Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16) is in for a tough fight to keep his seat as a congressman as a fellow progressive with significant experience is running against him in the Democratic primary. For some reason, Bowman’s strategy is to paint Westchester County Executive George Latimer as a White MAGA racist which is completely absurd. At the same time, Bowman is showing his true colors by whitewashing the terrible spike in antisemitism in New York, particularly stemming from attacks by non-White people.
Screenshot from Jamaal Bowman’s reelection website
Bowman’s website discusses a variety of hate crimes “since Trump was elected,” including against the Jewish, Muslim, Asian and Black communities. However, he only highlights one group of perpetrator of the attacks: White people.
At four different times, Bowman’s site highlighted “a white nationalist” killing Jews in Pittsburgh, “a white man” killing Muslims in North Carolina, and issues surrounding “white nationalism” and “white supremacist extremism.” At no time did he flag hate crimes and murders committed by Muslims or Blacks.
Bowman declined to mention several Black people killing Jews in Jersey City in 2019 or a Black man hacking a rabbi to death in Monsey, NY that same month. Or the dozens of attacks against Jews in New York City by minorities. He failed to highlight the near lynching of Joseph Borgen by a gang of five Muslim men in the middle of the day on the streets of Manhattan in 2021. He deliberately avoided mentioning the calls to kill Jews and harassment of Jews by Muslims over the past three months, with 34 antisemitic incidents per day according to the ADL.
Mahmoud Musa and four other Muslim men nearly killed an unarmed Joseph Borgen in Manhattan
In trying to appear balanced between Jews and Muslims, Bowman’s website says he pushed “a resolution that declared the value of both Palestinian and Israeli lives, urged an immediate ceasefire and encouraged diplomatic efforts.” That resolution was put forward in the week immediately after Palestinian Arabs sadistically butchered 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, essentially granting Hamas and other Arab terrorists immunity from justice. The resolution did not only fail to condemn Hamas, it did not call for a release of the 240 hostages. Instead, it called out humanitarian aid for Gaza.
Jamaal Bowman has long peppered his career in Washington with race-baiting. Now he taunts Jews that he is only concerned for their well-being when perpetrators are White racists, prioritizing Blacks and Muslims over Jews, as antisemitism spikes to alarming levels.
The anti-Zionists who claim not to be antisemites like members of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) say that they simply want the land of Israel to go back to the indigenous Arabs. They are lying.
Arabs are from Arabia. They invaded the land of Israel, as well as North Africa, as part of the Muslim invasions of the seventh and eighth centuries. They killed and converted Jews who had been living in the land for over one thousand years before Mohammed was born. Saying that Arabs are indigenous and Jews are not are lies and an attempt to rob Jews of their history and heritage.
Further, the calls that Jews should go back where they came from – whether Warsaw or Brooklyn – is repulsive on many levels. First, it denies the Israeli government the basic authority to make its own immigration decisions. Secondly, it is xenophobic in the extreme. Third, some of those countries tortured and exterminated Jews a few decades ago.
Every country decides on its own laws. Many countries such as Japan and Greece facilitate citizenship for people with Japanese or Greek ancestry, respectively. So does the Jewish State, which expedites Israeli citizenship for Jews. Non-Jews can and do become Israelis, and roughly 26% of Israeli citizens today are not Jewish, in sharp contrast to Japan where there are almost zero non-Japanese citizens. Yet no one attacks Japan or other countries for their ethnic citizenship laws.
It is also true that immigrants move all over the world. People who tell Nicaraguans to go back where they came from are called racists in the United States. Yet somehow, people who don’t even live in Israel, tell Jews that they should “get the hell out of Palestine,” like White House reporter Helen Thomas said. That’s an extreme level of toxic racism to demand the expulsion of people from a country thousands of miles away.
Thomas elaborated that Jews should go back to “Poland and Germany,” countries that wiped out their Jewish population in a genocide. She could have simply suggested that Jews drown themselves and save the carbon emissions from the airplane flight.
Her sentiment that Jews should leave the land of Israel is repeated around the world by antisemitic anti-Zionists, via either a forced expulsion or “voluntary immigration.” The latter was the statement suggested by Israeli politician Bezalel Smotrich, who was universally condemned by the media and same people who call for expelling Jews.
