'Same as the KKK': New SJP-affiliated group works to remove Hillel from US campuses

A new organization has been created on American college campuses with the sole purpose of campaigning to have the Jewish campus organization Hillel removed due to its Zionist affiliations.

The group, which can be found on social media under the name “Drop Hillel,” is affiliated with National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in the US.

Hillel is the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world. It provides a base for around 180,000 Jewish students at 850 universities in 16 countries, according to its website.

Drop Hillel calls itself a “Jewish-led campaign... advocating for divestment from Hillel” that wishes to “weaken Hillel’s grip on Jewish campus life.”

It said Hillel is a Zionist organization concerned first and foremost with bolstering support for the State of Israel.

“Over the last several decades, Hillel has monopolized Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” it added.

According to its social media statement, there is concrete evidence of Hillel’s surveillance and harassment of Palestinian students, as well as initiatives involving trips to Israel (including Birthright) and rules against Palestinians attending events.

Drop Hillel said Hillel is alienating Palestinian and Jewish anti-Zionist students and is collaborating with the IDF.

The group called on universities across the US to cut institutional ties with Hillel and to create grassroots Jewish organizations that are inclusive to anti-Zionist Jews.

“[We wish to] build alternative Jewish community structures on campuses that are capable of recognizing a Judaism beyond Zionism,” it said.

Hillel has taken over as an authority on antisemitism, which it criticizes as a means of suppressing Palestinian liberation, Drop Hillel said. It also said Hillel creates “antisemitic campus climate moral panic.”

The accounts that Drop Hillel follows are almost exclusively anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian groups, such as Jewish Voices for Peace, Jews for Ceasefire, Anti-Zionist Minyan, Students for Justice in Palestine, and various BDS groups.

Anti-Zionist Sukkahs

Alongside Columbia Jewish Voices for Peace and Columbia Apartheid Divest, Drop Hillel recently erected anti-Zionist sukkot on Columbia University’s campus, which they named “liberation sukkahs.”

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A post shared by BC/CU Jewish Voice for Peace (@columbia.jvp)

“While we sit in our sukkah in observance of our ritual and tradition, the Palestinians shelter in tents because their homes have been destroyed,” it said. “We refuse to profane our religion by celebrating in a sukkah built by a pro-genocide institution.”

According to the Daily Tar Heel, the student paper of the University of North Carolina, Students for Justice in Palestine held a rally on October 9 in which they called for “no more Hillel.”

The UNC SJP said that Hillel, like “the KKK, the Proud Boys or Heels for Israel,” is a “supremacist ideology” and should not be allowed on campus.

Hannah Spinrad, executive director of UNC Hillel, told the Daily Tar Heel that comparing Hillel to organizations like the KKK is hateful and antisemitic.

She said attempts to dismantle Hillel “[create] a hostile environment for Jewish students on campus.”

However, a member of SJP told the Daily Tar Heel that allegations of antisemitism are a “red herring” to distract from Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Disputing this, UNC Hillel VP Michael Wagner said, “We’re the ones who get to say what hurts us or what doesn’t hurt us. You can’t.”