To the commencement speakers stepping onto stages this spring:
You are about to speak at one of life’s defining moments. Graduates and their families will remember your words long after the ceremony ends. That podium carries weight. It should be used carefully.
And it should be used with moral clarity.
Do not praise the fashionable activism of the moment simply because it is loud, visible, and rewarded by the culture around it.
Do not mistake popular protest for courage. If you want to speak about courage, speak about the students who stood for Israel.
Speak about the students who defended Israel’s right to wage a just war against Hamas after October 7—the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
Speak about the students who understood that when a terrorist army invades a country, murders civilians in their homes, kidnaps children, rapes women, and openly promises to repeat it, the moral obligation of that country is defense. It is victory. It is the destruction of the machinery of terror.
That is what Israel is doing. And on campuses across America, students who have said so have paid a price.
Speak about that.
Speak about the Jewish students who have walked through hostile encampments and angry demonstrations to get to class.
Speak about the students who removed their kippot, hid their Stars of David, or stopped speaking openly because the atmosphere around them had become threatening.
Speak about the students who stood their ground anyway.
The students who wore hostage pins.
The students who defended the truth of October 7 when others rushed to justify it.
That is moral courage.
Real courage is not standing with a crowd chanting slogans. Real courage is standing when the crowd turns on you.
And that has been the experience of many Jewish students this year.
They have faced harassment, exclusion, intimidation, and hostility—often from classmates and sometimes with the silence or complicity of faculty and administrators.
That reality deserves acknowledgment. It deserves honor.
So if you are going to use your commencement speech to speak about justice, begin there.
To organizations like the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors, who speak often about academic freedom and the right of educators to speak their conscience: prove those principles mean something.
Stand behind the educators who speak in defense of Israel.
Stand behind those who praise students fighting antisemitism.
Stand behind those who say openly that Jewish self-defense is moral.
Because if you defend speech only when it flatters your politics, you are not defending freedom. You are defending ideology.
Commencement should be better than ideology. It should tell the truth.
The truth of this year on campus is that some of the bravest students were the ones who stood visibly, unapologetically, and often alone with the Jewish people.
If you want to honor courage from the podium, honor them. That would be a commencement speech worth remembering.
Derek Peterson, chair of the University of Michigan Faculty Senate, speaks during the University of Michigan’s 2026 Spring Commencement at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor celebrating pro-Palestinian “activists.”
Nothing seems to animate Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) as much as attacking America, Israel and Jews. Perhaps with the exception of defending those who do.
On July 15, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives Education & Workforce Committee held a hearing on antisemitism at universities. Rather than show concern for Jewish Americans facing harassment, intimidation and persecution – the point of the hearing – Omar went on the attack against those who called out the Jew hatred.
Ilhan Omar at House hearing to address antisemitism at universities, July 15, 2025
At (2:28:09) of the hearing, Omar took the microphone and started to bash Canary Mission as a nefarious, shadow organization that worked in concert with the government to “dox” students and “repress speech” of those who spoke up on behalf of SAPs, the Stateless Arabs from Palestine. She called it “McCarthyism” in which the group denied “due process” to individuals, as though this group was an arm of the government, looking to silence dissent.
It was a wild and crazy display of her hypocrisy and lies.
First, some plain facts. Canary Mission is an independent group and not part of the government. It posts public information about what people say and doesn’t share personal information like home addresses or phone numbers (the definition of doxxing). It is all covered under free speech – sharing other people’s “free speech.”
Second, Canary Mission does not silence anyone the way Omar charged. It does not intimidate. It simply compiles the vitriol of those who intend to harm America, its citizens and its allies.
Here is one clip from the site about a 2024 conference where “Palestinian” radicals threatened to tear down “empire,” the code name for the United States.
Omar doesn’t want you to see this: Canary Mission video about jihadists looking to destroy the United States
Here is a review of CM’s profile of Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, one of its longer highlights as he has long been attacking Jews and the Jewish State. It includes a long list of links to HIS comments. Nowhere does it provide his personal information.
