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Ending hostility and violence means wrestling with our own shadows

This story was originally published on My Jewish Learning.

(JTA) — Hostility originates in the disowned and unacknowledged elements within us. That, at any rate, is the claim of a body of research based on the work of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology.

Jung introduced the concept of the shadow, the unconscious part of ourselves that we are unable or unwilling to acknowledge. Those elements we repress stem from painful experiences that give rise to difficult emotions such as shame, jealousy, rage and grief. “The level of hostility a person exhibits is proportional to the amount of shadow,” writes Roderick Main, a professor in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies at the University of Essex.

At this moment of intensifying hostility within our communities and devastating levels of violence in our world, this week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach, offers us glimmers of insight into how we might heal society’s fractures and open a way towards peace: We must stop projecting our shadow on to others, and instead grapple with it for ourselves.

As the portion opens, Esau is on the march toward his brother Jacob, whom he has not seen since Jacob stole his birthright and ran away, evading responsibility. Jacob gets word that Esau is approaching with 400 men and becomes afraid and distressed. Rashi says the fear is that Esau will kill him, while the distress is that he will have to kill Esau. Either way, this already hostile situation seems likely to end in violence.

It is easy to imagine Jacob preparing to meet his brother by doubling down on a path of self-interest and plotting a preemptive attack. What’s more difficult to imagine is what he does instead.

Before meeting his brother, Jacob creates the conditions to first meet himself. Jacob separates himself from all that he has amassed and places it on one side of the Jabbok river where his family is camped. He then crosses back to the other side empty-handed and unescorted. That night, vulnerable and alone, shorn of all that has come to define him, a mysterious figure appears and wrestles with Jacob until dawn. As day breaks, Jacob demands from the figure a blessing. It is then that he is renamed Yisrael — one who has struggled with beings Divine and human and endured.

According to Jung, this kind of transformative experience of the Divine is “a force … that will only function and express itself where there is a true dialogue between ego-consciousness and the unconscious.” In this light, we can understand the mysterious figure with whom Jacob wrestles as representing the disowned, unacknowledged elements within that he finally brings to consciousness. Jacob emerges from his dark night of the soul humbled, hobbling and blessedly transformed. When dawn breaks and he and Esau finally meet, there is no hostility or violence. Instead, in an act of tender intimacy and relief, the brothers embrace and together they weep.

We aren’t told how Esau prepares for this encounter, or why he was able to meet Jacob with open arms. We could imagine that he prepared for multiple possibilities, including a hostile encounter. But with its focus on Jacob, the text seems to suggest that the changed contours of the conflict have much to do with the wrestling Jacob did within his own soul. We can infer that without this internal work, this story could have been the beginning of ongoing war, rather than a tender reconciliation. It was only after Jacob engaged in the wrenching, humbling work of grappling with his own shadow that the conflict could resolve.

The Torah is not meant to be a straightforward guidebook for how to navigate the world. But perhaps Jacob’s wrestling with his shadow can offer us clues towards actualizing the new realities we seek.

Each one of us has the capacity to do the inner work that changes how conflict unfolds. In this difficult and divisive time, what if we, like Jacob, acknowledged the fear and distress that we feel? What if we risked being “alone,” separated from the beliefs, narratives and identities that have come to define us, allowing for the vulnerability and disorientation that necessarily will arise? What if we wrestle with the difficult questions and challenging truths that come to meet us? Perhaps if we are tenacious enough to stay with the struggle long enough, we, like Jacob, will discover the blessing it contains.


The post Ending hostility and violence means wrestling with our own shadows appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Israel Can’t Be Expected to Give Aid to Gaza Unless it Bypasses Hamas

FILE PHOTO: Palestinians carry aid supplies they collected from trucks that entered Gaza through Israel, in Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip August 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas/File Photo

While Israel has denied the tidal wave of lies that it’s causing a famine in Gaza, to what extent is Israel legally obligated to supply aid to Gaza, if the aid also helps Hamas?

Obviously, no one wants to see civilians suffer. But things are not so simple, because while Hamas has been mauled, it has yet to be eliminated, it’s still attacking the IDF and Israelis, it’s still holding hostages, and it’s still stealing and reselling food, often with the effective cooperation of certain “humanitarian” organizations, like the UN-affiliated World Food Programme..

