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An Open Letter to University Presidents
Pro-Hamas demonstrators at Columbia University in New York City, US, April 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
Recent weeks have seen a surge in anti-Israel protests at universities across the US. As university leaders, you are undoubtedly facing intense pressure from various perspectives. Here are five keys issues and questions you have probably asked yourselves — but you likely got the answers wrong:
1. Isn’t it paramount that we support free speech and allow students to protest?
Free speech is fundamental in American society, allowing diverse opinions to be heard — even controversial ones. However, speech that threatens specific individuals or groups does not qualify as protected speech. At some campuses, rhetoric has escalated to dangerous levels, with calls for violence against Israeli cities and Jewish students. Such expressions exceed the bounds of free speech.
Jewish students have been targeted, physically intimidated, and even violently attacked. All of this puts much of the anti-Israel protests beyond the protection of free speech.
While protecting free speech is part of the equation, creating an environment that condemns and protects against racism and discrimination is also crucial. Imagine if the KKK wanted to protest in the middle of Columbia University chanting that “blacks are not welcome here” or if anti-gay groups were calling for homosexuals to be targeted and harassed. Would any university leader stand for this? Would anyone want to attend a university that allows this?
2. Aren’t these protests against Israel, not Jews? We should not equate the two.
The stated reason for the protests is to condemn Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. However, much of the rhetoric has devolved into antisemitism against Jewish students. Since the war began, 73% of Jewish college students reported experiencing antisemitic incidents, from vandalism to threats of violence. Additionally, 44% of non-Jewish students also stated that they witnessed antisemitism on campus. These are astonishing numbers.
The core of the connection between anti-Israel hate and antisemitism is the centrality that Israel plays in Jewish identity. One cannot separate Israel from Judaism. The Land of Israel is central to Judaism’s history, sacred texts, prayers, and religious observance. Israel cannot be separated from Judaism — it is integral to it. Thus, for so many Jews, an attack on Israel is an attack against the Jewish People. And many Jews have been attacked simply for being Jewish; the numbers and stories are undeniable
3. Since there are Jewish students also protesting, this can’t be antisemitism, right?
Jewish participation in protests does not negate antisemitism. Although some Jewish students participate in these protests, they represent a minority within the broader American Jewish community. Recent studies, including one by Pew, indicate that a significant majority of American Jews validate Israel’s reasons for engaging Hamas (89%), though opinions on the conduct of operations vary. The diversity among protesters, including Jews, doesn’t nullify the antisemitic elements present, particularly when Jewish organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace, which has been critiqued for antisemitic rhetoric, are involved.
4. How do I know when a protest against Israel’s actions becomes antisemitism?
Soviet dissident and human rights advocate Natan Sharansky has defined when criticism of Israel crosses the line to antisemitism. He calls it the “3 D’s”: delegitimization, demonization, and double standards.
Delegitimization: Questioning Israel’s very existence or advocating to ban “Zionists” from campus is delegitimizing and antisemitic.
Demonization: Israel is fighting against an enemy who openly calls for its destruction, attacks civilians, and then hides amongst Palestinian civilians. Accusing Israel of indiscriminately killing innocent people, committing genocide, or other war crimes when it is not factual is demonizing and antisemitic.
Double Standards: Criticizing Israel for actions that other nations are not criticized for is a double standard and antisemitic. Israel is often criticized for actions that other nations are not. While all loss of innocent life is tragic, one has to wonder why there are protests against Israel across all of these campuses when nothing was done for so many other horrible situations. There were no protests when Syria was using chemical weapons against its own people. There were no protests when Nigerian Christians were slaughtered by Islamists. There were no protests standing up for the brave Muslim women marching in the streets against the Iranian regime. There were no protests to stand up for the Kurds or the Yazidi women and children who were used as sex slaves by ISIS. Why not?
5. What do these protestors want and how can we end this?
Hearing from the protestors themselves, it seems like they have many conflicting agendas, including calls for a ceasefire, cessation of US support for Israel, or even the destruction of Israel. Some also express animosity towards Western values and are also expressing hatred toward America and Western culture, while some have no idea why they are protesting in the first place. This may explain the support they are receiving from Hamas and Iran, as the protesters are aligning with groups hostile to liberal democracies. Universities must formulate responses that reject hate and promote a safe academic environment without compromising free speech.
So how do we end this? Certainly not by giving in to haters and those intimidating, harassing, and threatening others. All university leaders must stand strong against this hatred and make it loud and clear that these hate tactics will not succeed
Elliot Mathias is Aish’s Chief Operating Officer for Global Activities, as well as Executive Director of Aish New York. Elliot is also the founder of Hasbara Fellowships, a program he created while studying at Aish in Jerusalem, Hasbara Fellowships grew under his leadership to become one of the premier campus Israel advocacy organizations in North America, training and supporting thousands of students to stand up for Israel.