Canary Mission video about those celebrating the October 7 massacre and seeking the destruction of Israel
Omar wants free speech for anti-American and anti-Jewish voices but not those who call out the haters. She doesn’t want there to be any ramifications for people calling to “tear down empire,” but only for those who showcase those shrill voices. She claims small private groups have power while she uses her powerful position in government to attack them.
Omar is the embodiment of hypocrisy and anti-American views, which she’s proud to broadcast while people are gathered to consider how to protect the most vilified minority-minority in America.
Omar has made her career out of playing both the victim and the defender of so-called marginalized voices—so long as those voices align with her political narrative. In Omar’s worldview, free speech is sacred when it targets America or Israel—but it’s dangerous harassment when used to expose her ideological allies.
Omar demands impunity for those who cheer jihad, but censorship for those who expose them.
Omar’s double standard is not just hypocritical—it’s dangerous. By shielding radical voices from criticism, she normalizes antisemitism and delegitimizes the right of Jews to call out hatred. Worse, she uses her platform to chill lawful speech, by mislabeling documentation as “doxxing” and criticism as “violence.”
This isn’t about protecting the vulnerable; it’s about protecting the radical. Her priorities are crystal clear:
Defend Hamas sympathizers
Smear Jewish watchdogs
Turn antisemites into victims
Turn their critics into villains
If Ilhan Omar were genuinely concerned about threats and intimidation, she would condemn the harassment of Jewish students, the glorification of Hamas, and the calls for violent uprising on American soil. But she won’t—because those voices are her own echo.
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), the chairman of the 45-person committee, said the “hearing will focus on the underlying factors instigating antisemitic upheaval and hatred on campus. Until these factors — such as foreign funding and antisemitic student and faculty groups — are addressed, antisemitism will persist on college campuses. Our committee is building on its promise to protect Jewish students and faculty while many university leaders refuse to hold agitators of this bigotry, hatred, and discrimination accountable.”
This Republican-led hearing will have the following witnesses:
Dr. Robert M. Groves, Interim President, Georgetown University
Dr. Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, Chancellor, The City University of New York
Dr. Rich Lyons, Chancellor, University of California, Berkeley
Here we will review foreign funding of universities.
Foreign Funding
Americans for Public Trust (APT) produced a report in March 2025 focused on foreign funding to universities. It found that “$60 billion in foreign gifts and contracts have been funneled into American colleges and universities over decades.” In particular, $20 billion went to ten elite schools with transparency laws being “lightly enforced” leading many universities to not report. Alarmingly, “many of the countries that top the list of foreign gifts… are long-standing adversaries and enemies of the U.S..”
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) noted in February 2025 that “a key culprit [for so much foreign money coming into universities] is universities’ failure to comply with the provisions of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, which requires US institutions of higher education to report income from foreign countries valued at over $250,000, such as gifts or research contracts. But American universities have failed to report billions in foreign funding, which drove the first Trump administration to launch several investigations into Section 117 noncompliance.”
The databases from the Education Department Office of Federal Student Aid Section 117 compliance can be found here.
AEI found “US schools reported over $4 billion in Qatari funding, making it easily the largest foreign donor to American universities. Looking at Qatari money together with China and Saudi Arabia further highlights how entangled these sources are with US higher education—seven of the universities investigated under Section 117 received most of their foreign funding from these three countries alone.”
APT reported that several “foreign adversaries” have donated to U.S. education, with “China, Russia, Iran, Qatar, Venezuela and Yemen have collectively syphoned billions into American schools.”
APT raised a red flag on the number of university researchers who have been arrested for illegally collaborating with China, including the chair of Harvard’s chemistry department. AEI was alarmed by the association of these foreign funders to universities doing work in artificial intelligence (AI). The COVID pandemic and risks from AI to society are reasons enough to clamp down on this funding, before even approaching foreign money stoking antisemitism.
