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The Fear Trap: What’s Missing From the Current Campus Antisemitism Debate

Pro-Hamas students rallying at Harvard University. Photo: Reuters/Brian Snyder

An underappreciated but crucial dimension of the campus antisemitism wars is how much of the discussion turns on the idea of fear by Jewish students. It’s crowding out some other arguments that might be more successful.

“Jewish students, faculty, and others are fearful for their own safety,” William Ackman wrote in his Dec. 10 letter to members of the Harvard governing boards.

“Students were terrified by this protest and the violence it endorsed,” said a Nov. 30 statement by Harvard Hillel in response to an anti-Zionist demonstration in which activists stormed the campus calling for the destruction of Israel.

US Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) spoke about the issue recently on Fox News, referring to a recent hearing of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce where US college presidents testified on campus antisemitism: “What was probably the most tragic aspect of the hearing to me was there were a number of Jewish students from those schools in the audience sitting behind them, and to watch, just the fear, as they’re listening to the presidents of these universities fail to answer a basic question of moral clarity, it was abysmal.”

The president of Yeshiva University, Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman, recently pointed to a 1990 law, the Clery Act, describing the hate crime of “intimidation” — literally, to render someone timid, or easily frightened. Berman wrote that “the definition of intimidation for Clery purposes is the one used by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program: ‘placing another person in reasonable fear of bodily harm through the use of threatening words and/or other conduct,’ even ‘without displaying a weapon or subjecting the victim to actual physical attack.’” There’s that “fear” word again.

Fear is a totally reasonable human reaction to recent events. When significant numbers of students and faculty react to the rape, beheading, and burning of Israelis on Oct. 7 by blaming Israel, by cheering on the attacks, or even by physically attacking Jewish people and property in America, “fear” from the minority of visibly Jewish or pro-Israel students and faculty makes sense, alongside horror, anger, and disgust.

This is the case even though the students and faculty, at a baseline level, are not cowards. I know some of the Jewish students at Harvard and at other universities; they are brave. Many universities, Harvard in particular, are indeed swamps of antisemitism. As a legal matter, Berman is doubtless correct about the legal definition of intimidation as something that elicits, as a reasonable reaction, the emotion of fear.

Yet emotion is a key word. That’s a practical problem on several levels.

From the point of view of educating future Jewish leaders or even just getting through the days ahead, the community needs to be cultivating the heroic virtues of courage and strength, not fixating on fear.

From a religious point of view, the Bible and the liturgy are full of messages from God and Moses to fear God, but not to fear people or enemies, because God is with the Jewish people. The emphasis is on the individual overcoming fear by placing faith in God, not on summoning university administrators to remove the fear-inspiring conditions.

Not that such demands on the administrators shouldn’t be made. But there are a range of ways to frame language around fear. On one end, there is, “I’m afraid that if one of these extreme anti-Israel students gets carried away, this could end in violence.” Or, “I’m afraid that if you don’t do something about these radical, mediocre professors, they are going to indoctrinate another generation of anti-Israel extremists, and ruin this university’s reputation.” On the other end, there is, “I’m afraid to go to class because I might be in the same lecture hall with the student I saw last week enthusiastically chanting ‘intifada, intifada, globalize the intifida.’”

From a legal point of view, the “reasonable fear” standard is subjective. As the college presidents told Congress last week, it depends on the context. What may make someone afraid after Oct. 7 might differ from what might have made someone afraid before Oct. 7. People may have different levels of fear response depending on their physical size, their level of self-defense training, their understanding of Arabic, whether they are alone or with a group, in daylight or in the dark, in the presence of police or without police, or even whether they themselves are visibly Jewish or not. As a result, it’s an imprecise yardstick to use to police campus speech. What about the Arab student who feels “reasonable fear” because of the presence of a Jewish student in an Israel Defense Forces t-shirt? The more fearful students claim to be, the more power they have to shut down the speech of the other side.

My own view of it is that for positive change to come on American college campuses, Jewish students and parents and their allies will need to accompany the “fear” argument with an array of other arguments.

