Brown University’s Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs’ website says it is “Seeking to promote a just and peaceful world through research, teaching and public engagement.” It gives someone hope that it is a force for good.

Alas, it spreads antisemitism while pretending to address the scourge.

On October 15, 2022, Brown hosted “The New Antisemitism and the Contemporary Middle East,” which one would imagine would address the horrible antisemitism in the Palestinian Arab community and throughout the Muslim Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. A viewer might have expected any of the following to have been addressed:

• Palestinians being the most antisemitic in the world, with almost everyone – 93% according to an ADL global poll – harboring Jew-hatred
• Palestinians voting Hamas to a majority of parliament, with the most antisemitic charter in the world which blames Jews for starting all wars in the world for profit to “rule the world.”
• Denying Jews their history in the holy land, calling them “European settler colonliasts“
• Jordan giving citizenship to people in the West Bank in 1954, as long as they weren’t Jewish
• The MENA region expelling nearly 1 million Jews from their countries after the establishment of Israel
• Muslims being twice as likely to be antisemitic as Christians in Europe
• Palestinian terrorists shooting and throwing an elderly wheelchair-bound American Jew off of a boat, who was not Israeli
• Palestinians shooting up Jewish synagogues in Europe, even though they were not Israeli
• The Islamic Republic of Iran hosting Holocaust-denial conferences
• Jordan banning Jews from visiting the Tomb of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs
• Banning Jews from praying at their holiest site on the Temple Mount

The list goes on. There is a disgraceful history of outright Jew-hatred in the “Contemporary Middle East” and Brown University had an opportunity to explore the evil.

The panel had two moderators: Nadje Al Ali and Katharina M Galor, both from Brown University. The speakers were Amos Goldberg of Hebrew University, Raef Zreik of Ono Academic College, Sherene Seikaly of UC Santa Barbara, and Noura Erakat of Rutgers. A mix of Jews and Arabs seemed like a good start to explore the rabid antisemitism in the region.

Goldberg led off the talk with a rant against the IHRA definition of antisemitism, claiming that it undermined the Palestinian narrative discussing Israeli “apartheid.” He added the “IHRA definition is a direct assault on truth,” (17:30) because it included a statement “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”

Zreik followed Goldberg and also lambasted the IHRA definition and said that Israel engages in “ethnic cleansing.”

Seikaly defined antisemitism as only being relevant when coming from White Supremacists and Nazis. She pivoted that Zionism was a concocted European invention to help fight antisemitism. She claimed that Zionism “promised Jews they could finally become European but only by leaving Europe.” (35:00) Zionism created the “ongoing Nakba” and that “the struggle for Palestinian freedom is a crucial step in ending this logic.” (35:40) In other words, she argued that destroying the Jewish State will emancipate Jews from the European invented defense of Jews.

WTF?

Erakat pushed this narrative further, that antisemitism only exists alongside racism when pushed by White Supremacists. She offered that Jews fall into two camps: the Zionists which back a racist state, and anti-Zionists who are anti-racist.

So a webinar about antisemitism in the Middle East devolved into a long attack on the Jewish State. They claimed that Israel is a racist state and therefore hating Zionism is actually the opposite of antisemitism; it is the fight against racism.

Goldberg leaned into this further when he said that Israel doesn’t even care about antisemitism, (48:25) and just uses it to push the Palestinian narrative off-stage.

Zriek continued his story that Palestinians suffer from dispersion, occupation, settler colonialism, and were victims of Jews. That is the only lens through which he believes one can look at Jews in the Middle East: they were victims in Europe but are oppressors in Palestine.

Seikaly ended the talk with “opposing antisemitism, opposing all forms of racism, and opposing Zionist settler colonialism,” (1:15:55) setting herself as a champion for Jews and all forms of hate, which includes hating Jewish supremacy.

Rather than addressing rampant antisemitism in Palestinian society, Brown University gave a lecture that Jews are not indigenous to the holy land and part of a European racist colonial project. At this Ivy, antisemitism is definitionally only a feature of the far-right, and should not be confused with Muslim Arabs fighting Jewish racism which might look like antisemitism to those who are racists and Islamophobes.

America’s universities are not only ignoring violent jihadi antisemitism, they are attempting to reframe it as a just fight against Jewish racists.

It is no wonder that we are witnessing universities celebrating the hideous pogrom launched by Hamas on October 7.

ACTION ITEM

Contact the large Brown University donors “Stop supporting Brown University which whitewashes Palestinian antisemitism and seeks to destroy Israel” Top donors include the Andrew Mellon Foundation ($42m) tel (212) 838.8400, the Ford Foundation ($5.7m) tel (212) 573.5000 and Arnold Ventures

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