a lot of pressure on them, but in some ways, the act of coming on this trip was a rejection of that dynamic,\u201d Gold said. \u201cA few of them have told us that they\u2019ve lost friends over this, or been asked why they are supporting baby killers, things like that. But by coming, they are saying that they don\u2019t\u00a0accept that they have to choose a side in order to learn and ask questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tUCLA students at the site of The Nova Festival in southern Israel during a Maccabee Task Force trip to Israel, July 2026. (UCLA Hillel)<\/p>\n

Anti-Israel activism has been a feature of UCLA for years, with movements calling on the university to divest<\/a> from Israel dating back to at least 2014.<\/p>\n

But tensions spiked shortly after the Hamas atrocities of the October 7, 2023, came to light, as pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel groups, led primarily by Students for Justice in Palestine, organized<\/a> marches demanding that the university divest from companies supplying weapons to Israel.<\/p>\n

The following spring, a heavily fortified anti-Israel encampment in the school\u2019s quad attracted nationwide attention for blocking<\/a> Jewish and Israeli students from accessing classrooms and campus libraries. Tensions culminated in overnight violence<\/a> on April 30, when counter-protesters attacked the site. It was hours before police intervened and subsequently dismantled the encampment, arresting over 200 demonstrators.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tPolice patrol as workers clean up anti-Israel graffiti at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus after police evicted pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters, May 2, 2024. (Frederic J. Brown\/AFP)<\/p>\n

Over the following months, the university faced legal action, as the federal government accused<\/a> UCLA of \u201cdeliberate indifference\u201d to discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The suit charged that the university enabled<\/a> a hostile environment where Jewish and Israeli students were systematically excluded from campus facilities.<\/p>\n

Several student organizations, including SJP, were suspended for violating campus rules, while strict new guidelines governing public demonstrations were put into place. Pro-Palestinian vigils and demonstrations continue to occur, but they are now met with greater security and enforcement, the university says.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tOmer Shem Tov speaks onstage during the humanitarian award dinner for Warner Bros. Discovery President and CEO David Zaslav, presented by the Simon Wiesenthal Center on October 30, 2025, in Beverly Hills, California. (Jon Kopaloff\/Getty Images for Simon Wiesenthal Center\/AFP)<\/p>\n

When former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov spoke<\/a> at a campus event on Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day, the event proceeded peacefully, and when UCLA\u2019s Undergraduate Students Associated Council (USAC) wrote a letter condemning the talk for \u201cselective platforming,\u201d university leaders and Jewish student groups responded<\/a> immediately with \u201cdisgust.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Jewish students are still afraid to identify with anything relating to Israel, Schranz said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t experienced real antisemitism myself, but whenever I tell people I\u2019m going to Israel, I see that the mood changes,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of my friends are scared to say anything, or they\u2019ll lie about their visits here. It\u2019s not a fear of violence, it\u2019s about being excluded and isolated from everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Optimism for the future<\/p>\n

Despite the hostile climate, Jewish life at UCLA has been expanding, Gold said. The Hillel house he runs provides a coffee shop, daily lunch and dinner programs, study spaces, workshops, classes, and over 25 student\u2011run clubs ranging from cultural and political groups to religious societies, he said. On a typical weekday, he added, 400\u2013500 students pass through the building, an all-time high.<\/p>\n

Other organizations, such as Chabad, Olami, and the Orthodox Union\u2019s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus, add additional layers of Jewish education and culture, Gold said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, participants on the trip said their experiences in Israel had opened their eyes to the reality on the ground, and that they looked forward to using their newfound knowledge to educate others.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tDan Gold, executive director of UCLA\u2019s Hillel, on a Maccabee task Force trip to Israel, July 6, 2026. (Zev Stub\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

Jack Elginer, a political science major, said he appreciated experiencing the empathy and compassion exhibited by the people he sees vilified in the media, and said he would seek to promote dialogue in the groups he works with.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis tour did a great job of showing both sides of the conflict with fairness and nuance,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople need to understand that everyone here is a regular person who just wants to protect their families.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Gold, that\u2019s exactly the kind of thing he was hoping to hear \u2014 even if he understands how difficult the road ahead will be.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen these kids say they want to organize programs next year, I don\u2019t think they understand the opposition they are going to face from their peers,\u201d he said. \u201cIt may seem obvious to them now, but opening people\u2019s minds on campus will require real bravery.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of college students shuffled into a hotel conference room in Jerusalem on a recent Monday evening,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[37957,31480,37,63211,29472],"class_list":["post-219039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-american-college-campuses","tag-antisemitism-on-campus","tag-israel","tag-maccabee-task-force","tag-ucla"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116966433176803527","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}