It’s complete hypocrisy.
But worse.
The anti-Zionists who call for expelling Jews are more dangerous than Smotrich. There are 1.8 billion Muslims and over 50 Muslim-majority countries. Smotrich is not attacking them and knows that Gazans could find a safe home around the world. That is in sharp contrast to Jews who have a single Jewish state and number only 15 million people as they’ve been murdered and ethnically cleansed around the world. Smotrich is fine living in a country in which 26% of the citizens are non-Jews who coexist peacefully but anti-Zionists want to rid the entirety of the land of Jews.
Many actually want ALL Jews dead.
Consider Fatima Mohammed, commencement speaker for CUNY in May 2023. On January 16, 2024 she yelled to a cheering crowd on the street “death, death, death to Zionism wherever it exists! Whether it is in our neighborhoods or across seas! Death to Zionism every single place it lays its feet!”
Radical jihadists around the world are looking at Israeli and diaspora Jews as targets. That is the attitude of CAIR, the Council of Arab-Islamic Relations who called out Jewish groups around the United States as “enemies” and the Massachusetts “Mapping Project” which gave the addresses of Jewish institutions around the state for targeting.
The radical jihadists are openly calling to root out Jews wherever they live, not just in Israel. They want the Jews in the land of Israel to “voluntarily immigrate” into the ovens in Poland and Germany, while the jihadists take matters into their own hands in the Jewish diaspora.
While there are some pro-Palestinian protestors who just want Jews and Arabs to live in peace – as Jews and Arabs do in Israel – there is a loud, growing and very dangerous jihadi movement around the world actively calling for the complete genocide of Jews.
Today’s genocidal Nazis are jihadi radicals marching in the streets and posting to millions of global followers on social media to kill the Jews, as democratic societies stutter in shameful silence.
The December 5, 2023 Congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses was about a very serious and obvious dynamic: Jew-hatred. It was right there in the title, and was called for in response to widespread attacks against Jews on college campuses.
Three university presidents attended: from Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and MIT. Elizabeth Magill of UofP resigned shortly after the hearing after smugly responding to the question of whether calling for the genocide of Jews was against university policy that “it’s a context-dependent decision.” Claudine Gay of Harvard also resigned for a different reason even though she offered a similar response; she stepped down because of allegations of plagiarism.
Claudine Gay of Harvard, Elizabeth Magill of UofP, Pamela Nadell of American University and Sally Kornbluth of MIT
The “context” comment was defended by university-backers as whether such calls for genocide were directed at individuals or were severely harassing to step beyond the bounds of free speech. However, the opening comments of each university president reveals a very different context orientation.
Gay shared in her opening comments that she appreciated the need for the hearing “on the critical topic of antisemitism,” as the world had seen a dramatic spike in antisemitism after the brutal Hamas massacre, including at Harvard. She then added “At the same time, I know members of the Arab and Muslim communities are also hurting. During these past months, the world, our nation and our campuses have seen a rise of incidents of Islamophobia.”
Why were these statements about Muslims inserted into a hearing about Jew-hatred?
She was not alone.
Magill spoke and about Hamas’s October 7 massacre and the targeting of Jewish businesses near the school. She added “we are seeing a rise in our society in harassment, intimidation and threats toward individuals based on their identity as Muslim, Palestinian or Arab.” Again, why did a university president’s prepared opening remarks discuss hatred for some non-Jews – particular non-Jews – when the hearing was on Jew-hatred?
Pamela Nadell, a professor of Jewish history at American University then addressed the panel. She concluded her remarks “I urge congress to do everything in its power to support the national strategy [against antisemitism] and also the forthcoming national strategy to counter Islamophobia.”
The trend was clear. One needn’t have listened to MIT’s president’s opening remarks.
Sally Kornbluth of MIT talked about new initiatives launched to fight hate on campus. “In addition to fighting antisemitism, it will address Islamophobia, also on the rise and also underreported. MIT will take on both. Not lumped together but with equal energy and in parallel.”
Every one of the speakers could not focus on the dedicated topic of Jew-hatred in scripted remarks to a congressional hearing about antisemitism at their institutions, and each mentioned “Islamophobia.” Racism persists at the schools but went unmentioned. Slurs against the LGBT community on campuses continue but were not called out.
Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs were specifically highlighted because the October 7 massacre was committed by Islamic extremists in the Palestinian Arab community. The “context” for university presidents was how to handle Jew-hatred on their campuses from a campus community which approved of and celebrated the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
It was as though the heads of American universities would have called out Germanophobia during World War II when discussing Jew-hatred emanating from German students and Nazi-supporters on campus.
It was a sad spectacle in American history but at least members of congress still cared enough about Jews to call for such hearing.
That is not the case on the world stage, where the United Nations’ adoption of Palestinians as permanent wards ensures that the global body always takes their side and only finds fault with Israel. The U.N.’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) will now narrowly focus on Israel’s actions in Gaza and provide no “context” that Israel is responding to Hamas’s massacre of civilians and threats to repeat the attacks “again and again,” whose soldiers hide like cowards beneath their families.
University presidents and the United Nations are telling all of us clearly that there are reasons people hate Jews before, after and while they are slaughtered. And most importantly, those antisemitic grievances should confine Jewish activities and constrict sympathy for Jewish suffering.
On Christmas Eve, The New York Times chose to publish an opinion letter by the mayor of Gaza City, Yahya Sarraj. Sarraj was appointed to his role by the ruling authority of Gaza, Hamas.
Hamas was launched in 1987 as the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its 1988 charter is the most antisemitic foundational charter ever written, calling for the killing of Jews as a religious obligation by the world’s Muslims. Palestinians elected Hamas to 58% of the parliament in 2006 with this genocidal charter. On October 2023, it made good on its promise to Palestinians with the invasion and brutal slaughter of 1,200 people in Israel.
The Times figured that it would give its Sunday platform to a member of this U.S.-designated terrorist organization, as a form of support that people assume only comes from TikTok. Sarraj got to plead his case that Israel is attacking a peace-loving enclave. The dozens of squares, schools, buildings and tournaments named after terrorists in and around Gaza City were not listed. The polls which show that the vast majority of Gazans have consistently embraced killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel since 2000, was also omitted.
Leaders of the Taliban, al Qaeda and ISIS were not given a prominent platform at The New York Times. But they hadn’t just killed over a thousand Jews.
ACTION ITEM
Write to letters@nytimes.com “Giving a platform to a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization is unlawful and immoral. You have put the lives of millions of Jews in danger by airing Hamas propaganda.”
Fisherman have long engaged in the act of chumming to attract large game fish. According to ioutdoor.com, “chumming means dumping bait or something into the waters to attract fish.” If one wants to attract sharks, “use a bloody fish. Sharks have a very keen sense of smell so that they could smell blood no matter how diluted it might be…. By tossing the sharks chum, you can keep them in the area for hours.”
Chumming the water with bloody bait to attract sharks and other large fish
Jew haters use a similar tactic to attract other antisemites.
Historically, many European and Middle Eastern communities fabricated blood libels in which they blamed Jews for certain crimes, such as the preposterous idea that Jews abduct non-Jewish children to use their blood to bake Passover matzah. The charges led Jew haters into the streets to slaughter and observe the murder of Jews for centuries.
There is another kind of chum which extends beyond the blood of non-Jews to draw out the Jew-haters, and that’s the blood of Jews themselves.
On October 7, 2023, Palestinian Arabs invaded Israel and brutally slaughtered 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and also abducted 240 people who were brought back into Gaza as captives, again, mostly civilians. The reactions of Jew haters around the world was immediate and grotesque.
The scent of Jewish blood was sharp in the neighboring Palestinian territories where 93% are antisemites, and they cheered and supported the murders. They were elated when Hamas promised to commit the atrocities again and again. Palestinian Arabs would elect Hamas to the presidency with a whopping 78% of the vote according to a December 2023 PCPSR poll, a huge jump from the previous poll three months earlier.
Israeli Jewish woman bound, raped and paraded through Gaza on October 7, 2023
The appalling celebration of the sadistic murder of Jews spanned the globe. Jew haters, like sharks, have a keen sense of smell and come out wherever Jewish blood is spilled, even thousands of miles away.