“influenced… the academic environment, research priorities, and faculty recruitment, particularly within the School of Foreign Service (SFS), the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU).”
created centers that mainstreamed “political Islam, minimizing the threat of Islamist extremism, and advancing anti-Israel narratives.”
Georgetown, based in the nation’s capital of Washington, D.C., thereby produced a large cohort of alumni who “occupy prominent positions in the U.S. State Department, intelligence agencies, media, and NGOs, effectively introducing and reinforcing these ideological perspectives within American foreign policy-making processes.” It has also led to a spike of anti-Jewish actions on campus.
The ISGAP report specifically called out Qatar, “from being a major funder of the Muslim Brotherhood’s global operations to providing resources to Hamas—the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—and harboring the remnants of its leadership, Qatar has consistently positioned itself as both an ideological incubator and logistical facilitator of Islamist extremism. The Muslim Brotherhood is committed to destroying democracies, including the United States and Israel, and to replacing them with a distorted version of an Islamist caliphate.”
The funding works two ways – monies flowing onto American campuses as well as building campuses of American schools in foreign countries. Six American universities maintain campuses in Doha’s Education City: Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Commonwealth, Cornell, Northwestern, and Texas A&M, although Texas A&M is scheduled to close in 2028 (bolded countries in top 10 receiving foreign money). The state-run Qatar Foundation finances the campuses and personnel in Doha.
There have been numerous studies which analyze whether funding from foreign institutions – and those from countries which might be viewed as hostile to the U.S. – have an increased level of anti-American and antisemitic activity. A comprehensive statistical study showed “consistently strong evidence that institutions that received Section 117 funding from OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) member countries or authoritarian countries had much higher levels of antisemitic/anti-Zionist activity.” Interestingly – and counter to the argument of liberals – the study added “that there is minimal evidence here that foreign funding, per se, is associated with erosion of liberal democratic norms around campus speech.”
The Jew hatred was not confined to the universities’ campuses. In additional analyses, the study found “that as campus antisemitism goes up or down, so does antisemitism in the surrounding communities.”
While the study cautioned about drawing direct conclusions about the direction of antisemitism (perhaps society has caused antisemitism to spike in schools rather than vice versa), it was clear with its conclusion:
“The present research highlights two troubling possibilities that deserve further investigation. The first is that receipt of Section 117 funding from foreign sources, especially authoritarian ones, has contributed to these [antisemitic] developments. The second is that providing massive financial support to campuses with ascendant illiberalism serves the interests of foreign actors hostile to the U.S. in particular or liberal democracy in general.”
These are profound concerns not just for American Jews but America.
Biased Think Tank Fig Leaves: Brookings Institute
There are a number of “think tanks” that offer opinions and research papers about a variety of issues, including antisemitism at universities and the impact from foreign funding. Many are deeply conflicted. For example, the Brookings Institute had a center in Doha for 14 years, until it was closed in 2021. It often works in partnership with Georgetown University which takes significant money from Qatar. It is therefore not surprising that Brookings publishes defensive reports on Qatar which paint the sponsor of terrorist groups as a partner for the United States against bad actors in the Middle East, rather than a fountain of funding for evil: “a window may still be apparent whereby Qatari policymakers would welcome inventive U.S. suggestions as to ways that they could make themselves useful to American counterparts, all in the name of firming up their U.S. partnership in the face of hostile local states.”
Considering the Brookings-Qatar-Georgetown dynamic, it is not surprising that the group published a study that the Trump administration’s efforts to root out antisemitism at universities was really about Trump attacking his critics, not combatting Jew hatred.
Recommendations
AEI recommended that the government “move the enforcement of Section 117 out of the Office of Federal Student Aid (the office that gave us the FAFSA debacle) and return it to the Office of the General Counsel, which is better equipped to investigate and address non-compliance with federal statutes. The Education Department should also audit far more universities to ensure adequate reporting of foreign funds. Finally, department investigators should work closely with their counterparts in the Department of Justice and FBI to tackle this issue—especially when foreign funding could be linked to influence campaigns, technological espionage, or other efforts to undermine national security.”
