Wednesday, May 8 , 2024 • 7 PM Israel Time | 12 AM EST | 9 AM PST
Tamar Uriel-Beeri, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Jerusalem Post, speaks with Ilan Sinelnikov, founder and president of Students Supporting Israel (SSI), the pro-Israel international campus movement. Sinelnikov founded the organization twelve years ago while a student at the University of Minnesota, when he experienced Israel Apartheid Week on campus. Today, the organization is registered and active on over 200 college campuses throughout North America and three countries.
Sinelnikov explains that students who say that they are anti-Zionists are, in reality, expressing antisemitic sentiments. “They traffic antisemitism under every word they say and under every action they practice,” he says, adding that it is one of the biggest challenges is to ensure that those who hate Israel cannot be allowed to define what Zionism means. “They try to take the word Zionism, smear it, and define it for Jewish students, not knowing that the majority of the Jewish students at the university level are Zionists. Even if they’re not the most vocal or the most visible Zionists, they do have a connection to the State of Israel. It’s part of their identity.”
The progression of anti-Israel feelings and antisemitism on college campuses, notes Sinelnikov, did not happen overnight and is not only due to misinformation. Instead, he says, it is a process that has been happening for decades. Many Middle Eastern countries have invested significant funds in academic departments on American college campuses, and their influence has been felt in the re-education of American college students.
Misinformation is spread through social media, he says. Most college students learn about world events from social media sources such as TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram, and Sinelnikov points out that there is a vast amount of misinformation and lies about Israel that is transmitted over social media. “If I’m eighteen or nineteen years old, and that is what I see for two or three hours a day, of course, I will be misinformed about Israel.”
Antisemitism is the oldest virus in the history of the world, he says, noting that it has been present as long as the Jewish people have been in existence. SSI cannot solve the issue of antisemitism, he explains, but it can empower students – both Jewish and non-Jewish – to get together as a group and promote Israel.
Sinelnikov notes that the largely anti-Israel slant of student governments must also be overcome and suggests that pro-Israel Zionist students run for student government, both to counter anti-Israel student resolutions and to propose pro-Israel ones instead.