Professors from Cornell and Columbia in the United States stated how thrilled they were with the sadistic murder of Jews. In Sydney, Australia, hundreds of antisemites came out with chants to “gas the Jews.” In New York City’s Times Square, the Democratic Socialists of America organized a protest to support Hamas, which was attended by hundreds of people, some flashing swastikas. Iranian leaders welcomed the start of “the collapse of the Zionist regime and promises its imminent annihilation.” Iranians and other Muslims from around the world met in London to celebrate the attack.
This was before Israel launched any counter-offensive on Gaza.
The actual smell of Jewish blood is seemingly more intoxicating than the myth of Jews spilling non-Jewish blood. The fervor has pushed some people to demand an immediate ceasefire to keep Hamas intact so they can inflict such carnage again, to ultimately destroy the Jewish State and 45% of global Jewry.
The Jew-hatred frenzy will likely come to a community near you, spilling more Jewish blood. Such action will activate the run-of-the-mill non-shark Jew-haters who lack the acute sensitivity to join the carnage around the world.
The orgy of hatred has produced a vile intoxicated mob.
The vicious “cycle of violence” is no longer about bloody exchanges between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims. It is the odious demand for more Jewish blood as the antisemites become sated on the initial October carnage.
Jew-hatred was the leading form of hatred in the United States, even before the horrible spike post-October 7. Yet it was actively minimized by politicians and the mainstream media in favor of Victims of Preference, the majority-minority groups of Blacks, Hispanics and members of the LGBT+ community.
When Jew-hatred was tied to Israel, powers in government, media and universities deliberately did their utmost to claim that anti-Zionism wasn’t antisemitism, even as they promoted anti-Semitic laws and narratives.
There are a few primary antisemitic laws and narratives which have become so normalized, many fail to acknowledge their profound Jew-hatred:
Denying Jews their history and heritage
Banning Jews from living somewhere
Banning Jews from praying at their holiest site
Denying Jews Their History and Heritage
Jews have a unique religion. At its core, Jews are a small tribe tied to a specific piece of land, the holy land of Israel. While other religions were idealized as universalistic and therefore pushed to convert masses wherever they went, Jews had no such mantra. Whether they live in Israel or the diaspora (everywhere other than Israel) they pray facing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and try to visit Jerusalem at least three times each year, and did not scour the globe in search of new recruits.
Yet university professors say that Israel is a product of “European settler colonialism,” denying Jews their history and heritage, and these professors get tenure and continue to espouse their Jew-hatred to the next generation.
Banning Jews From Living Somewhere
Would anyone consider it legal to pass a law that Black people cannot live somewhere? Has Amnesty International blessed Iran’s policy of banning gay people and hanging them in public, and suggested the law be spread to more countries?
Yet the United Nations General Assembly passed resolutions in the 1970s and the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2334 in 2016 making it illegal for Jews to live in the “West Bank” and eastern Jerusalem, including the Old City of Jerusalem where Judaism’s holiest sites are located. According to international law, an Israeli Arab from Jaffa can relocate to the Old City of Jerusalem but a neighboring Israeli Jew in Jaffa would be called an illegal settler if he did a similar move.
It reeks of Jew-hatred, blessed by the United Nations.
Banning Jews From Praying At Their Holiest Site
Jews, and only Jews, are denied their right to pray at their holiest location. The world brands people who demand such basic human right as “extremists,” rather than the jihadists who insist on such law, threatening Jews with violence.
Israel has continued the antisemitic ban to calm the Muslim world. Palestinian Arabs are not satisfied and want Jews to stop even walking around the Temple Mount during regular visiting hours as they consider such visits “provocative.” The United Nations supports that Jew-hatred, and claims that the Jewish Temple Mount is a purely Islamic holy site.
United Nations map showing the Jewish Temple Mount as only holy to Muslims
All of these things have to do with Jews, not Israelis nor the Israeli government. These are laws that insult any Jew as it relates to their permissible activities in their homeland regardless of whether Israel is run by a right-wing or left-wing government, or even if Israel was a country.
There are also laws in other countries which are infused with Jew-hatred like banning the ritual slaughter of animals for kosher meat, bans on Jewish circumcision or wearing a kippah in public to make it difficult for Jews to live in those countries. Some ban Jews from being able to become the leader of the country. Those countries wrap their animus with misdirection about protecting animal and minor rights, or protecting the civil nature or culture of their societies for passing such edicts.
