Uncategorized
Universities Must Be Forced to Address Antisemitism
University of California, Santa Barbara student body president Tessa Veksler on Feb. 26, 2024. Photo: Instagram
JNS.org – “Never would I have imagined that I’d need to fight for my right to exist on campus,” laments Shabbos Kestenbaum, a student at Harvard University who is suing the school because “antisemitism is out of control.”
Jewish students have suffered an unrelenting explosion of hate on American higher education campuses—so far with little relief. They have endured antisemitic rhetoric, intimidation, cancellation and violence. But those charged with keeping campuses safe—whether administrators who govern student and faculty behavior or federal agencies responsible for ensuring that schools adhere to civil rights protections—are failing in their jobs.
Many Jewish students have complained to their colleges’ administrators about the injustices. But instead of responding with measures to ensure Jewish students’ safety—like stopping pro-Hamas protestors from hijacking campuses or expelling militants who incite Jew-hatred— administrators have largely shown indifference. In some cases, college authorities have made things worse for Jewish students by appeasing the riotous, pro-Hamas mobs who have been primary perpetrators of Jew-hatred on campus.
Snubbed by college administrators, Jewish students and their supporters have appealed for federal protection, filing Title VI complaints with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the body tasked with enforcing protections under the Civil Rights Act. Unfortunately, the OCR, which has the power to levy severe financial punishments against colleges that neglect students’ Title VI rights, has so far rewarded negligent universities with little more than slaps on the wrist.
Until college and university boards of trustees begin hiring administrators committed to Jewish students’ safety—and until the OCR begins seriously punishing antisemitic perpetrators—we can expect no respite. Safe to say, colleges and universities run by arrogant, apathetic administrators will not change until their jobs and schools’ survival are threatened.
College/university administrators don’t take antisemitism seriously. Their reactions to Jewish students raising concerns about Jew-hatred range from indifference to outright hostility. For example, when Mohammed Al-Kurd, who the Anti-Defamation League says has a record of “unvarnished, vicious antisemitism,” came to speak at Harvard, Shabbos Kestenbaum and other Jewish students complained to administrators.
Rather than cancel Al-Kurd’s appearance, which would have been the appropriate action, the administrators ignored the students’ complaints. “Harvard’s silence was deafening,” Kestenbaum wrote in Newsweek. Kestenbaum said he “repeatedly” expressed concerns to administrators about the antisemitism he experienced, but as his lawsuit alleges, “evidence of uncontrolled discrimination and harassment fell on deaf ears.”
Administrators at Columbia University reacted to Jewish students’ complaints about antisemitism even more cynically. In fact, during an alumni event, several administrators exchanged text messages mocking Jewish students, calling them “privileged” and “difficult to listen to.”
When Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) asked the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania if calling for genocide against Jews violated their schools’ codes of conduct, none could say “yes.” The presidents of Harvard and UPenn have since resigned. Good riddance.
Some college/university administrators have outrageously granted concessions to pro-Hamas students. For instance, Northwestern University agreed to contact potential employers of students who caused campus disruptions to insist they be hired, create a segregated dormitory hall exclusively for Middle Eastern, North African and Muslim students, and form a new investment committee in which anti-Zionists could wield undue influence. Brown University agreed to hold a referendum on divestment from Israel in October.
Similar appeasements were announced at other colleges and universities, including Rutgers, Johns Hopkins, the University of Minnesota and the University of California Riverside.
So far, OCR has failed to take concrete action against antisemitism on campus. This is evident in recent decisions involving the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Michigan. CUNY was ordered to conduct more investigations into Title VI complaints and report further developments to Washington, provide more employee and campus security officer training, and issue “climate surveys” to students.
The University of Michigan also committed to a “climate survey,” as well as to reviewing its case files for each report of discrimination covered by Title VI during the 2023-2024 school year and reporting to the OCR on its responses to reports of discrimination for the next two school years.
