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UNC Event with Bari Weiss Offers a Model for Israel Events on Campus
Students sit on the steps of Wilson Library on the campus of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, US, Sept. 20, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Drake
The Program for Public Discourse at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) recently hosted the event, “Frank Bruni and Bari Weiss in Conversation.” For three minutes during the middle of the talk, activists with UNC’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) shouted down the speakers, while slowly exiting the auditorium.
Ahead of the event, SJP publicized its intention to disrupt the speakers. On social media, SJP explained it planned the disruption because Weiss calls out left-wing antisemitism, and expresses concerns about intersectionality. They posted on X/Twitter, “Bari Weiss and her lies are NOT welcomed on campus!”
Days before the event, UNC initiated changes, presumably to deal with the planned disruption. The school changed the event’s starting time and the time for the box office to open. Advanced tickets were no longer available.
We arrived at the UNC box office 30 minutes early, and stood in a line that was already long. Behind me were several dozen SJP activists masked to conceal their identities. A woman in line who had escaped the Holocaust told me she has a family member currently being held hostage in Gaza. She was nervous about the planned protest and considered leaving.
Each person in line was allowed one ticket, presumably for security reasons and to prevent activists from scooping up large portions of the tickets, thereby preventing others from attending. Attendees were asked to provide ID and an email address to receive the tickets electronically.
Attending this UNC event felt similar to going through TSA at the airport. I wondered if SJP’s campus disruptions and support of violence will lead UNC to consider installing metal detectors and searching bags at future events.
Before the event began, I spoke with Jewish UNC students seated in front of me. A sophomore said she loves attending UNC, but that she and her friends are afraid to speak up in class when topics related to Judaism and Israel arise.
UNC staff deliberately seated attendees in the intimate auditorium. Some rows were kept empty. It appeared about one-quarter of the seats were kept empty. This fact frustrated those who came to the event and were unable to obtain tickets.
Almost all of the approximately 45 SJP activists were seated in two groups at the back, immediately adjacent to the doors leading out. This arrangement prevented SJP from marching through the auditorium and toward the speakers. UNC deserves much credit for the seating and other measures.
UNC’s Provost, Christopher Clemons, opened the evening by welcoming the speakers and telling the audience that civil behavior was expected. There were to be no disruptions. The audience could ask questions by writing them on paper cards that would be collected.
About 25 minutes into the event, SJP activists simultaneously stood up and slowly walked out, screeching chants of “Bari Bari, you can’t hide, you’re committing genocide.” Of course, she was not hiding. She was on stage, engaging in public discourse, offering to take questions from community members, including the very activists screaming at her.
The “walkout” amounted to a heckler’s veto that prevented the speakers from talking. Uniformed police, followed by Provost Clemons, ushered SJP activists out of the event. Some activists remained outside the auditorium, heckling and shouting at the audience after the event finished an hour later.
The conversation between Bruni and Weiss offered a model of how two people can engage in civil discourse about important issues while sometimes disagreeing. I will not summarize the impressive conversation here, except to say that Weiss mentioned how her highly respected media website — the Free Press — had recently received criticism for publishing a column by Andrew Sullivan that was viewed as being strongly critical of Israel.
UNC offered free pizza to attendees as we left. There were many uniformed police officers outside, and SJP activists were shouting chants and attempting to intimidate attendees who were leaving. A group of four masked SJP activists shouted at us and followed my group. Police officers appeared to follow the activists who were following us.
One reason SJP activists feel emboldened to act in such menacing ways on campus is that UNC continues to allow them to conceal their identities during protests and disruptions. UNC policy and North Carolina law prohibit the use of masks to hide identity. The great preponderance of the masked audience were SJP members, who were easily recognized as they sat in the same two areas and walked out in unison.
The “arguments” SJP activists screamed at us after the event indicated these young adults have no interest in engaging in difficult conversations. The activists following us were yelling about what they called “genocide pizza” and “apartheid pizza” that UNC offered.
SJP activists screeched that they are Arabs, and that Arabs are Semites too. They continued by screaming that since they are Semites, they can’t be antisemitic. This “logic” continued with the activists saying anyone who calls them antisemitic are actually the real antisemites.
A UNC source told me after the event that “Chancellor Roberts is involved in consequences for violations.” I was later informed that the Provost is as well.
While some local community members feel differently, I believe UNC presented a terrific event, with strong security, and strong warnings to the provocateurs.
The identity of all or most attendees should be known by UNC. The University gave fair warning as to the expected rules of conduct when the event began. Photographs of all attending were presumably taken and available to authorities.
It is likely that SJP activists will continue to intimidate, menace, and disrupt the campus community — while concealing their identities — until UNC makes it clear to them that such behaviors are unacceptable.