The Senate should pass the DETERRENT Act (Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions Act) which seeks greater transparency of foreign funding in universities, especially from a “foreign country of concern.” It was passed by the House on March 27, 2025 with a vote of 241 to 169 (with 20 abstentions). Nearly 97% of Republicans voted for the measure while fewer than 15% of Democrats voted for the bill. It is before the Senate as S. 1296, sponsored by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) with 13 Republican co-sponsors.
Conclusion
Billions of dollars are seeping into American universities from countries which are undermining American society and values. Qatar and China are particular actors which deserve heightened scrutiny regarding their potential nefarious efforts in artificial intelligence, biochemical research and promoting antisemitism.
ACTION ITEM
Call Rep. Tim Walberg’s office at (202) 225-6276 to thank him for holding the session on this important matter.
Call your senator to support the DETERRENT Act and call Sen. Thom Tillis’s office at (202) 224-6342 to thank him for sponsoring the bill.
Liberal media has rallied to liberal universities.
Newspapers like The New York Times call the Trump administration’s investigations into campus antisemitism as a targeted attack on institutions of higher learning, with over-sensitive Jews acting as useful pawns. The Times reporting actively omits and whitewashes the calls for violence against Jews to frame the discussion as impinging on minority rights for its remaining readers.
Consider the story of Kehlani, an anti-Israel singer who called “Long live the Intifada” in one of her music videos. She was invited and then disinvited to sing at Cornell when Jewish students found out about her coming to a campus-wide event. Under the banner “Campus Crackdown,” the Times headline was that her “support for Palestinians” and “her stance on the war in Gaza” led to her cancellation, leading to students being disappointed.
The article did not shy away from her call for intifada, and provided context that while some Jews might infer it as a call for violence, pro-Palestinian voices “regard it as a cry for liberation and freedom from oppression.”
At no point in the article did the Times discuss the 1,000 Jews slaughtered in the Second “Intifada,” including babies blown apart in pizza stores by Jew-haters like “journalist” Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi who lives freely in Jordan.
At no point did the Times describe the environment at Cornell, where a professor celebrated the slaughter and rape of people in Israel on October 7, 2023, saying he has “exhilarated” because “Hamas has punctured the [Israel’s] illusion of invincibility” during a student-led protest a week later off-campus. Russell Rickford was invited back to campus to teach this 2024/5 academic year according to Insider Higher Ed, because his comments were made “in his free time.”
The Times did not write about student Patrick Dai who threatened to kill Jews (in his free time), who was sentenced to 21-months in jail in August 2024.
Instead, the article highlighted “a queer person of color” who was “disappointed” at the cancellation of Kehlani’s performance. It listed a “Gambian-British citizen” who left the country, fearing “possible deportation.”
Why omit the targeting of Jews in the story about antisemitism?
Because the media wants to define antisemitism by its own distorted lexicon, and to shield the systemic Jew-hatred on campus from the Trump administration. If Jews are intimidated, harassed or unable to enjoy campus life, that’s too bad because any modifications might strip fun and opportunities from victims of preference.
According to the ADL, antisemitic attacks in the US reached record levels in 2024. Campus antisemitism jumped 84% from 2023 to 2024, accounting for 18% of all incidents, also an all-time high.
The Times would not write about that either.
Americans are fed distorted media which sanitizes institutions rife with Jew-hatred. The Times raises alarms about “campus crackdowns” because Trump is shattering universities’ “illusion of invincibility,” of tramping Jewish rights with billions of taxpayer dollars.
There really may be only one solution: a revolution to intifada the universities.
Protest outside of AIPAC conference in Washington, DC in June 2023, months before the October 7, 2023 massacre
Well before the brutal October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel, antisemitism in the United States had reached horrific levels. Jews were shot in synagogues and supermarkets. Held hostage and hacked with machetes. Vilified by famous athletes and entertainers. Accused of being too powerful in the news and told by the leading powers in the country to hide their Jewishness.