Neither institution was penalized financially, even though the Department of Education has the power to withhold federal funds, which most colleges and universities depend on. There are now 149 pending investigations into campus antisemitism at OCR. If these investigations yield toothless results similar to those of CUNY and Michigan, it is highly unlikely that colleges and universities will improve how they deal with antisemitism.
Putting an end to skyrocketing antisemitism on campus involves three things.
First, donors and governments at every level should withhold funds from colleges that fail to hire administrators who will take antisemitism as seriously as they take pronoun offenses or racism directed at people of color.
Second, the OCR must mete out serious consequences to Title VI violators in the form of funding cuts. This may require legislation that specifically mandates withdrawing funding from offending parties. A bill recently introduced by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.)—the University Accountability Act—may be ideal, as it is designed to financially penalize institutions that don’t crack down on antisemitism.
Third, if OCR won’t act, Jewish students and their supporters should turn to the courts. Lori Lowenthal Marcus, the legal director of the Deborah Project, a public-interest Jewish law firm, argues that the CUNY settlement demonstrates the futility of going to OCR and that going to court is more likely to produce “a clearly delineated and productive result,” such as punitive and compensatory fines. As of late May, at least 14 colleges and universities are facing lawsuits over their handling of antisemitism on campus since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.
As long as college administrators are allowed to ignore antisemitism on campus and as long as OCR and other government institutions fall short in punishing Jew-hatred, antisemitism will continue to plague Jewish students.
The post Universities Must Be Forced to Address Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
Uncategorized
The Jewish Bund Was Popular — But It Couldn’t Save Lives Like a Jewish State Could
Participants with Israeli flags look at the landmark Birkenau extermination camp gate in Auschwitz Museum – former Nazi German Concentration Camp during the International March of the Living (MOTL) in Oswiencim, Poland on April 14, 2026. Photo by Dominika Zarzycka/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
If you are a fan of klezmer music, you may be familiar with a catchy up-tempo Yiddish song “Barikadn” (barricades), recorded by the popular band The Klezmatics. The song is about a strike by workers in the Polish city of Łόdź, in which men, women, and children join together to erect barricades in the streets of the city.
Barikadn was popular with the Bund (General Jewish Labour Bund), a secular Marxist Jewish political movement established in 1897 in Vilna (then in the Russian Empire), just two months after the First Zionist Congress was held in Basel, Switzerland.
The Bund was one of the first socialist political movements in Russia. It played an important role during the lead up to the Russian revolution, but disbanded in the early 1920s, in response to pressure from the Communist Party. However, it continued to be an influential Jewish voice in Poland and Lithuania until the outbreak of World War II.
The Bund promoted the use of Yiddish, rather than Hebrew as a Jewish national language. The concept of “doikayt” (Yiddish for “hereness”) was a central feature of Bundist ideology. It discouraged Jewish nationhood (Zionism), advocating instead for Jewish communities to remain dispersed but culturally autonomous and politically engaged within their host countries.
Before the outbreak of World War II, the Bund was the most popular Jewish political force in Poland, with a party membership of close to 100,000. Its members were central to the vibrant secular Yiddish cultural life of pre-war Poland. However, as recorded by Yad Vashem, the Bund suffered the same fate as all the Jews of Poland. Only 1,000 members survived the war.
Today, in the aftermath of October 7, and now the Iran war, the Bund is enjoying something of a revival, as exemplified by Molly Crabapple’s new book Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund. The book highlights the universalist hope of Bund ideology, versus the perils associated with following the Zionist plan, including eternal war with Israel’s Arab neighbors and an increasingly chauvinist agenda.
Crabapple’s book has received a number of positive reviews, including one in The Forward and another in The Guardian (“For Leftist Jews the Bund is a Model”). However, one reviewer in Commentary Magazine has pointed out the fatal flaw in the Bundist program. He writes “We’ll never know if the Holocaust would have happened as it happened had there been a State of Israel at the time. Instead, the Holocaust happened during the time of the Bundists. That isn’t to blame them, obviously, for what happened. It is merely to say that Bundism wasn’t a plan for Jewish survival.”
