(JTA) — More than 200 students at Florida Atlantic University’s Boca Raton campus received fake eviction notices from a pro-Palestinian group.
The notices were posted March 30 by the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine, the Florida Jewish Journal reported April 5. The notices were posted to draw attention to the alleged number of Palestinian home demolitions by Israeli troops over the past three decades.
Some of the students who did not read the notice carefully thought that they were actually being evicted, a Jewish student told the newspaper.
“We’re considering it a hate crime," Rayna Exelbierd, 20, a Jewish student who received a fake eviction notice, told the newspaper. "The flier promotes hate; it doesn’t promote peace. People were scared by it. People felt threatened by it.”
The fliers contained the university housing department’s official stamp.
“The recent mock eviction postings did not comply with the policies of University Housing and Residential Life or the Office of Student Involvement and Leadership concerning the distribution of printed material, and therefore the postings were removed,” Charles Brown, FAU’s senior vice president for student affairs, said in a statement.
Andrew Rosenkranz, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Florida region, said the university is going to open an investigation into the incident.
CORRECTION: The original version of this story mistakenly reported that the 200 students who received the eviction notices were Jewish.
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