So far, only the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been willing to make sure that its aid goes only to civilians. And a recent whistleblower complaint to USAID outlines how these other “humanitarian” groups have refused IDF offers to work together to ensure that aid was not stolen by Hamas, thereby acting to protect Hamas rather than Gaza civilians.

According to the whistleblower:

A firsthand eyewitnessing of senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials offering any support necessary, including security protection and coordination, to representatives from the World Food Programme (WFP) and the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) only to have WFP and OCHA respond that they were not prepared to discuss such coordination…

[The] IDF is actively helping the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) get food into the hands of civilians while U.N. agencies, including WFP and OCHA, through their unwillingness to coordinate with the IDF, are inhibiting the distribution of such aid … [this refusal] raises serious questions.

Under international law, the refusal by these other “humanitarian organizations” to prevent Hamas from stealing aid makes all the difference in the world. That’s because Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, on Consignment of medical supplies, food and clothing, states that a party to the conflict is not obligated to allow aid convoys if it has “serious reasons for fearing”:

(a) that the consignments may be diverted from their destination,

(b) that the control may not be effective, or

(c) that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy through the substitution of the above-mentioned consignments for goods which would otherwise be provided or produced by the enemy or through the release of such material, services or facilities as would otherwise be required for the production of such goods.

The next paragraphs of Article 23 underscore that Israel has the right to block aid because its “permission is conditional” and it has the “right to prescribe the technical arrangements under which such passage is allowed.”

Prescribing the “technical arrangements” includes working with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is ensuring that the aid goes directly to civilians and that it is not stolen by Hamas. And it also includes not working with the WFP, OCHA, UNRWA, and other “humanitarian” organizations that seem to actually be agents of Hamas.

Not surprisingly, because it is actually aiding Gaza civilians rather than Hamas, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been condemned by the “humanitarian” community, as reported by the BBC:

More than 170 charities and other NGOs are calling for the controversial aid distribution scheme in Gaza run by the Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to be shut down.

Also not surprising is that a UN press release, titled “UN experts call for immediate dismantling of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” has as its lead expert signer Francesca Albanese, the notorious antisemite who has been sanctioned by the United States.

The bottom line is that under international law, Israel has every right to refuse to work with these self-discrediting Hamas-adjacent “humanitarian” organizations, especially when the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is there to pick up the slack.

Alex Safian, PhD, was until recently the Associate Director and Research Director of CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. 

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What the Brandeis Study Gets Shockingly Wrong About Antisemitism on Campus

Brandeis University. Photo: Wiki Commons.

American higher education prides itself on truth-telling. Yet when the subject is antisemitism, the academy often resorts to denial and minimization.

A recent Brandeis University study is a striking case in point. Its authors, Dr. Graham Wright and Prof. Leonard Saxe of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, claim that only three percent of non-Jewish faculty are hostile toward Israel.

In a recent Inside Higher Ed editorial, the authors argue that most professors are in fact allies, not adversaries, in the fight against antisemitism.

This narrative is reassuring — but dangerously misleading. It rests on a narrow definition of “hostility” that excludes far more pervasive expressions of animus.

Wright and Saxe classified as hostile only those faculty who denied Israel’s right to exist and refused to collaborate with colleagues who affirmed it. By that measure, just three percent of professors qualified. Yet their own data tell a different story: a majority — 54 percent — agreed that Israel is an apartheid state; 8 percent said they would not collaborate with a colleague who supports Israel’s existence; and 7 percent denied Israel’s right to exist outright.

Calling Israel an apartheid state — when it manifestly is not — is an act of hostility, one that delegitimizes the Jewish State and stigmatizes its supporters. By any reasonable standard, then, hostility among non-Jewish faculty is not marginal but widespread.

Jewish students’ experiences reinforce this reality about faculty.

Wright and Saxe’s own earlier 2023 report, In the Shadow of War: Hotspots of Antisemitism on US College Campuses, found that at some of the most hostile schools since October 7, 2023, “about 80 percent of Jewish students reported encountering hostility toward Israel from other students ‘sometimes’ or ‘often,’” and 30 percent reported hostility directly from faculty.