Now I ask, what will follow? Will UNC continue to tolerate SJP activists wearing masks to deliberately conceal their identities while disrupting campus functions? Or, will the university act against those who violated University policy? Will SJP be suspended as a University-approved organization?
Peter Reitzes writes about issues related to antisemitism and Israel.
The post UNC Event with Bari Weiss Offers a Model for Israel Events on Campus first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Why Does the Media Not Tell the Truth About Hezbollah’s Attacks on Israel?
Firefighters respond to a fire near a rocket attack from Lebanon, amid ongoing cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, near Kiryat Shmona, northern Israel, June 14, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Last month, the BBC News website published a report by the BBC Jerusalem bureau’s Lucy Williamson under the headline “Fires in northern Israel fuel demands to tackle escalation with Hezbollah.”
The following day, the BBC News website published another report by the same journalist on the same topic titled “Israelis using gardening tools to fight wildfires sparked by Hezbollah rockets.”
A couple of weeks later, that pattern was repeated. On June 19, the BBC News website published a report by Williamson headlined “Israel and Hezbollah play with fire as fears grow of another war,” which was previously discussed here.
Late on June 22, the BBC News website published another report titled “Unable to back down, Israel and Hezbollah move closer to all-out war,” which is credited to “Lucy Williamson, Reporting from the Israel-Lebanon border.”
If one assumed that the reason for the appearance within days of a second report on the same topic by the same journalist was the emergence of new information concerning the situation on Israel’s northern border, one would be wrong.
A considerable proportion of Williamson’s second report (which was also translated into Swahili) consists of interviews with people on both sides of the border: Israelis from Kiryat Shmona and Malkiya, and two residents of southern Lebanese villages.
Failing to clarify that her interviewee lives in a town described as one of the “bastions of strong Hezbollah support” where a strike against a Hezbollah command center took place in March, Williamson tells her readers that:
Fatima Belhas lives a few miles (7km) from the Israeli border, near Jbal el Botm.
In the early days, she would shake with fear when Israel bombed the area, she says, but has since come to terms with the bombardments and no longer thinks of leaving.
“Where would I go?” she asked. “[Others] have relatives elsewhere. But how can I impose on someone like that? We have no money.”
“Maybe it is better to die at home with dignity,” she said. “We have grown up resisting. We won’t be driven out of our land like the Palestinians.”
Readers may recall that just days earlier, another BBC report from southern Lebanon promoted that same “Nakba” comparison.
Similarly failing to note Hezbollah’s presence and infrastructure in Mays al Jbal (also Meiss al Jabal), Williamson continues:
Hussein Aballan recently left his village of Mays al Jbal, around 6 miles (10km) from Kiryat Shmona, on the Lebanese side of the border.
Life there had become impossible, he said, with erratic communications and electricity, and almost no functioning shops.
The few dozen families left there are mainly older people who refuse to leave their homes and farms, he told the BBC.
But he backed the Hezbollah assault on Israel.
“Everyone in the south [of Lebanon] has lived through years of aggression, but has come out stronger,” he said. “Only through resistance are we strong.”
Williamson fails to remind her readers that Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon 24 years ago, and that the only “aggression” has been in response to attacks by Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, such as the cross-border attack that sparked the war in 2006.
As in her previous report, Williamson portrays the events resulting from the Lebanese terror group’s decision to attack Israel on October 8 as “tit-for-tat”:
But as the tit-for-tat conflict grinds on, and more than 60,000 Israelis remain evacuated from their homes in the north, there are signs that both Israel’s leaders and its citizens are prepared to support military options to push Hezbollah back from the border by force.
Also, as in her own previous reports and in most other BBC content, Williamson fails to explain to her readers that according to UN Security Council Resolution 1701, Hezbollah should be nowhere near the border with Israel ,and that the UN’s “peacekeeping force” in Lebanon has failed to enforce that resolution since it was passed in 2006.
Williamson’s framing of the situation in the north of Israel includes the following:
The dangerous stalemate here hinges largely on the war Israel is fighting more than 100 miles (160km) to the south in Gaza.
A ceasefire there would help calm tensions in the north too, but Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is keeping both conflicts going, mortgaged by his promise to far-right government allies to destroy Hamas before ending the Gaza War. [emphasis added]
And:
Demands for political change are likely to increase when Israel’s conflicts end.
Many believe Israel’s prime minister is playing for time: caught between growing demands for a ceasefire in Gaza, and growing support for a war in the north.
In other words, Williamson’s framing ignores the fact that Hamas chose to attack Israel on October 7, and that Hezbolah chose to attack Israel on October 8, and almost every day since then. She erases the fact that Hamas has rejected multiple ceasefire offers in order to promote a narrative whereby it is Israel’s prime minister alone who is “keeping both conflicts going”.
Moreover, she tells BBC audiences that:
The problem for Israel is how to stop the rockets and get its people back to the abandoned northern areas of the country.