As noted earlier, very few of the Bundists survived the Holocaust, so we don’t really know their views in the aftermath. However, Isaac Deutscher was a prominent Polish-Jewish socialist, writer, and journalist, a biographer of Trotsky.
Before World War II, Deutscher opposed Zionism as economically retrograde and harmful to the cause of international socialism. But after the Holocaust he regretted his pre-war views, saying, “If, instead of arguing against Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s, I had urged European Jews to go to Palestine, I might have helped to save some of the lives that were to be extinguished in Hitler’s gas chambers.”
The Bund wasn’t a plan for Jewish survival. Zionism was, and still is. Unlike other nationalisms, modern Zionism is a survivalist imperative, a rescue mission. In this, it has been remarkably successful; a refuge for Jews from the DP camps of Europe, from the Arab/Muslim world, and from the Former Soviet Union.
Jacob Sivak, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, is a retired professor, University of Waterloo.
Uncategorized
Tidbits: Traces of a ghetto bunker uncovered in Będzin, Poland
Tidbits is a Forverts feature of easy news briefs in Yiddish that you can listen to or read, or both! If you read the article and don’t know a word, just click on it and the translation appears. Listen to the report here:
אַ גרופּע אַרכעאָלאָגן, וואָס האָט געהאַלטן אין מיטן אויסגראָבן אַ בונקער פֿון דער צווייטער וועלט־מלחמה אינעם פּוילישן שטעטל בענדין, האָט אַנטדעקט שפּורן פֿון אַן אונטערערדישן באַהעלטעניש און טונעל, וואָס ייִדן האָבן געניצט קעמפֿנדיק קעגן די דײַטשן אין 1943.
„מיר האָבן אַנטדעקט שטיינערנע טרעפּ, וואָס פֿירן אַרײַן אין אַ באַהעלטעניש אונטער אַן אַמאָליקער געבײַדע,“ האָט די אַרכעאָלאָגישע פֿירמע „וויקאָפּ נאַ פּאָזיאָמיע“ געמאָלדן אויף פֿייסבוק. זיי האָבן אויך אַנטדעקט אַ טונעל, וואָס האָט געדינט ווי אַ זיכער אָרט אונטער ד׳רערד.
די אַרכעאָלאָגן האָבן געזאָגט, אַז זיי האָבן זיך געריכט צו געפֿינען „אַרכעאָלאָגישע עלעמענטן“ אָבער זענען געווען דערשטוינט, וואָס אַלץ האָט זיך אַזוי גוט פֿאַרהיט. אינעם טונעל קען מען נאָך זען די פֿריִערדיקע הילצערנע פּאָדליגע און שפּורן פֿון די ווענט.
דער בונקער איז גלײַך לעבן דעם „הויז פֿון די געטאָ־קעמפֿער“, וואָס געפֿינט זיך הײַנט אויף 24 רוטקאַ־לאַסקיער גאַס. בשעת דער צווייטער וועלט־מלחמה, ווען די נאַציס האָבן פֿאַרטריבן די ייִדן אין געטאָ, איז דער בנין געוואָרן דאָס געהיימע פֿאַרזאַמלונג־אָרט פֿון די ציוניסטישע יוגנט־גרופּעס און דער „ייִדישער קאַמף־אָרגאַניזאַציע“. די מיטגלידער פֿון דער אָרגאַניזאַציע, מיט פֿרומקע פּלאָטניצקאַ בראש, האָבן דורכגעפֿירט אַ ווידערשטאַנד אין אויגוסט 1943, בעת די דײַטשן האָבן אָנגעפֿירט מיט די לעצטע דעפּאָרטאַציעס און מיט דער פֿאַרטיליקונג פֿונעם געטאָ. דרײַ טעג האָבן די ייִדן געקעמפֿט, ביז די דײַטשן האָבן דעם ווידערשטאַנד אײַנגעבראָכן.