Is it remotely plausible that only three percent of faculty are hostile when nearly one in three Jewish students perceive faculty hostility firsthand?

The authors’ subsequent 2024 report, Antisemitism on Campus: Understanding Hostility to Jews and Israel, reached similar conclusions: a majority of Jewish students (60 percent) reported a hostile environment toward Jews on their campus, and 82 percent reported hostility toward Israel.

Non-Jewish students largely agreed: 56 percent said there was a hostile climate toward Israel on their campus. And in February 2025, the American Jewish Committee reported that nearly one-third of Jewish college students believe faculty themselves have promoted antisemitism or hostile learning environments, which matches the 2023 numbers on faculty. These findings make clear that many faculty are part of the problem, not simply neutral bystanders.

Campus incidents drive the point home. At NYU in April 2024, professors formed a human barricade to shield a pro-Hamas encampment from police. At Columbia, professors rallied in defense of encampments accused of harassing Jewish students. At Barnard, a professor proudly supported students in a building takeover and berated a student who challenged her extreme anti-Israel views.

At Sarah Lawrence, where I teach, many faculty openly embrace anti-Zionist narratives, justify calls for violence, and encourage disruptive tactics such as building takeovers. The president of the American Association of University Professors has even endorsed militant “direct action,” betraying its founding mission of protecting academic freedom in favor of raw activism. This posture lends legitimacy to those who would turn campuses into platforms for radical politics and intimidation.

These are not isolated incidents. They reflect a broader pattern of faculty normalizing antisemitic rhetoric, excusing intimidation, and modeling for students that radical activism trumps pluralism. If only a handful — say three percent — of professors were hostile, then the rest would be allies. Yet where are the teach-ins against antisemitism? The op-eds condemning dehumanizing chants? The marches for pluralism led by senior professors with tenure? They scarcely exist, and certainly not in meaningful numbers.

Instead, we see that Jewish and Zionist faculty very publicly retreat in frustration or fear. Many resign or fall silent rather than rally colleagues. Outside groups such as the Academic Engagement Network have tried to fill the void, but on campus, the absence of strong faculty support for beleaguered students is glaring. That silence sustains an anti-Israel culture that cannot credibly be blamed on only three percent of professors.

The Brandeis study also overlooks a structural reality: much of the actual teaching of undergraduates is done not by tenured or tenure-track professors, but by adjuncts, lecturers, and contingent instructors. These are the faculty who most directly shape classroom climate, yet they were excluded from the survey. By extrapolating from a narrower, more insulated slice of faculty, the study presents a portrait of classrooms that is rosier than the reality Jewish students encounter.

The consequences of the study’s myths are profound. Administrators cite it to downplay problems. Policymakers invoke it to avoid reform. Faculty hide behind it to excuse their inaction. The result is a campus environment where hostility toward Israel and its supporters festers unchecked, while institutions point to “data” purporting to show that almost all faculty are allies.

Wright and Saxe close their piece by warning that while the actions of a few faculty can shape the climate of an entire campus, punishing faculty as a whole is unwise. They add that changes are needed, but can only succeed if faculty are part of the process. On that last point, they are right: faculty must be part of any solution. Universities cannot be reformed over the heads of the people who teach and mentor students every day.

But solutions cannot rest on misinterpretation. The Brandeis study’s own data reveal serious problems, yet its framing implies that faculty hostility is statistically marginal. That misleading conclusion obscures the lived reality of Jewish students — and the actual reality on campus.

As I have argued in AEIdeas, faculty bear a responsibility not only to avoid hostility, but to actively sustain pluralism and resist intimidation. When professors retreat into silence, they create a vacuum that the most radical voices inevitably fill. Recognizing that reality is essential if faculty are to become part of the solution rather than bystanders to the problem.

Until faculty themselves prove otherwise, the evidence is clear: too many are not allies of Israel or of Jewish students, but part of the problem itself.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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The Future of Journalism? The Columbia Journalism Review’s Skewed View of Israel & Gaza

A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a bullhorn during a protest at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) on March 11, 2025. Photo: Daniel Cole via Reuters Connect.