“Experts” said that the antidote was to teach people about the Holocaust. If only potential Jew-haters saw what results from “big” antisemitism they would avoid smaller antisemitic acts.
The author Dara Horn scoffed at the idea in April 2023 and now in April 2025. She argues that a narrow focus on the Holocaust limits people to thinking that Jews were wiped out as a people in the past. Israel is framed as a consolation prize awarded by Europe to appease their guilt in the genocide. Lost is the rich history of Jews.
In fact, Jewish history is not passively lost but actively obliterated and vilified. To attend universities in America about “Palestinian Studies” is not a review of any positive history of Arabs in the small slice of the Middle East that Jews view as holy, rather a demonization of Jews.
Visit the University of California, Davis website regarding reading materials on “the Situation in Palestine and Israel,” last updated on October 18, 2023, right after thousands of Gazans massacred people in Israel. The materials are completely anti-Israel, whether books, blogs or articles. Israel is condemned as a “colonial project” over again, tied to “imperialism” and “militarism.” The boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS movement) is advanced everywhere. People are urged to “revolt” against Zionism and Zionists.
Nowhere is there an iota about the thousands of years of Jewish history in the land, nor about the centrality of Jerusalem in Judaism. Rather, it includes links to articles by groups like Palestinian Youth Movement which the Israeli government has tied to U.S.-designated terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Palestineism is not a study about Arab culture or history but a rank course in antisemitism, denying thousands of years of Jewish history and the centrality of the land – and Jerusalem in particular – in Judaism.
Jewish History In Israel and Judaism
There is over 3,000 years of history of Jews in the land of Israel. Well before the modern idea of countries was formulated, Jews lived throughout their holy land. They had kings and kingdoms. They had holy temples which Jews would visit at least three times every year, ensuring they remained close to Jerusalem.
Jews have been a majority of Jerusalem since the 1860s, before the advent of modern Zionism. For hundred of years, Jews have ended their passover seder with a call “Next year in Jerusalem!” The Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah, was written in 1878, well before the First Zionist Congress, in a song about Jews being in Jerusalem and Zion. Israel is the only country in the world whose national anthem is all about its capital city.
There are certain religious Jewish practices that can only be observed in the land of Israel. Jews are the only religious group with a diaspora, defined as those Jews living outside of the land of Israel, because it is the only religion tied to a specific land.
A field in Israel with a sign that it observes “shmita,” meaning the land is resting, a Jewish tradition only observed in Israel in keeping with laws in the bible (photo: First One Through)
Whether one likes the current government of Israel and its policies is irrelevant. The LAND of Israel is the Jewish homeland. That fundamental fact is not only omitted but deliberately erased in socialist-jihadi schools like UC Davis.
It is time to rethink education and focus more on the land of Israel and its centrality to Jews and Judaism, than Holocaust studies. We need to prevent anti-Jewish lessons and teach Jewish education. To prevent another genocide of Jews, start with thousands of years of Jewish history and culture in the holy land, instead of classes about the European Holocaust.
Jewish students were physically blocked from sections of UCLA’s campus by anti-Israel protestors, many covering their faces with kaffiyehs in the Spring 2024 semester. Three students consequently sued to have the university ensure that they have equal rights to use and enjoy the campus facilities.
U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi agreed with the plaintiffs that UCLA knew students could not enter parts of campus because of their religious beliefs. His ruling ordered UCLA to stop “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students from ordinarily available portions of UCLA’s programs, activities, and campus areas, whether as a result of a de-escalation strategy or otherwise.”
UCLA strongly disagreed.
Mary Osako, UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications, said “the district court’s ruling would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community. We’re closely reviewing the Judge’s ruling and considering all our options moving forward.”