There’s an educational argument that reasoned conversation rather than shouting slogans is more conducive to teaching and learning, and that narrow ideological conformity is educationally stifling of independent thought.

There’s a moral argument that Israel is superior to the Hamas terrorist organization, that antisemitic discrimination is wrong, and that part of a university’s job is teaching students to make such moral distinctions.

There’s an excellence versus mediocrity argument that the faculty leading the charge against Israel are mediocre and that adopting their policy recommendations, such as boycotting Israel, will damage the missions of teaching and research.

Relatedly, there’s a competition argument, that if a particular institution fails to navigate these issues successfully, then talent and resources will flee to competing institutions that do a better job.

If those other arguments fail to prevail, then fear — not only for bodily harm of individual students, but for the future of America — will indeed be warranted.

Until then, though, the focus on fear may be impeding progress for Jews and Israel on American college campuses.

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.

The post The Fear Trap: What’s Missing From the Current Campus Antisemitism Debate first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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The BBC Documentary That Paints Every Israeli as an Extremist

The Jewish community of Beit El in Judea and Samaria. Photo: Yaakov via Wikimedia Commons.

Louis Theroux first visited the West Bank in 2011 to film a documentary titled Louis and the Ultra-Zionists, part of his long-running series for the BBC. Back then, he at least seemed to possess a trace of journalistic curiosity. Even the title signaled a degree of editorial caution — framing his subjects as a small, ideological fringe rather than representative of Israeli society as a whole.

At the time, Theroux made an effort to clarify that he was profiling a narrow segment of Israelis. He showed legally purchased Jewish homes (sold by Arab landowners, no less) and acknowledged the regular — and at times deadly — terror attacks faced by Israeli civilians living in the area, often requiring military protection. There was condescension, certainly. But there was also context.

Fast-forward to 2024, and the curiosity is gone — though the bemused, slightly smug expression remains. His new BBC documentary, Louis and the Settlers, drops even the soft qualifiers. No “ultra.” No nuance. Just “settlers.” And with that, Theroux makes it clear: half a million Israelis living in the West Bank are one and the same — extremists who, we’re told, want every last Palestinian removed from the land.

This time, the documentary doesn’t begin with questions. It begins with conclusions. And Theroux uses a brief, unrepresentative snapshot of life in the West Bank to draw sweeping indictments of the entire Israeli state.

The message is unmistakable: Israel is the problem. Settlers are the villains. And Palestinians are passive, blameless victims of a colonial project.

Within the opening minutes, Theroux plants his ideological flag. He refers to the West Bank as “Palestinian territory” and describes every Israeli community within it as illegal under international law — a sharp departure from his more qualified approach 14 years earlier.

And while his personal views seep in throughout the film, they become crystal clear during one exchange at a checkpoint, where an Israeli soldier casually refers to their location as “Israel.” Theroux shoots back: “We’re not in Israel, are we?”

And just like that, the BBC and Louis Theroux have redrawn Israel’s borders. No Knesset debate needed.

Erasing History to Blame the Massacre

The timing of this return trip is no accident. The film comes in the shadow of the October 7 Hamas massacres — the day 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered, families were burned alive in their homes, and children were dragged into Gaza. And yet, Theroux barely mentions it.

The few passing references to October 7 serve not to inform the audience — but to imply that Israel may be exploiting its own dead to justify further expansion. It’s not an investigation. It’s an accusation. And it allows him to skip over thousands of years of Jewish history in order to frame the current war in Gaza as a convenient cover story for Israeli “aggression.”

Take Hebron, for example. Theroux tells viewers that “in 1968, the year after [the West Bank] was occupied by Israel, a community of Jewish settlers moved in illegally. They now number some 700.” He fails to mention that in 1895 — decades before the modern state of Israel existed — Hebron had a Jewish population of 1,429.