It is a transparent fig leaf when they extend their hatred for Jews far from their shores.
On a small strip of land far away from their own, countries still press laws infused with Jew-hatred, either because they want to appeal to 1.8 billion Muslims and over 50 Muslim-majority countries, or they simply hate Jews. Either way, these laws helped set the stage for the October 7 massacre, as they normalized Jew-hatred in the Jewish homeland.
The vile REACTIONS to the October 7 massacre did not happen in a vacuum. The UN, media and universities have normalized Jew-hatred for years, and it is well past time to strike the antisemitic laws at the UN and remove the classes and professors at universities.
The world is full of ignoramuses, and Hollywood has more than its fair share. Idiots like Susan Sarandon not only make horrible personal comments about Jews but suggest false information.
The simple facts are that Jews are much more persecuted than Muslims in the United States by a large margin.
Hate crimes against Jews have always been much higher than for Muslims or Arabs in every year for the past twenty years according to the FBI. The two groups started to converge around 2014 to 2016 as crimes against Jews started to decline and those against Muslims began to increase, but those trendlines reversed.
According to the raw FBI data, there were 6.3 times more hate crimes committed against Jews than Muslims in 2020. In 2008, the ratio was an astounding 8.6 times and got as low as 2.2 times in 2016.
When adjusting for the relative population of Jews and Muslims, assuming 5.7 million American Jews and 3.3 million American Muslims, the conclusion remains the same that Jews are targeted for hate crimes much more than Muslims or any other group, including Blacks.
Even before the terrible spike in American antisemitism in the wake of the most heinous slaughtering of Jews since the Holocaust on October 7, Jews were the most persecuted people in the country. Attacked by the alt-right, jihadists and the alt-left, and vilified by professors and politicians like Rep. Rashida Tlaib who claims that Jews in the United States and Israel are greedy conniving creatures who steal land and make money off of racism, Jews have become the global pinata.
American Jews are finding few allies and an array of enemies. It is well past time to prepare.
College is the first time that many young people live away from home. Young adults find new friends and community to experience learning and fun for several important formative years.
Alas, it is not always simple for Jews at universities.
Campus antisemitism has been a growing issue, and after the October 7 Hamas massacre, it has escalated and made Jewish students fear for their basic safety. Threats against students at Cornell, Cooper Union, New York University, Columbia and Hunter College are seemingly mentioned daily.
And that’s just in New York, home to the largest population of Jews outside of Israel.
As the current Gaza War is likely to go on for some time, it is likely that the tepid reaction of universities will enable more antisemitism on campuses, so this article is meant as a guide for how to ingest the latest incidents.
First Framework: 98% and 2% of Campuses with Jews
In the United States, there are roughly 5,300 colleges. Of those, roughly 100 have a Jewish presence of note, whether by number of Jewish students, percentage of Jews or those with a visibly Orthodox presence. That means that 98% of American colleges might have antisemitic incidents that do not actively harm Jews at that moment in time. While the toxicity of antisemitism spreading should not be overlooked, the antisemitism may go unnoticed and unreported.
The figures may hold true for other countries with large Jewish populations including Canada, United Kingdom and France. While there are many fewer universities there, it is likely that 90%-plus percentage of them have under-reported antisemitic occurrences.
Second Framework: The Three Groups of Antisemitic Actors
Antisemitism at universities have three principle actors: the alt-right, jihadists and the alt-left.
The alt-right and neo-Nazis were historically viewed as the classic antisemites. While the alt-right continues to taunt and attack Jews, they have a quiet presence thus far at the two percent of universities where most Jews attend. They have greater voices in the other 98% of campuses so that antisemitism is often unreported.
When White Supremacists marched at the University of Virginia in 2017, the world took notice. There wasn’t a need for the Hillel, which claims there are 1,000 Jews at UVA, to alert the press as everyone was shocked by the scale of the provocative march meant to intimidate the relatively small Jewish population and other minorities.
The jihadists have been gaining significant ground since the turn of the century. Led by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the pro-Hamas group has roughly 250 chapters around the United States, including almost all of the 2% schools which Jews attend including the large state universities (Florida, Michigan, Maryland, Indiana, Wisconsin), the City of New York/ State of New York and University of California school systems, as well as the Ivy League schools. Their presence on campus directly correlates to more antisemitic actions on campuses as shown by work done by the AMCHA Initiative.