Thomas Harvey, the lawyer representing Faculty for Justice in Palestine, came up with the absurd notion that the ruling “paves the way for total removal of pro-Palestinian activity on campus. If the sincerely held religious belief being protected here is the belief in the Jewish state of Israel, any class, campus event or speaker that criticizes that nation’s legal or political decisions might be prohibited.”
Jewish student at UCLA denied entry to campus while police looked on
UCLA and the lawyer’s arguments aren’t just ridiculous but make one wonder if they are deeply antisemitic. The ruling doesn’t say anything about criticizing “political decisions” of any country; it is about free and fair access for all students to use every corner of the university campus.
In a strange bit of coincidence, on October 6, 2023, one day before the barbaric Palestinian massacre of Israelis, UCLA announced the UCLA Research Hub on Antisemitism, funded by a $600,000 gift by the Pritzker family. The hub is a joint effort between the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate and the Center for Jewish Studies. In announcing the new effort, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said “It is critical that we do more than condemn the recent surge in antisemitism — we must actively work against it.”
Chancellor Block was pushed to resign in May 2024 by anti-Israel protestors who also called for canceling the school’s Israel Studies Department and for boycotting all Israeli universities.
UCLA is tacking to the jihadi fringe to remove any tolerance of contrary points of view and freedom of access in an undemocratic purge of Zionists and Jews. It is displaying a frightful lack of basic civility and critical thinking.
UCLA is so infected with anti-Zionism, that it is fighting to ban pro-Zionist students from campus and an education. It says a great deal about California and the terrible state of education today.
Antisemitism on college campuses has been growing reality for several years. The explosion of Jew-hatred since the popular Palestinian political-terrorist group Hamas‘s slaughter of 1,200 people in Israel has made many school environments toxic for Jews. Not Israelis; Jews. They’ve hidden in their dorm rooms and worked from home. They’ve transferred to different schools. They’ve sued their universities.
In the noxious wake of this antisemitic bilestorm, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) summoned the heads of major universities to investigate the situation on campuses.
The work revealed a systemic bias against Jewish students who were harassed, intimidated and attacked repeatedly. A dynamic which would never have been tolerated for majority-minority groups like Blacks and Hispanics had been given a passing grade.
When the public witnessed the testimony there was an uproar. When it read the subpoenaed texts circulated among college deans about the state of antisemitism, there was widespread disgust.
University presidents and deans lost their jobs. Lawsuits filed by Jewish students were filed and settled.
The revelations of the hearings were not only that Jew hatred had become embedded in universities from the students to professors through the administration, but that the concern was seemingly NOT bipartisan.
Several Democratic members of Congress like Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) used their time at the hearings to ponder why there was no investigation about Islamophobia rather than tackle the subject at hand. The media accused Republicans of holding a partisan spectacle and didn’t really care about Jews, such as The New York Times which wrote “The drubbing is part of a campaign by Republicans against what they view as double standards within elite education establishments — practices that they say favor some groups over others, and equity over meritocracy. Others see it as partisan attack.”
The framing is seemingly peculiar. There is no question that antisemitism on college campuses reached outrageous levels post-October 7. Why would Democratic politicians and liberal media not want to protect young Jews going to school, a community which historically always voted Democratic?
A compulsion to protect DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) which often prioritizes Blacks and Hispanics over Jews and Asians
It begs the question: should Democrats become the majority in Congress in the next election, will Jewish students be abandoned to be tormented at universities around the United States?
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) talking to gathering concerned about the state of antisemitism in universities, July 17, 2024 (Photo: First One Through)
It is both shocking and repulsive to imagine that Democrats would abandon young American Jews but the reactions of Democrats to the past hearings as well as Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) refusal to advance several bills in Congress (since Democrats control the Senate, he controls which bills come forward for a vote) like the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 and the DETERRENT Act make one believe it to be the case.
It would appear that not only is Israel now a partisan issue, but antisemitism has become one as well.