Jews have lived in Hebron since antiquity — it’s where, according to Jewish tradition, Abraham purchased the Cave of the Patriarchs. Modern records date the community back centuries, despite discrimination under Ottoman rule and bans on Jewish prayer at holy sites. In 1929, Arab rioters carried out a massacre, wiping out Hebron’s Jewish population. Dozens were murdered; the rest were expelled. Under Jordanian rule from 1948 to 1967, Jews were banned from the city entirely. When they returned after the Six-Day War — not as colonists, but as a displaced community coming home — Theroux picks up the story there and calls it “illegal.”

On the Six-Day War itself, Theroux offers no context. No mention of the Arab armies preparing to destroy Israel. No mention of Israel’s preemptive strike against an existential threat.

According to The Settlers, Israel simply “occupied” — full stop.

Palestinian Terrorism? Not Even a Footnote.

Theroux visits Evyatar, a small Jewish community near the Palestinian town of Beita, and uses it as a stand-in for the entire West Bank. Beita is depicted as a symbol of peaceful resistance: a proud, ancient Palestinian village standing firm against violent settlers backed by IDF soldiers.

It’s a neat story. Too neat. Because missing from the story are years of organized, violent riots from Beita — complete with Molotov cocktails, burning Stars of David, and Nazi swastikas. All carefully omitted to preserve the narrative: Palestinians peaceful, settlers aggressive. Facts that don’t fit? Left on the cutting room floor.

Meanwhile, Israeli nationalism is treated as something sinister and unsettling — a moral aberration to be examined. The notion that Jews might want sovereignty or security is met with thinly veiled suspicion. Yet Hamas’ goal of a Jew-free Palestine, explicitly laid out in its charter, is never mentioned. Nor is the Palestinian Authority’s “pay-for-slay” policy, which literally incentivizes terrorism by rewarding those who murder Israelis — including women and children.

These aren’t fringe details. They’re central to understanding the region. And Theroux knows it. He just doesn’t care.

The BBC’s Complicity

That The Settlers aired on the BBC — a publicly funded broadcaster once seen as a gold standard of global journalism — says plenty. Not just about Louis Theroux’s agenda, but about the institutional direction of the BBC itself. This wasn’t a rogue filmmaker sneaking bias past the editors. This was bias built into the foundation — signed off, packaged, and broadcast under the banner of credibility.

There is, of course, no problem with scrutinizing Israeli policy, and no issue with questioning the settlement enterprise or highlighting the tensions in the West Bank. But journalism — real journalism — demands context. It demands precision. It demands at least a passing familiarity with the full scope of the story.

Theroux offers none of that. He arrives with a predetermined script and casts his roles accordingly: Hero. Villain. Victim. Oppressor. And when reality refuses to cooperate? It’s left out.

Louis Theroux didn’t return to Israel to understand it. He returned to flatten it. To reduce its complexity to a morality play — and to ensure everyone knows the antagonist is.

The Settlers isn’t a documentary. It’s a hit piece. And the BBC handed him the camera — then applauded the performance.

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.

The post The BBC Documentary That Paints Every Israeli as an Extremist first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Indian Army Kills Islamist Terrorist Linked to 2002 Murder of Jewish-American Journalist Daniel Pearl

Jewish-American Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. Photo: Screenshot

The Indian government announced on Thursday that its military forces had killed “Pakistan’s most wanted terrorist,” who was connected to the 2002 murder of Jewish-American Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.

On Wednesday, India launched “Operation Sindoor,” which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claims is targeted at dismantling “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The operation came after Pakistani terrorists killed 26 Hindu tourists in Kashmir last month amid escalating tensions between the two countries.

In a post on X, the BJP confirmed that during this week’s operation, the Indian army killed Islamist terrorist Abdul Rauf Azhar, who was involved in numerous terrorism plots, including the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight, the 2001 terror attack on the Indian Parliament, and the 2016 Pathankot Air Force base attack.

Azhar’s involvement in the 1999 hijacking led to the release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born al-Qaeda member with close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence services, who later was involved in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of 38-year-old Pearl, who was covering the war on terror as a journalist when he was abducted.