In the current environment after the October 7 Hamas attack, they are a leading cause of anti-Jewish hostility on campus, and Jews are directly feeling the brunt of their extremism and hatred.
The third category of antisemites comes from the alt-left, such as groups associated with the Democratic Socialists of America. They are profoundly anti-Zionist, and have falsely labeled Israel as a “settler colonial state”, denying Jews their history and heritage in the holy land. Since the 2014/15 Black Lives Matter protests, socialists have bonded with the jihadists in coming for Jews and Zionists. Like the jihadists, they are found in almost school where Jews are located.
The cumulative effect is that one doesn’t hear much about campus antisemitism from the alt-right, especially during conflicts in the Middle East. If one hears about it at all, it will be from something major like the “United the Right” UVA march which included many people from outside the university.
In contrast, jihadists feel uncomfortably close with their daily confrontations with Jews and the spectacle is frightening.
The alt-left socialists feel even closer for progressive Jews. They belong to the same clubs and advocated for many of the same causes. To see them celebrating the murder and butchering of Jews is deeply hurtful and shocking.
Third Framework: The Three Levels at Universities
The third way to consider antisemitism is understanding the three tiers of a university: the institution, the teachers and the students.
Groups like SJP are made up of students and tend to be the most vocal actors on campuses. They stage die-ins, put on Israel Apartheid Weeks and are the ones generally responsible for vandalism. The university has little sway over them, other than the ability to not officially recognize them or allow them to hold events on campus grounds, or expel them if they go against rules of conduct.
Teachers are directly employed by the university so the institution has much greater influence on them. However, once a teacher gets tenure, it becomes very difficult to discipline them unless they do something egregious.
The institutions are businesses, whether they are not-for-profit or for-profit, public or private universities. They need funding, students, professors, accreditation, real estate and many other things to operate. As such, it is possible to impact their direction by donors and federal mandates.
Using these three lenses about universities, one can better evaluate the impact of campus antisemitism.
Examining Donors Via The Frameworks
Many wealthy Jewish university benefactors lashed out about the state of antisemitism on campuses. Marc Rowan, Bill Ackman, Leon Cooperman, David Magerman and others stated that they will no longer send universities millions of dollars as they have in the past.
It matters much less than they think. Not only do the universities have billions of dollars already in endowments, but the monies those benefactors spent were on hospitals and center for the arts and to put their names on buildings. The Jews gave money at the institutional level.
That is in sharp contrast to the Gulf states including Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Foreign forces gave over $10 billion to American universities at every level including the student and professor levels. At the institutional level, they spent money opening up campuses in their kingdoms to legitimize their autocratic regimes.
At the student level, the governments sent tens of thousands of students onto American campuses, changing the nature of the schools. The universities appreciate the fully-funded tuitions and the ability to appear diverse and international. In the 2015/6 school year, over 61,000 Saudi students attended American schools. That represented 0.2% of the entire population of Saudi Arabia to a single country. By way of comparison, the ENTIRE American students abroad cohort all over the world is around 162,000, or 0.05% of the U.S. population. Imagine 650,000 American college students all going to Brazil for college, and you get the absurdity of what transpired on American campuses with petrodollars.
The Gulf money also funded professors and chairs of departments. In July 2000, the president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, donated $2.5 million to the Harvard Divinity School to endow the Sheik Zayed Al Nahyan Professorship in Islamic Religious Studies. Within a short period of time, the Zayed Center became a noxious fountain of anti-Semitic screed complete with Holocaust denials and blood libels. It took the non-profit group The David Project and a student at the Harvard Divinity School, Rachel Fish, to loudly protest the donation and Center itself.
But the damage is often already done. With an application of two students and approval of a professor, a new SJP chapter comes to campus. The AMCHA Initiative has shown that campuses with five or more professors who support the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) of Israel and has an anti-Zionist group like SJP on campus, is over seven times more likely to have antisemitic incidents.
