According to the Anti-Defamation League, over 520 anti-Israel events occurred on college campuses nationwide in the 2014-15 year. That is a 30% increase from the past year. The majority of these events were associated with the BDS movement.

BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. It is a movement that seeks to isolate the State of Israel from the rest of the world by boycotting its government, universities, and businesses, as well as companies that do business with Israeli companies. They use the international law to determine that Israel is an assailant in the Middle East and is an abuser of human rights.

The BDS movement is the most common form of anti-Semitism seen on college campuses. BDS is obstructing the peace process and stands for false information. The overall goal of BDS is to delegitimize the State of Israel and its right to exist; the right for the Jewish people to have a place in this world.

They try to advance their agenda by claiming that the State of Israel is hateful towards Palestinians, but this is far from the truth. Israel wants peace with the Palestinians, yet every time Israel tries to make peace agreements, they refuse. In 2005, Israel gave the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians in an effort to make peace. Israel forced their own people out of their homes in the Gaza Strip to make peace, but the Palestinians now use it to attack Israel. To this day, the Gaza Strip, run by terrorist organization, Hamas, uses schools, hospitals, and homes to fire rockets into Israel.

Most college students who support BDS make the same claims about Israel. Here are many of the claims they make with counter points:

• Israel evicts Palestinians from their homes.
  • Israel only evicts renters who don’t pay rent or are in homes built illegally. Evictions can always be challenged in the court system, which is known for its independence and tendency to rule against the government.
• Israel doesn’t have rights to the West Bank and should leave.
  • Israel has offered several land compromises in efforts to make peace, most recently in the evacuation of the Gaza Strip. Now, Gaza is under control of Hamas and uses schools, hospitals, and homes to shoot rockets into Israel. Many times, the Palestinians have been offered a state of their own, but every time they rejected it. Why? Because it would also mean recognizing the rights of the Jewish people to share the land, and they do not want that. Israel also has legitimate historical and religious claims to the West Bank. Israel believes that all religions should have access to the West Bank, while the BDS movement believes only one religion should.
• Israel’s presence in the West Bank is illegal.
  • Israel entered the West Bank after being attacked by every country bordering it in 1967. Israel was given authority to rule the area until there was peace under the Hague Conventions. The West Bank continues to be an area terrorists use to attack Israel and the Palestinian Authority has rejected any offers of peace, giving Israel the right to keep the peace.

The BDS movement on campus all comes down to one central belief; that the Jewish people don’t have the right to a state in their land with self-determination. This is the largest anti-Semitic movement on campus and it is currently on the rise. It is often ignored because it does not directly call out the Jewish people, but it is a problem and it needs to be known