In a statement on X, Pearl’s father, Judea, addressed initial reports regarding Azhar’s death and his connection to his son’s murder.

“I want to clarify: Azhar was a Pakistani extremist and leader of the terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed. While his group was not directly involved in the plot to abduct Danny, it was indirectly responsible. Azhar orchestrated the hijacking that led to the release of Omar Sheikh — the man who lured Danny into captivity,” he said.

In 2002, the Jewish-American journalist was abducted and killed by a group of Islamist terrorists connected to Azhar’s militant network, which had ties to al-Qaeda and Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terror group aiming to separate Kashmir from India and incorporate it into Pakistan.

On Jan. 27, 2002, an email was sent to several Pakistani and US media organizations, which included several photos, stating that Pearl was being held in “inhumane” conditions to protest the US treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners in Cuba. Photo: Screenshot

Originally stationed in New Delhi as the South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, Pearl later moved to Pakistan to investigate terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City.

After kidnapping Pearl at a restaurant in Karachi, southern Pakistan, the Islamist terrorists, who identified themselves as the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, accused him of being an Israeli spy and sent the United States a list of demands for his release.

However, Washington did not meet their demands, and Pearl was ultimately executed after being held captive for five weeks.

His wife, Mariane Pearl, gave birth to a baby boy, Adam D. Pearl, in Paris later that year. On the Daniel Pearl Foundation website, she said, “Adam’s birth rekindles the joy, love, and humanity that Danny radiated wherever he went.”

The post Indian Army Kills Islamist Terrorist Linked to 2002 Murder of Jewish-American Journalist Daniel Pearl first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Jewish Jewelry Shop Owners Brutally Assaulted in Tunisia Days Before Annual Pilgrimage

A Jewish jewelry shop owner in Djerba, Tunisia, was brutally attacked by a man wielding a machete. Photo: Screenshot

A Jewish jewelry shop owner in Djerba, Tunisia, was brutally attacked by a man wielding a machete just days before the Tunisian island was set to host its annual Jewish pilgrimage, which is expected to draw thousands of visitors.

On Wednesday morning, two Jewish men — owners of a jewelry shop in the center of the island, located off Tunisia’s southeast coast — were physically assaulted by a man carrying a large knife.

Although the attack was halted when one of them screamed — alerting members of the local Jewish community who subdued the assailant — one of them was left severely injured.

According to local media reports, the attacker had surveyed the island the day before, visiting several stores to identify those owned by Jews. Local police arrested him shortly following the assault.

After the attack, one of the owners was admitted to the hospital with severe injuries. The 50-year-old Jewish man had his fingers severed during the assault and underwent surgery to reattach them.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar condemned the attack and expressed his wishes for a swift recovery to the victims.

“This attack comes two years after the previous deadly assault that claimed Jewish lives and the lives of security personnel during the Lag BaOmer celebration,” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.

“I call on the Tunisian authorities to take all necessary measures to protect the Jewish community,” Saar continued.

Djerba is home to the majority of Tunisia’s Jewish community, numbering about 2,000 people, and is also where the renowned El Ghriba Synagogue, one of North Africa’s oldest synagogues, is located.

The attack comes just a week before Jewish pilgrims are expected to arrive on the island for the Lag B’Omer holiday, when thousands gather annually for three days of festivities. The annual pilgrimage to El Ghriba Synagogue, scheduled for May 15 and 16 this year, draws visitors from around the world.

The synagogue has been targeted in multiple terrorist attacks over the years, including in 1985, 2002, and 2023.

Two years ago, a shooting at the synagogue claimed the lives of two Jewish cousins and three police officers. Aviel Hadad, a 30-year-old Israeli goldsmith, and Ben Hadad, a 42-year-old Frenchman who had traveled to join the festivities, were among the victims.

The post Jewish Jewelry Shop Owners Brutally Assaulted in Tunisia Days Before Annual Pilgrimage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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