I recently beamed as UCLA students — at times so worked up that they almost climbed up on their tables — shouted at each other their irreconcilable views of the Arab-Israeli conflict. I smiled not because the tired Arab-Israeli debate briefly poisoned my classroom as it has University of California campuses, but rather because I made pro-Palestinian students defend Israel and pro-Israel students defend Palestinians. For the first time, they fully, emotionally grasped the other side’s perspective — so well, in fact, that I had to end the exercise early.

It’s been a rare privilege to teach undergraduate sections on the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict at UCLA. I am a former lawyer turned Ph.D. student, driven to change my career path by one question: If propaganda can fuel war (including on U.S. campuses), can communication equally bring peace to Arabs and Jews? Happily, what I have found is that, rather than stifling debate, the fairness and respect that I tried to impose in my class enabled healthy exchange, constructive criticism and, I trust, enduring bonds between my Muslim and Jewish students.

It is precisely for this reason that I recently implored the UC Board of Regents to adopt the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism — which includes demonization of Israel — in their efforts to improve campus climate.

Anti-Israel campus groups — routinely supported by outside lobby groups — have increasingly poisoned campus life with wild anti-Israel invective and accusations so horrific that they boggle the mind. Rather than educating students, BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voices for Peace and others on campus have manufactured mass hostility to Israel by exploiting (and defiling) the sacred narratives of minorities. These groups have varyingly (and incompatibly) equated Israel with apartheid, occupation, ethnic cleansing of natives, genocide, racist sterilization, colonialism, Jim Crow and the like. Thus has the campaign of shaming and isolating Jewish students been waged: by targeted emotional manipulation posing as human rights activism. Consciously have they made Israel — and by extension its supporters on campus — every minority’s enemy.

And the result has been stifled, warped “debate” and an ever-taller barrier dividing Jewish and Muslim students. For how can anyone debate defamation? Why would anyone befriend pariahs?

The UC system long ago enacted policies to prevent this kind of vilification of minorities. Students and faculty are regularly reminded that the university takes a zero tolerance approach to speech that disparages women, religious minorities, sexual minorities and ethnic minorities — all minorities, that is, except for Jews. On the Jewish state — and by extension, on Jewish students with any attachment to the Jewish collective and its dignity — it is now open season. From October to June, there is an endless stream of events, displays and resolutions dehumanizing Israelis, assassinating Israel’s character and, in the long run, giving moral cover to terrorism. This reality has predictably made Jewish students feel isolated, ignored and unsafe.

A definition of anti-Semitism that bans undue assaults and demonization of Israel would put anti-Israel groups on notice and, like with other minorities, serve to temper hate speech that makes students feel unsafe and unwelcome on campus, while allowing intelligent debate. That the line is not always easy to draw between criticism and demonization should not be an impediment to this move, either. Indeed, with respect to numerous minorities, hate speech often poses as policy debate — and yet the UC has generally decided to err on the side of caution. Why should Jewish students not likewise be afforded that caution? Why wouldn’t attacks on Jews that also fall in the grey area between criticism and vilification be individually assessed, while a general norm against anti-Israel demonization stands?

History has a way of rendering decisions we sometimes shy from. The reluctance to afford Jewish students the same protection afforded to all other campus minorities has resulted in the unacceptable situation whereby Jewish students, alone, are forced to choose between pride in their identity — which very much includes Israel — and a welcoming campus environment. That reality can find no justification in the historical facts of this conflict, is morally intolerable and within the Regents’ power to easily fix. I hope that they do the courageous thing and afford Jews the protection that all other groups benefit from by adopting the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism. Only hate speech will lose.

Philippe Assouline is a UCLA section instructor in Middle East politics and studies the influence of political communication on the Arab Israeli conflict.