These professors actively push the antisemitic narrative to Decolonize Palestine, framing Jews as interlopers and the Jewish State as a European Colonial State. It is inherently antisemitic, as it negates Jewish heritage and history. The professors claim that it is worthy of debate and administrations remain silent.
Ramifications
Historically, Jews focused on choosing schools with a good Jewish campus life. If there was a Hillel, AEPi Jewish fraternity, Chabad or OU-JLIC couple on campus, students and parents felt comfortable with a supportive environment. Walking through campus and seeing Jewish names on buildings like Stern and Lauder gave people comfort that they would not confront antisemitism.
That is simply not the case.
The correct questions are whether the university has an SJP or Jewish Voice for Peace on campus. Does the university take millions of dollars from Gulf states? Are there tenured professors with a history of antisemitic remarks like Columbia’s Joseph Massad? Does it promote the antisemitic libel that Jews have no history in the holy land and that it is noble to “normalize and globalize Hamas” the way Brown University suggests?
Action Items
The jihadists have focused on American universities for twenty years, and the alt-left has long had a hold on campus life but only bonded with the jihadists since 2014/5. It will take time to undo the damage that has been done.
But there are several things which can be effectuated to start the change. For those who don’t want or cannot wait, consider Yeshiva University or Touro which are Jewish institutions with no jihadist groups and very few members of the alt-left.
Get universities to stop taking money from toxic regimes. Qatar openly supports the terrorist group Hamas. Saudi Arabia beheads minors. There must be some human rights bright lines which should block universities from taking money. At a minimum, there should be a cap of say $5 million over any five year period for any foreign government or agency to pour money into American schools.
Label SJP a hate group and kick them off campus. With seven times more antisemitic incidents with their presence, the groups should be blocked from school recognition.
Place a morality clause in all contracts. If misgendering someone can be cause for dismissal, then certainly celebrating the slaughter of babies and raping of women should result in immediate firings.
Get the Biden Administration to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism as it relates to Title VI for universities. The administration already approved it as the best working definition of antisemitism but has not applied it to Title VI which would pull government funding to universities that allow rampant anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
Expel foreign students involved in hate crimes. Universities like MIT have been loathe to suspend foreign students as it would result in their deportation. American Jews should not be forced to endure visiting students’ antisemitism because the university wants to keep the foreign nation’s tuition funnel flowing.
Support Jewish and Israel groups. OU-JLIC, Hillel and other groups need active support, as do external groups which help out university students like StandWithUs and Students Supporting Israel. The infrastructure must be continuously enhanced for a strong Jewish campus life.
Get benefactors to fund Jewish scholarships and Jewish and Israel studies departments. Just like the Gulf states, Jewish benefactors should fund scholarships for Jews to their alma maters as well as professors focused on Jewish studies.
Write about the problem. Penning letters to the school administrators, posting on social media, and telling members of congress and governors about the horrific situation on campuses will help drive change. Write letters to the media that they must cover campus antisemitism more regularly and honestly.
Campus antisemitism is at alarming levels. You can help.
An estimated 290,000 Jews and Zionists came to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on November 14, 2023 to march for Israel, the release of hostages and against antisemitism. News reports share that it was the single largest turnout of Jews in D.C. ever.
Hundreds of thousands of people at the National Mall rally on November 14, 2023 (photo: FirstOneThrough)
While marked as a “march” to run from 1:00PM to 3:00PM, the rally started at 11:00AM and ended well past 3:00PM. Speakers and singers addressed the large crowd who came from around the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. There were masses of Israeli flags everywhere, as well as American flags, as everyone attending appreciated the simple ability to come out without fear in America’s capital.
There were sections set aside for members of Congress, and both Republicans and Democrats were proud to show their support for Israel and Zionists. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) was an early speaker, and the most forceful American politician from those invited to speak. He roundly condemned Hamas and spoke with moral clarity about the fight against evil.
Other Democrats who were not given the podium, like Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), were happy to speak to various people about the war, including Nir Barkat, former Mayor of Jerusalem and current Minister of Finance in Israel. Republican speakers included new House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) who was only second to Rep. Torres in clearly articulating standing firmly with Israel and against Hamas, and that America’s support was a bipartisan effort. Many other Republicans attended, including from California, Arizona, Georgia and Texas.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz at rally for Israel in Washington, DC on November 14, 2023 (photo: FirstOneThrough)
Beyond the familiar names were the new names.