The post An Open Letter to University Presidents first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Vancouver police raid a home linked to the director of Samidoun—which is now a terrorist entity in Canada
Vancouver police arrested and released one person at the home of Charlotte Kates, director of the terror group Samidoun, in a dramatic raid on Nov. 14. The raid was conducted […]
The post Vancouver police raid a home linked to the director of Samidoun—which is now a terrorist entity in Canada appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Trump Won A Majority of Votes In Heavily-Jewish New York City Precincts, Election Data Claims
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Forum River Center in Rome, Georgia, US, March 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer
President-elect Donald Trump won an overwhelming majority of the votes in New York City (NYC) precincts that were at least a quarter Jewish, according to a data analysis by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), a prominent Washington DC-based political group.
RJC presented data on Friday affirming the notion that Trump won a higher proportion of the NYC Jewish vote than in previous elections, potentially signaling an ideological shift in the traditionally-liberal voting bloc. According to RJC data, Trump received the “overwhelming” majority of votes in precincts with a Jewish population of at least 25%.
Trump’s 2024 performance among Jews in NYC seems to mark a substantial improvement over the 2020 and 2016 elections, contests in which the president-elect struggled to make inroads among Jewish voters.
Voting data from the 2024 election also indicate that there was a significant shift among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania. President-elect Trump also enjoyed greater success in heavily-Jewish enclaves of deep-blue cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, according to data compiled by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners and the Los Angeles Times, respectively.
Trump’s increased success among Jewish voters in the Big Apple comes amid simmering anger over surging antisemitism across the country.
In the year following the Hamas slaughter of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel, college campuses have become embroiled in an unrelenting onslaught of protests opposing the Jewish state. Moreover, many Jews have expressed dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, suggesting that the president has not been a firm ally of the Jewish state.
Over the past year, NYC has been ravaged with raucous, often-violent anti-Israel demonstrations and an unrelenting spate of antisemitic hate crimes.
Columbia University, one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in the world, became a poster-child for the anti-Israel campus movement, erecting encampments and holding protests calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Many NYC public schools came embroiled in scandal after teachers presented students with lesson plans that accused Israel of committing “apartheid” and “genocide” against the Palestinians.
Though most national Democrats continue to express support for Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas terrorists, some figures in the party have, over the past year, adopted a more adversarial posture toward the Jewish state, often citing the humanitarian situation in Gaza as a key reason.
High-profile Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) have suggested that Israel has perpetrated a “genocide” against Palestinians in Hamas-ruled Gaza, where Israel has been waging a military campaign targeting terrorists since the Oct. 7 atrocities. Earlier this year, a group of dozens of Democratic lawmakers, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), sent a letter to US President Joe Biden, urging him to “reconsider” approving offensive arms shipments to Israel.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. While courting Jewish voters, Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them once he retains office in January.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
The post Trump Won A Majority of Votes In Heavily-Jewish New York City Precincts, Election Data Claims first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Attempted Robbery of Jewish Man in Brooklyn Puts Orthodox Community on Edge
Screenshot of masked men who attempted to rob Jewish man in Crown Heights, Brooklyn on Thursday. Photo: Screenshot
The Jewish community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York was the target of another attack on Thursday evening, as three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the neighborhood.
Footage of the incident was shared on X/Twitter by Yaacov Behrman, liaison of Chabad Headquarters and founder of the Jewish Future Alliance (JFA) nonprofit. It shows the men, whose faces were concealed by hoods and ski masks, chasing the man into the street and through the neighborhood after attempting to accost him.
No arrests have been made.
“He doesn’t give in easily, and I don’t think they got anything,” Behrman tweeted. “The Jewish Future Alliance is deeply concerned not only about the increase in crime but also the fact that, once again, the perpetrators were wearing masks. We need to reinstate mask laws.”
The explosion of an antisemitic hate crime spree in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn has set the Orthodox Jewish community on edge in recent weeks.
Last Tuesday, two men beat a middle-aged Hasidic man after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery. According to multiple accounts, the assailants were two Black teenagers.
That incident was the third time in eight days that an Orthodox resident of Crown Heights was targeted for violence and humiliation. Before then, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily neighborhood, which is heavily Jewish, and less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face.
Most recently, a masked man was caught on video approaching a visibly Jewish father walking with his two sons and grabbing one of the children in broad daylight. He was unable to secure possession of the child, whose father fought back immediately and did not let go of his son. Police later identified the man as Stephan Stowe, 28 — a suspect gang member with an extensive criminal history which includes 33 prior arrests — and charged arrested him attempted kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child.
In each case, the suspect was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.
Black-on-Jewish crime is a social issue which has been studied before. In 2022, a report published by Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA) showed that Orthodox Jews were the minority group most victimized by hate crimes in New York City and that 69 percent of their assailants were African American. Seventy-seven percent of the incidents took place taking in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Of all assaults that prompted criminal proceedings, just two resulted in convictions.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” AAA founder and former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D) told The Algemeiner. “Shouldn’t there be a plan for how we’re going to deal with it? What’s the answer? Education? We’ve been educating everybody forever for God’s sake, and things are just getting worse.”
The problem has become acute in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face. Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.
According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Attempted Robbery of Jewish Man in Brooklyn Puts Orthodox Community on Edge first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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