Shabbos Kestenbaum, Jewish Harvard graduate, speaking at Republican National Convention on July 17, 2024
Some phrases get adopted by a wide range of co-fanatics. Something like “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free,” is echoed by a range of anti-Israel agitators like Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Code Pink and others.
The call to attack Zionists and Jews has now come to New York City, home to the largest Jewish diaspora community by Within Our Lifetime.
Within Our Lifetime is a radical Muslim group which has called to set New York City aflame with a “citywide day of rage” at Hunter College in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It has urged students to “organize an action on your campus” and then descend on Hunter.
Hamas is in New York. This is no longer a campus issue for security guards or even local police. This is a federal matter requiring the National Guard.
The New York Times loves to tell stories with pictures and captions alongside its articles. It has a long history of using those visuals to downplay Palestinian Arab terrorism and antisemitism, as well as to magnify Israeli violence.
The paper also does this in its backyard of New York City, where it sanitizes Palestinian supporters’ antisemitism.
Antisemitic attacks, harassment and intimidation have become rampant on college campuses and at Columbia University in NYC, in particular. Last week, the head of the university and board members were summoned to testify before congress to address the scourge that had taken over the campus. In the aftermath of that testimony where Columbia’s leaders readily acknowledged the horrible situation for Jews on campus, things actually got worse.
Chants of “there is only one solution, intifada revolution” were heard throughout the campus and surrounding streets, in calls to terrorize and slaughter Israeli Jews. There were additional calls to “globalize the intifada” to bring the massacres to diaspora Jewry.
Jews were taunted with “Go back to Poland” and “we don’t want Zionists here!” Some Hamas supporters yelled “we’re all Hamas, pig!” at Jews walking by.
The situation was so toxic, that the Orthodox rabbi at Columbia/Barnard told his community that Columbia clearly “cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy,” and as such, recommended that Jewish students go home and not return to campus until matters settled.
President Biden echoed the disgust in his Passover remarks stating “This blatant Antisemitism is reprehensible and dangerous – and it has absolutely no place on college campuses, or anywhere in our country.”
The appalling situation was obvious to anyone who looked at the dynamics. But not for the Times which has an agenda to minimize antisemitism which might cloud the narrative that Palestinians are the only victims in this story.
The headline ran that “some Jewish students feel targeted” with a sub-header that other Jews “rejected that view,” informing viewers in bold that the whole narrative of antisemitism among the pro-Palestinian protestors is highly questionable.
The lead image showed marchers “apparently unaffiliated with Columbia” who “reportedly shouted at Jewish students.” There are dozens of videos showing the harassment, so why add the “reportedly” to make the claim dubious?
The article continued with a picture of “a Jewish graduate student” sitting comfortably on the campus green noting “he doesn’t feel unsafe” as well as another picture of women in kafiyehs with a caption that “many of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia are Jewish.” Clearly the Times wanted viewers to internalize that this protest could not be antisemitic, as Jews participated.
The final picture of the protestors was taken from above at night, with tents huddled together in a peaceful shot of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”
For the casual/Instagram-oriented reader who just scans the headlines, pictures and captions, the story was that Arabs, Jews and others were participating in anti-war peaceful protests on campus, with some people from outside the university perhaps saying something which might be construed as antisemitic. Any actions taken by the school administration against the student demonstrators was therefore unwarranted, and pressured by the too sensitive (and too powerful) Jews.
Just to get YOUR antisemitic attitudes up a few notches.
Even as Jews were targeted for attack and fled from university life, The Times told its readers that “pro-Palestinian demonstrators” are neither pro-Hamas nor antisemitic. It’s an alt-left / jihadi marketing ploy, marketed by the “axis of resistance” of Iran-Russia-China; their proxies of Hizbullah and Hamas in the Middle East; Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Jamaal Bowman in Congress; Students for Justice in Palestine on college campuses; and the alt-left media like The New York Times.
Know that when the alt-left demands that White people give up their privilege, they also demand that Jews give up their victim hood and rights to protection.
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.
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