Families of the over 200 hostages held in Gaza came to Washington. They stood and held each other and demanded the return of their loved ones. Many took the stage and spoke passionately about their sons, daughters and family members abducted amidst the slaughter of October 7.
Family of Hersh Goldberg-Polin
Rachel Goldberg-Polin spoke to the audience as she has done many times at any forum where she can try to help advance the release of her son Hersh, whose arm was blown off during the October 7 massacre. She shared that she did not know if he was alive and buried in the tunnels of Gaza, or had died from bleeding out from his wounds. But she knew she needed to speak out as best she could.
Other parents also spoke on behalf of their children. Some held placards with the names and faces of the captives. These were not “Kidnapped” signs that could be ripped from lampposts as thousands have been by anti-Zionists in America’s cities. These signs held up the tortured families, standing somewhere between shiva and hope.
In many ways, that was the essence of rally. While people leaned on each other for support and blessed the United States for both standing with Israel and being an open welcoming society, everyone knew that this was no celebration.
Over 1,200 people in Israel were slaughtered and butchered. Antisemitism was skyrocketing. University professors and students shouted their joy at the death of Jews. Politicians and world governments were calling the Jewish State a racist genocidal country not worthy of existing. Global crowds cheered the jihadists’ auto-da-fe.
So thousands came to America’s capital in a counter-demonstration of love and peace.
Jews and Christian Zionists came to be together. At times they accepted comfort from the array of speakers and other times they shouted back “Bring Them Home!” and “No Ceasefire!” in reply. The crowd stood for hours, talking to people around them to understand their personal stories of how they’ve been impacted, as well as to simply embrace friends traumatized by unfolding events.
Families of hostages demand the return of their loves ones in Washington, DC on November 14, 2023 (photo: FirstOneThrough)
The crowd came to the capital to collectively mourn the unholy death in the holy land. They came to get and demand reassurance from powerful politicians that they will be safe in America and make sure Israel can have peace.
And they openly showed their fear.
Like the 240 hostages in Gaza, roughly 300,000 people are not sure whether this was a time for hope or a time to mourn. Perhaps this is a post-Ecclesiastes world when time and state are no longer paired; a time for shiva and hope concurrently.
Jews make up a very small population in the world yet suffer disproportionately from persecution.
Globally, Jews account for less than 0.2% of the population, or about 1 person for every 525 people. Most people have never met a Jewish person.
As most of the world is Christian and Muslim, it is not surprising that Christian-majority countries make up the majority of the United Nations, followed by Muslim-majority countries. There is only a single Jewish-majority country, Israel, which is disproportionately vilified at the United Nations.
Outside of the Israel, the only country with a sizable Jewish population is the United States, which has 40% of the global Jewish population. Outside of Israel and the USA, there is roughly 15% of the rest of world Jewry, principally located in France, Canada, United Kingdom, Argentina and Russia.
In the United States, Jews are a small part of the minority groups. While DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) efforts focus on Hispanics, Blacks, Asians and the LGBT+ community, it ignores Jews who are labeled “White” and “privileged”.
Without protection afforded to other minorities, Jews stand out as the most targeted group in the United States for hate crimes, based on population.
College campuses have become particularly noxious breeding grounds of antisemitism. In addition to excluding Jews from DEI and federal Title VI protections, universities miseducate Zionism to be a form of “European colonialism” and Zionists to be racists. Compounding the matter, because Jews are labeled “White and privileged”, they are not allowed to defend themselves, and must simply sit and be berated.
The tragic farse doesn’t even end there. In addition to persecuted American Jews being vilified by laws and people meant to defend minorities, those groups label Israel as an example of White Supremacy, even though Mizrahi Jews make up a majority of the Jewish State. Jews of color make up 41.2% of the Israeli population.
Despite Jews being indigenous to the land of Israel and Israel being the most liberal country in the entire Middle East, liberal universities have turned the Jewish State into a polluter of pure Arab land.
Jews are a minority-minority in the United States and around the world, persecuted and unprotected by laws and people who are both proud of their antisemitism and those who think they are fighting for minority rights. At least majority-minority rights, like 1.8 billion Muslims.
First One Through 