Jewish students feel unsafe and unwelcome at the UvA
Jewish students at the UvA do not feel safe due to strong anti-Israel sentiment and implicit calls to violence during the recent occupation. “If you don’t subscribe to a pro-Palestinian ideology at the UvA, you’ll be in for a rough time.”
The exams are approaching, so on Tuesday afternoon the library is heaving with unsuspecting students. Among them is Israeli-Jewish student Tamar Efrati (25) and her friends, hard at work on their bachelor’s thesis for PPLE, until they hear noise coming from the REC-ABCD hall. “Perfect time for a break,” they think – let’s see what’s happening, maybe grab a coffee.
In the video that follows, a chaotic scene unfolds. People wearing coloured balaclavas parade through the hall; a jeering crowd shouts incendiary slogans; UvA official Jan Lintsen is abused; and draped over the balustrade is a huge banner reading “Cut ties with Israeli colonisers. Free Palestine”. “It was terrifying,” several students tell Folia, right in the middle of a university foyer.
Intifada
Efrati’s arrival – who never hides that she is Israeli-Jewish in tutorial group and wears her Magen David as a pendant every day – does not go unnoticed by some of those present. “Someone in a balaclava suddenly called me a ‘dirty Zionist’,” she recalls. “No one intervened or told them to stop.”
When she later hears the word “intifada” (Arabic for ‘uprising’), she and her Jewish friends know it’s time to leave the building. “It felt very unsafe to walk around there,” says Efrati. “You couldn’t engage in conversation, so you just fled. My entire friend group left.”
Shocked, she emails both the diversity officer of the Faculty of Law and UvA’s central diversity officer, Machiel Keestra, the following day. She explains that ‘Intifada’, in the collective memory of Israelis, refers to terrorist attacks in which people lost family and friends. “So when Israelis hear that, they feel unsafe,” Efrati clarifies. “I don’t think many students realise that.”
She requests meetings with the diversity officers – a role established to promote inclusion and diversity – and with the occupation’s organisers, Amsterdam Autonomous Coalition and UvARebellion. No response follows. “It’s a sensitive topic and precisely why we should have a conversation,” she protests. “That’s what a university is for: exchanging ideas.”
‘Brainwashed by Israel’
This isn’t the first time Efrati has felt unheard or unwelcome at the UvA. During a lecture at the Amsterdam Centre for Middle Eastern Studies (ACMES), she asked a critical question about the Middle East’s geopolitics, only to be told by the lecturer, “You’ve been brainwashed by the Israeli government.” “I wasn’t disrupting the class,” she says. “Everyone else was anti-Israel or knew little about it. Apparently you can no longer debate respectfully.”
She also recalls a professor on the Political Responsibility course promoting the global BDS movement – which NOS describes as advocating economic pressure on Israel to end the “occupation of Palestinian territories”. A majority of the German parliament has deemed the movement antisemitic. Efrati did not dare challenge him. “The lecturer decides your grade, so you just keep quiet.”
Indifferent stance of the UvA
Another UvA law student of Jewish heritage – who wishes to remain anonymous due to potential repercussions – was profoundly shocked by the anti-Israel sentiment during the occupation. He sent a letter, now in Folia’s possession, to the UvA stating that he does not feel safe on campus.
He would love to attend lectures wearing a kippah but does not dare to do so on Roeterseiland. “If you do not subscribe to a pro-Palestinian ideology, you are in for a rough time at the UvA,” he writes. “I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened if I had been wearing my kippah and walked past that crowd of protesters.”
He lambasts the university’s indifference: “A call for an Intifada, including the boycott posters, is a political and violent action aimed at inciting conflict and promoting violence,” he explains. “But so far nothing has come from the UvA: no statement of condemnation, absolutely nothing.”
“Everyone should feel safe, and the university should be a welcoming place regardless of background, sexual orientation, political views or gender,” he continues. “However, it seems the UvA turns a blind eye when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the law student concludes.
The University of Amsterdam does not support calls for a boycott of Israel or Israeli institutions. International collaboration between universities, as well as among individual scholars, is a cornerstone of the academic world and an essential element of academic freedom; such ties are normally only broken in the event of international sanctions, as was recently the case with Russia.
Open debate
Naturally, the university is a place for diverse opinions, for debate, for exposure to different viewpoints and for demonstration. However, no boundaries should be overstepped in the process.
Security stepped up
A UvA spokesperson told Folia that the university received several emails from concerned and shocked Jewish staff and organisations immediately after the demonstration. According to the spokesperson, replies were given privately but not publicly.
“We too were appalled by the banners calling for a boycott and the chants urging an intifada,” says the spokesperson. “We fully understand and deeply regret that Jewish students feel unsafe due to an implicit call to violence (‘Intifada revolution, Palestina free, from the river to the sea’). The university must be a place where no one – as these interviews show – hesitates to dress as they wish or to be open about their religion or identity.”
The UvA has now instructed its security team to be extra vigilant for expressions – verbal or on banners, for example – that are offensive or create a sense of insecurity for students or staff.
The name of the anonymous law student in this article is known to the editorial team.