The Columbia Journalism Review, the official organ of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, recently published a round table discussion on press freedom in Gaza and Israeli restrictions on foreign journalists entering Gaza.

This was not, however, an academic and nuanced discussion on such hot-button topics. Rather, it was an orgy of radical voices accusing Israel of the most heinous crimes, dismissing any connection between certain Gazan journalists and Hamas, and ignoring the role that Hamas plays in obstructing press freedom in Gaza.

The tone of this piece was immediately set by the introductory remarks by Azmat Khan, the initiator of this discussion, and both an assistant professor of journalism and the director of the Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism at Columbia Journalism School.

Khan engages in a blistering diatribe against Israeli actions in Gaza, accusing the Jewish State of committing genocide, purposefully targeting Gazan journalists in order to stop them from reporting on the war, and manufacturing a “man-made human catastrophe in Gaza.”

Khan dismisses Israeli allegations that certain Gazan journalists and media workers that were moonlighting as terrorists as “poorly evidenced accusations that someone Israel killed was a combatant, rather than well-documented evidence of that person’s work as a reporter” and also goes after “pro-Israel advocacy groups that dub themselves ‘media watchdogs’ and wage systematic campaigns, fomented by Israeli intelligence, to discredit, dehumanize, and blacklist them—and to harass those who defend them.”

There is no doubt that Khan had HonestReporting in mind on that last point, after we exposed the terror links of certain Palestinian journalists in Gaza and how Hamas frames the narrative emerging from the coastal enclave.

Clearly, rather than engaging with the serious questions about the journalistic integrity of some Gazan reporters and media workers, Khan prefers to blindly absolve them of any wrongdoing and vilify those bringing these terror ties to light. This is not the work of an influential academic committed to truth and accuracy but of a propagandist obfuscating reality to serve a prepared narrative.

Khan’s ire then turned toward governments and news outlets, accusing them of turning a blind eye to Israel’s actions in Gaza and endangering the lives of Palestinian journalists.

It is here that Khan turned to a litany of “thinkers from across the fields of journalism, human rights, literature, academia, and advocacy,” asking for new strategies and ideas on how to promote “press freedom” in Gaza. With such a biased introduction, it is no surprise that the respondents all shared Khan’s animus towards Israel and placed all blame at the feet of the Jewish state, completely ignoring the terror organization that still exerts control inside the Gaza Strip.

Here are some of the most radical proposals and claims that were put forward in this piece:

  • Sharif Abdel Kouddous, the Middle East and North Africa editor for Drop Site News (an alternative news organization that has no problem parroting Hamas talking points and sympathizing with the terror group), suggested journalists strike until media organizations include a disclaimer that Israel is responsible for the most journalist deaths around the world. He said the veracity of any Israeli statement “is dubious.”
  • Arwa Damon, a former CNN correspondent who was quick to  contextualize Hamas’ October 7 attacks, recommended “banning Israeli government and military voices from air and print until they let the press into Gaza.”
  • Activist and journalist Mohammed El-Kurd, no stranger to misinformation and bending the truth, suggested a flotilla or march of foreign journalists to Gaza.
  • Lila Hassan, an independent journalist, accused the media of favoring the Israeli narrative and not questioning it, thus violating media ethics.
  • Assal Rad, a media critic, urged journalists and media organizations to platform Palestinian voices from inside Gaza and to stop treating Israeli government statements as “a reliable source of information.”
  • Similarly, Diana Buttu, a former spokesperson for the PLO, called on journalists to stop “interviewing or giving space” to Israeli spokespeople.
  • Abubaker Abed, a Palestinian journalist who glorifies Hamas and incites violence, suggested that media organizations should hire more Gazan journalists and pay them double the current rate while also providing cover for them in the international arena.

The publication of such a one-sided piece in an elite university’s journalism review calls into question the ethics and standards that are being taught to budding journalists. What hope is there for journalistic standards to be maintained in future reporting on Israel and the Palestinians if this is the approach taken by those who are tasked with influencing the next generation of journalists?

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

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