The problem for Hezbollah is how to stop the rockets when its ally, Hamas, is being pounded by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Williamson cites a statement made by the UN Secretary General on June 21:
Hezbollah is a well-armed, well-trained army, backed by Iran; Israel, a sophisticated military power with the US as an ally.
Full-scale war is likely to be devastating for both sides.
The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, said it would be a “catastrophe that goes […] beyond imagination”.
Like the UN Secretary General, Williamson has nothing to tell her audiences about the Lebanese state’s decades-long failure to tackle the Islamist terrorist organization that has repeatedly dragged that country into conflict, and has nothing to say about the failure of the United Nations to enforce its own resolutions designed to prevent further conflict.
The BBC’s sidelining of UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and its whitewashing of the failures of the UN forces that are supposed to enforce it, did not begin in October 2023: that editorial policy has been evident for many years.
Now, however, that policy is being used to advance framing of a potential escalation after over eight months of continuous attacks on Israeli communities by Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations, as something that is the responsibility of Israel alone.
Hadar Sela is the co-editor of CAMERA UK – an affiliate of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Why Does the Media Not Tell the Truth About Hezbollah’s Attacks on Israel? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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University of Toronto is granted an injunction to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment that has been on campus for two months
The University of Toronto has received an injunction to dismantle the pro-Palestinian encampment on its property. The 98-page decision from Justice Markus Koehnen of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice said that members of the encampment must take down the tents within 24 hours, by 6 p.m. on Wednesday, July 3. Toronto Police will have […]
The post University of Toronto is granted an injunction to dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment that has been on campus for two months appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Jewish Cemeteries Vandalized in Cincinnati, Montreal
Vandals in Canada targeted a Jewish cemetery. Photo: Screenshot
Vandals have targeted notable Jewish cemeteries in Cincinnati, Ohio and Montreal, Canada, sparking outcry and concern over mounting threats of antisemitism.
Vandals at Montreal’s Kehal Yisrael Cemetery placed memorial stones in the shape of a Nazi swastika on top of tombstones. Ones with the last names Eichler and Herman were targeted in the antisemitic attack.
Placing memorial stones on graves is an ancient Jewish custom to memorialize the dead. Jewish cemeteries oftentimes have stones nearby tombstones for mourners.
Canadian leaders decried the vandalism.
“It is absolutely abhorrent and revolting to defile the dead with swastikas,” Jeremy Levi, the Jewish mayor of a Jewish-majority suburb of Montreal, commented on X/Twitter. “This desecration at the Kehal Israel cemetery in Montreal is beyond contempt. [Canadian Prime Minister] Justin Trudeau, step aside and get out of the way so we can reclaim our country. May this Kohen’s neshama have an Aliyah on high.” One of the tombstones vandalized belonged to a Kohen.
The leader of the Conservative Party in Canada’s parliament and candidate for prime minister, Pierre Poilievre, lambasted Trudeau and denounced antisemitism. “We cannot close our eyes to the disgusting acts of antisemitism that are happening in our country everyday,” he posted on X/Twitter. “The prime minister must finally act to stop these displays of antisemitism. If he won’t, a common sense Conservative government will.”
Canada, like many countries around the world, has experienced a surge in antisemitic incidents since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Meanwhile in Cincinnati, vandals targeted two historic Jewish cemeteries this past week, toppling and shattering ancient tombstones — some dating back to the 1800s.
According to a statement from the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, 176 gravesites in Cincinnati’s West Side were ruined “in an act of antisemitic vandalism.”
“Due to the extensive damage and the historical nature of many of the gravestones, we have not yet been able to identify all the families affected by this act,” the statement continued. “Our community [is] heartbroken.”
The Cincinnati Police Department and the FBI are investigating the incidents.
The destruction of monuments is the latest in a greater trend of antisemitic vandalism. In an incident over the weekend, vandals in Australia targeted war memorials dedicated to Australian veterans who sacrificed their lives in Korea and Vietnam with pro-Hamas graffiti.
A couple weeks earlier, vandals in Belgium defaced two memorials for Holocaust victims with swastikas and a phrase calling for violence against Israel. In Germany, meanwhile, at least seven stolpersteine, or stumbling blocks in the sidewalk meant to mark Jewish homes seized by the Nazis, were defaced with the message “Jews are perpetrators.”
The US, Canada, Europe, and Australia have all experienced an explosion of antisemitic incidents in the wake of the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, and amid the ensuing war in Gaza. In many countries, anti-Jewish hate crimes have spiked to record levels.
According to the B’nai Brith, antisemitic incidents in Canada more than doubled in 2023 compared to the prior year.
The post Jewish Cemeteries Vandalized in Cincinnati, Montreal first appeared on Algemeiner.com.