אין 2024 האָט די צוקערמאַן גייט פֿונדאַציע געקויפֿט דאָס אייגנס, כּדי דאָרט צו בויען אַן אָנדענק־מוזיי. די פֿונדאַציע איז שוין יאָרן לאַנג אַקטיוו אין בענדין און האַלט דאָרט אויף אַ פּריוואַטע שיל אין אַ טעמעמענט־בנין.
לייענט דעם אַרטיקל אויף ענגליש.
The post Tidbits: Traces of a ghetto bunker uncovered in Będzin, Poland appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Netanyahu, IDF condemn Israeli soldier’s bludgeoning of Jesus statue in Lebanon
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is denouncing an incident in which a soldier bludgeoned a statue of Jesus in southern Lebanon, igniting criticism at a time when some Christians believe Israel discriminates against them.
A photograph of the incident spread widely on Sunday after being shared by a prominent Palestinian journalist, Younis Tirawi. The photograph shows a soldier in an Israel Defense Forces uniform smashing a statue of Jesus, which has fallen from its cross and is lying partially on the ground.
The IDF said it had examined the photograph and determined that it was real. “The IDF views the incident with great severity and emphasizes that the soldier’s conduct is wholly inconsistent with the values expected of its troops,” it said in a statement.
Netanyahu said the photograph had shocked him.
“Yesterday, like the overwhelming majority of Israelis, I was stunned and saddened to learn that an IDF soldier damaged a Catholic religious icon in southern Lebanon. I condemn the act in the strongest terms,” he said in a statement on Monday. “Military authorities are conducting a criminal probe of the matter and will take appropriately harsh disciplinary action against the offender.”
The incident took place in Debel, a Christian village in the region of Bint Jbeil, where Israel said it killed 150 Hezbollah operatives, including a commander, on the day before a ceasefire was imposed last week. A church in Debel posted a picture of the statue when it was intact, along with the line, spoken by Jesus in the New Testament during his crucifixion, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
The incident comes comes as Israel fends off criticism from even its allies that it is discriminating against Christians. Tensions flared last month when the Israel Police, citing wartime safety regulations, blocked top Catholic clergy from holding a Palm Sunday service in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem, eliciting oblique criticism from the pope. Netanyahu said in response that he had ordered that the clergy be given full access to the church.
In his statement about the statue incident, Netanyahu emphasized that Christians in the Middle East face danger from Islamic fundamentalists, including in Lebanon.
“Israel is the only country in the region that the Christian population and standard of living is growing. Israel is the only place in the Middle East that adheres to freedom of worship for all,” he said. “We express regret for the incident and for any hurt this has caused to believers in Lebanon and around the world.”
The Lebanon incident adds to a number of incidents in which Israeli soldiers have been photographed or filmed desecrating religious objects or sites in areas where they have been fighting, including in Gaza. (The IDF has urged soldiers not to take or share photographs of their activities.) The Israeli army has denounced the incidents, but even those who have resisted the most strident criticisms of Israel say a pattern is adding up.
“The lack of discipline, professional conduct, and antagonizing of Christians in Lebanon and elsewhere is an entirely unnecessary and deeply harmful behavior that will further erode support for Israel and fuel those who believe this is a religious war of conquest,” tweeted Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian writer and advocate in the United States who has criticized both Hamas and Israel.
The Lebanon incident also comes amid a number of incidents suggesting growing influence by religious Jewish leadership in the IDF. In recent days, soldiers were jailed for barbecuing on their base on Shabbat, when traditional Jewish law prohibits cooking; women soldiers were penalized for wearing immodest clothing to their discharge ceremonies; and the army was accused of barring women from wearing shorts while running in a race associated with the Jerusalem Marathon.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Netanyahu, IDF condemn Israeli soldier’s bludgeoning of Jesus statue in Lebanon appeared first on The Forward.