Why have elite universities become breeding ground for anti-semitism?
It is not so much that our elite universities have allowed a spirit of vile Jew hatred to take root on their campuses. Instead, they have cultivated that very spirit, fueling its fires and finetuning its ideologies. The universities are complicit. Ben Shapiro confirmed these sentiments, writing, “Open anti-Semitism has been on the rise for legitimately decades on campus. It was rife on campus when I was there 20 years ago. It’s particularly rife from the radical Muslim community, and it’s been fostered by a Left-wing college administration across campuses for two generations that believes in the intersectional hierarchy of victimhood, in which Muslims outrank Jews.”
For years, the New York Times has refused to cover attacks on Jews in New York City so long as those attacks were being committed by minority criminals.
Ben Shapiro
Focusing on what was happening on the Columbia University campus in the heart of New York City, he wrote, “How did the New York media miss it? The answer: They didn’t miss it. They fostered it. For years, the New York Times has refused to cover attacks on Jews in New York City so long as those attacks were being committed by minority criminals. Intersectionality is a hell of a drug, and this entire world view has promoted anti-Semitism, particularly at elite institutions.”
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BDS Movement Has Flourished on US College Campuses
It is no secret that the BDS movement has flourished on many of our left-leaning campuses and that pro-Palestinian student groups have had virtually complete freedom to demonize the Jewish state (and Jewish people). But what many observers have failed to realize is the degree to which the very grid of leftwing intellectualism fosters this Jew-hating spirit. It is the Marxist dichotomy of the oppressor class (= the Jews) and the oppressed class (= the Palestinians), of the colonizers (= the Jews) and the colonized (= the Palestinians). And with the endless stereotypical antisemitic tropes in which “the Jews” control the media and the banks and the governments of the world, Zionism becomes the ultimate expression of oppressive, colonizing, European White Supremacism.
Zionism is the worst! Zionism is the archenemy! Zionism is racism on steroids! And the Zionists are the most megalomaniacal, genocidal, downright evil people on the planet.
These sentiments have been simmering on our campuses for years, ready to surface at any moment. Israel’s war on Hamas, resulting in great suffering for two million Palestinians, is all that was needed to cause these hate-filled sentiments to erupt with fury and passion.
The Scenes at Columbia University
Think for a moment about some of the scenes at Columbia University in recent days, as the shouting became louder and angrier, directed at the Jewish students on campus. “Go back to Europe,” and “You have no culture,” and “All you do is colonize.” Then consider this October 8, 2023 article by Columbia professor Joseph Massad (yes, published one day after the massacre).
He speaks glowingly of the “innovative Palestinian resistance” and its major achievements, referencing the “stunning videos.”
For Prof. Mossad, the kibbutzim where the Israelis were slaughtered in cold blood are “settler-colonies,” noting that, “the colonists’ flight from these settlements may prove to be a permanent exodus. They may have finally realized that living on land stolen from another people will never make them safe.” With pride he speaks of “the Palestinian and Arab peoples who came out across the region to march in support of the Palestinians in their battle against their cruel colonizers,” celebrating “the capture of some of Israel’s colonial soldiers and officers in their underwear while sleeping.”
To his dismay, he notes that “the international enemies of the Palestinian people rushed to declare support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism and to condemn the Palestinian resistance.”
He also takes umbrage at the international community’s rebuke of the Palestinians for receiving help from Iran, writing, “This would be like demanding that the Europeans resisting the Nazi occupation during World War II refuse military and financial help from the white supremacist and apartheid United States, not to mention the racist colonizing regimes of France and Britain.”
And he ends with this telling paragraph: “But as the ongoing war between the Israeli colonial army and the indigenous Palestinian resistance has only just begun, the days to come will surely be crucial in determining if this is the start of the Palestinian War of Liberation or yet another battle in the interminable struggle between the colonizer and the colonized.”
Professor ceaselessly beats his Marxist, Israel-hating drum
In all, the words colonies, colonizers, and colonized occur 21 times in his op-ed, as he ceaselessly beats his Marxist, Israel-hating drum. And remember that Prof. Massad “is professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University.”
Is it any wonder that the Columbia protesters shouted, “All you do is colonize”? Where, pray tell, did they get such ideas?
Not to be outdone, Muhammad Abdou, a visiting professor at Columbia this year, posted a comment on Facebook on October 11, 2023 entitled, “Decolonization, Islam, Palestine & Turtle Island.” And as if he was competing for a prize for packing in the most possible woke tropes in one sentence, he begins by writing, “Decolonization is an inherently violent, yes, but it’s also a spiritual act in restoring neocolonialism’s disfiguring impact on the native’s racialized, sexualized, gendered, material, historical, symbolic, political, and spiritual relationship to our mother earth, non-humxn [sic!] life and land (that are also spiritual subjects not objects).” All clear?
Thankfully, Columbia’s embattled president Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, when testifying before the House, condemned Massad’s statement, saying she was “appalled” by it, also stating that Abdou “will never work at Columbia again.”
But this is too little, too late, as multiple generations of students have already been indoctrinated by these toxic, destructive, and downright dangerous dogmas, providing very fertile soil for the germinating of outright Jew-hatred.
The universities are complicit. They helped create the monster, and now it is out of control. Nothing less than a comprehensive, top to bottom and bottom to top ideological overhaul will do.
