RSS
American campuses aren’t the only ones erupting over Gaza. Welcome to Haifa University.
HAIFA (JTA) — In the days leading up to her university’s long-delayed first semester, Yael Granot-Bein brought a group of Arab and Jewish students together.
Granot-Bein, who works in the University of Haifa’s dean of students office, had envisioned working with the students to come up with a way to demonstrate solidarity during a war that was testing bonds at the school, which enrolls the highest proportion of Arabs of any Israeli university.
“I said, ‘Let’s think together about a catchphrase that we can put on T-shirts and bracelets.’ In my mind, I had something like, ‘Let’s keep a diverse campus safe,’” Granot-Bein recalled. “They looked at me and were very honest and said, ‘Listen, that is not appropriate. We are not on the same page at all.”
It was a dramatic and disappointing conversation at an institution that has been a rare oasis of shared society in a country whose roughly 7 million Jewish citizens and 2 million Arab ones live in largely separate spheres. Except in a handful of cases, Jewish and Arab children are educated in separate schools until reaching university, and are generally more comfortable communicating in different languages.
At Haifa University, which resumed classes on Dec. 31 alongside the rest of Israel’s universities, Israeli Arabs make up half of the 17,000-person student body. In a typical year, Jewish and Arab students from Muslim, Christian and Druze backgrounds choose to study at Haifa in part for its reputation as Israel’s most diverse campus environment. In addition, Haifa is a cultural center for Arab Israelis and is known for a history of largely peaceful coexistence between its Jewish and Arab residents.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, however, the atmosphere on and around campus has felt different. In the weeks after Hamas’ invasion of Israel, the university took the unprecedented step of suspending eight Arab-Israeli students for posts on social media and WhatsApp groups that were deemed to be supporting terror.
This month, those students were allowed back on campus while their cases undergo a mediation process — sparking calls by some Jewish student leaders for a “day of disruption” in protest of that decision.
“We demand that they stay off campus until the process is completed,” Elad Asis, the student government president, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency as he led a rally of dozens of students holding signs at the campus entrance at the start the second week of classes on Jan. 9. “It is not possible that students who supported terrorism will sit next to students whose family members were murdered on Oct. 7.”
According to Adalah, an Arab-Israeli legal rights nonprofit, more than 100 Arab students have faced disciplinary proceedings over social media posts related to the war, at least eight of whom were expelled.
The university administration handed out materials with the slogan “Continuing to study together” in order to cool tensions. (Eliyahu Freedman)
The suspensions have had a sweeping impact at Haifa, where several campus community members had family members killed on Oct. 7 and one student’s parents were kidnapped by Hamas. A campus exhibition illuminates one candle for each of the dozens of graduates killed in action in Gaza.
“I understand their feelings,” Ron Robin, the university’s president, told JTA after meeting with the protesting students on the street. But he said he did not think there was a significant problem on the campus, adding, “I think that if there’s anybody in the university who has sympathy for Hamas I can count on one hand.”
About 1,500 Haifa students were called up to reserve duty as the Israeli army mounted its largest-ever mobilization in the days after the attack. Some of them have now returned to campus, carrying their guns per military policy as they navigate the new tensions. The university is recording classes for the time being, in part so soldiers on active duty can stay caught up; it is also awarding scholarships worth about $530 to all students called up to the army. Annual tuition is approximately $3,000.
“Someone told me that it felt good for her seeing me with my weapon and that it made her feel safe, and someone else saw my weapon and it allowed her to feel comfortable to talk about her difficulties during the war,” said Avinoam, 27, a reservist who is scheduled to alternate weeks between campus and serving on one of Israel’s borders with his army unit. (Per military policy, he shared his first name only.)
The sight of armed students across campus is less comforting for Annabell Sharma, an Arab political science student. Sharma said she was alarmed by the anger on campus about the nine students who had been suspended.
“It is possible that I will be assaulted, not necessarily physically, on the basis of nine students,” she said. She added, “Why bring a weapon to campus, when that is supposed to be the job of campus security? If someone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and decides to fire upon all of us, then what?”
The tensions at Haifa are far from unique. According to a November survey of Arab and Jewish Israeli students commissioned by the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, most Jewish and Arab students fear the other, with around 20% of each feeling that fear to a high degree. The survey also found that nearly half of Arab students were considering not returning to campus.
The survey was taken weeks after Arab students were evacuated from the dorms at Netanya Academic College in late October after Jewish residents rioted outside, calling for “Death to Arabs.”
At Haifa, Sharma said she blamed the tensions felt by Arab students at Haifa on a small group of Jewish extremists who have in some cases doxxed and harassed Arab students for writing posts on social media and Whatsapp that they feel are disloyal to Israel. Sharma called the group of Jewish extremists “an obstacle,” and added, “fanatics on both sides need to be restrained without favoritism.”
Granot-Bein said that after the initial tension during her slogan-brainstorming session with students, she was able to resume her original plan by pressing the students to name things they all had in common.
“They said, ‘We want to study, we want to graduate and we want to move on with our lives,’” she recalled.
A boiled-down version of their message — “Continuing to study together” — can now be seen on staff T-shirts and thousands of orange bracelets worn by students across campus that were handed out by professors and volunteers during class breaks at the start of the semester.
Maya Negev, a professor of public health who was handing out bracelets near the main library, emphasized that all members of Israeli society reflected in Haifa’s population have stepped up during the war, from Druze soldiers to Arab Israeli nurses.
“Everyone in the [Department of Public Health] is helping a lot. A lot of Arab medical staff have been covering for Jewish colleagues who are out on reserve duty,” she said.
Medicine has long been one of the most integrated sectors of Israeli society. Hamada, a Muslim student in her final year of nursing school who declined to share her last name, said her medical training had prepared her to return to a wartime campus.
“I am not so afraid because I am used to working with a diverse group of people as a hospital worker, but I know that other students are afraid,” she said. “There is no tension for me here.”
She said an Arab-Jewish leadership course she took last year offered an example of how to build relationships. Once the students got to know each other, she said, “we were able to speak openly about everything from religion to politics to racism.”
Mona Maron, a neuroscientist and vice president for research and development who is one of the university’s most senior Arab-Israeli academics, said that even in the best of times, it can take time to break the ice between Arab and Jewish students on campus.
She was optimistic that the tensions of recent months would soon dissipate now that classes had begun.
“The first meeting of many of the Arab and Israeli students takes place on campus,” she said. “It’s true now that you see groups of Arab and Jewish students sitting separately.”
She added, “Come back in a few weeks and you will see them sitting together.”
—
The post American campuses aren’t the only ones erupting over Gaza. Welcome to Haifa University. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
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.
RSS
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.
RSS
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.