Hate crime suspected in torching of succah at San Jose State
 

By David Meir-Levi

SAN JOSE, California—Silicon Valley Hillel serves Jewish students at San Jose State, Santa Clara University and Foothill and De Anza Colleges.  The Hillel offices are at San Jose State.  Jewish students and faculty celebrate Jewish holidays there, including the holiday of Sukkot (Tabernacles), for which the students built the out-door ceremonial shelter known as a sukkah (hut, tabernacle). 

But this year’s celebration was marred by what may have been a hate crime: late Tuesday evening (10/04), or early Wednesday morning, someone attempted to burn down the sukkah by persistently holding a flame to its nylon fire-resistant side panel.  The arsonist kept at his work long enough to melt much of the side panel and some of the metal frame. He also intentionally burned the paper decorations hanging from the ceiling.

Sue Maltiel, executive director of Silicon Valley Hillel, notified police and FBI.  Supporters of Hillel, students, and faculty showed up in force the following Friday night to express solidarity and offer assistance.  Letters of support were received from local churches and a local mosque.

It is clear that the fire was deliberately set, because no carelessly tossed cigarette or lit match could have melted the fire-resistant panel. But in the absence of notes or messages or graffiti, the FBI and police are hesitant to call the arson a hate-crime.  Sgt. Mike Santos, with the university police, noted that the campus is in a troubled neighborhood, and vagrants, winos, and homeless often sleep on Hillel’s patio.  He seemed to be implying that some transient drunk might have set the fire, as opposed to an anti-Semite intent on doing harm to Jews.

However, it must be noted that the sukkah is an obviously Jewish structure, with Hebrew writing and Jewish decorations plainly visible; and the arsonist spent quite a while intentionally holding the flame to the nylon panel in order to melt it; and then intentionally burned the decorations. This was not a casual bit of vandalism.  It was premeditated arson.  However troubled this neighborhood may be, there have been no cases of arson here for years.  It looks very much like the sukkah was the chosen target precisely because it is a Jewish ceremonial object.

Further adding to the likelihood that this was indeed an anti-Semitic hate crime is the occurrence of an incontrovertible anti-Semitic hate crime at UC Davis just one day later.

Someone spray-painted “END ISRAELI OCCUPATION” and ‘FREE PALESTINE” on the walls of the UC Davis sukkah.  Mike Amerikaner, the Hillel program director at UC Davis, noted that he had been dealing with anti-Semitism on campus for quite a while, and this latest incident was indicative of a much larger problem.  The UC Davis campus police have not yet gone on record with a response.

The graffiti on the UC Davis sukkah, and perhaps the arson attack at San Jose State, present examples of how anti-Israel sentiment can be expressed in an anti-Semitic manner.  The sukkah is a Jewish religious structure.  The vandals intentionally defaced this Jewish structure to express their anti-Israel sentiment.  Such anti-Israel sentiments have become commonplace in university classrooms and at university-sponsored events where campus speakers routinely demonize and berate Israel, erroneously declaring it a racist state founded on an apartheid imperialist ideology (Zionism).

Purists may assert that anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism. But the obsessive manner in which some faculty and student groups disproportionately condemn Israel for its restrained and defensive actions against the seemingly endless relentless terror war being waged against it by Hamas and Fatah and other Arab terror groups, even while these same faculty and students ignore the terrorists’ daily crimes against humanity and incitement to genocide, creates a blurring of the borders between the two.  Thus someone exposed to the virulently anti-Zionist diatribe on college campuses can be motivated to express his dissatisfaction with Israel by attacking Jewish targets.

This virulent anti-Israel transmogrification of the campus commitment to free speech and to academic freedom is not just a threat to the educational and scholarly integrity of our university system; it is also a clear and present danger to Jews.

David Meir-Levi  teaches Middle East history at San Jose State University and serves as a senior project manager at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.