David Bernstein | 4.24.2024 1:25 PM
April 15, 2024, was admitted students day at Northwestern University. Student protestors took advantage of that day to, well, protest.
As the Daily Northwestern reported, "Demonstrators outside Sargent and Allison handed out flyers that welcomed admitted students to what they called the 'real Northwestern' around noon." The leaflet handed out by protesters accused Northwestern of "funneling Jewish students into Hillel, the Zionist 'foundation for Jewish life.'"
Later in the day, students held a protest rally, which included a student inveighing again NU Hillel as the "Zionist home of Jewish life on campus" in a speech during the rally. "Hillel is one of the many ways in which this university is complicit in infusing Jewishness with Zionism," the organizer said.
For the uninitiated, Hillel is the mainstream, international Jewish student organization that has hundreds of chapters in the US. Hillel provides religious and cultural programming to any Jewish (or non-Jewish, if they are interested) students who seek it. The only limitation Hillel has, ideologically speaking, is that it won't sponsor or partner with groups that call for Israel to cease to exist, nor who support boycotting Israel-related entities. That said, "anti-Zionist" students are welcome to participate in Hillel activities, and it does not impose any ideological litmus tests on participants. Wanting Israel to continue to exist is a position shared by well over ninety percent of American Jews.
The obvious reason that NU activists were attacking Hillel on admitted students day was to discourage students who either support Israel's existence, or are sufficiently indifferent to Israel to........