by Steve Kramer
Although it’s 55 years since I graduated from college, I still fondly remember my student life being enhanced by my membership in a Jewish fraternity. Today, I might have a different attitude, now that Jew-hatred (some call it antisemitism, a somewhat innocuous term.) A recent article in the Jewish Exponent describes the multiple incidents of harassment of the AEPi fraternity house at Rutgers, the State University of NJ. (Rutgers has one of the largest Jewish populations of American universities.) Like nearly all the similar incidents on college campuses, the perpetrators were pro-Palestinian students or provocateurs.
Events like this have become commonplace at many colleges and even in high schools, leading Jewish students to feel threatened and humiliated. Many students have reacted by hiding their Jewish backgrounds to avoid being a victim. As expected, but not always forthcoming, there have been statements by the Rutgers administration, in this case the school’s chancellor, condemning antisemitism. What was different at Rutgers is that in a 2021 incident the administrator’s statement was devalued by a subsequent apology to the school’s Muslims (!) after pushback from the SJP chapter (Students for Justice in Palestine). Its credo equates condemning antisemitism with denying Palestinian rights (sic).<
Other campuses unfriendly to Jewish students include Columbia University, Duke University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Harvard University, New York University, Princeton University, University of California Berkeley, University of California Los Angeles, University of Chicago, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington Seattle, and Yale University. See Note below.<
Many American Jews don’t know about, or minimize, the damage that Jew-hatred is causing to their children or grandchildren. This is especially prevalent in higher ranked educational institutions. The pro-Palestinian Arab groups, which are common on many campuses, are potent because of overly-lenient, timid administrations at most colleges, who are afraid to stand up to violence against Jews. You know, Islamophobia and all that. This is in contrast to the national abhorrence to racism against minorities of every type – except the Jewish minority.
It gets much worse. The Jerusalem Post just reported: “FBI Director Christopher Wray said at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing that ‘antisemitism and violence that comes out of it is a persistent and present fact. The numbers that we’ve seen – about 63% of religious hate crimes overall – are motivated by antisemitism: And that’s targeting a group that just makes up about 2.4% of the American population.”’
Jew-hatred may emanate from one’s home, but it quickly spreads to the society. I don’t need to enumerate the several murders of Jews in synagogues, stores, or city streets that are now common and out of proportion, as Christopher Wray noted. He also said that, “according to the ADL, the second highest number of reported [Jew-hating] incidents was recorded in 2021.”
On November 19, the Jerusalem Post headlined, “Waves of bomb threats hit Jewish schools across the US. At Jewish day schools in Texas and Pennsylvania, bomb threats were made to these institutions, forcing them to evacuate for student safety. This follows a consistent uptick in antisemitic attacks and comments in the US in recent weeks.”
“The School Watch initiative of the Israeli-American Council (IAC) has reported [many] antisemitic comments in schools. ‘I cannot remember the last time that there were so many cases of teenagers using the word ‘Hitler’ in American public schools,’ IAC’s CEO Shoham Nicolet told The Jerusalem Post from his home in California. There has been a rise of incidents in public schools overall, he said, adding that he thinks some of them may be credited to the antisemitic statements made recently by rapper Kanye West and basketball star Kyrie Irving.” (JPost.com)
No doubt, there is violence against Israeli Jews here in Israel. But the type of hatred that Western Jews living in the Diaspora are subject to is a different animal. Here, we contend with nationalistic crimes, on a scale that is minuscule compared to violence in the US. By all measures, Israel is a safe country for the average citizen. Not to minimize any of these horrible attacks, but to illustrate the point, there have been 21 murders caused by terrorists this year in Israel, a country of 10,000,000 people. For comparison, New York City has had 361 homicides so far in 2022. (homicide.nyc.com)
All the schools here have a security guard at the entrance to the school campus, which has a fence around it. This is an ordinary precaution, not necessitated because shootings occur in schools. (Up to now, zero.) Synagogues and Jewish institutions don’t have police protection, because it isn’t needed. Security guards at public buildings have become rare. People walk on the streets at night, even solitary women late at night. There is crime, of course, but the most common incident is car theft, not a violent crime.
What can American Jews do to combat Jew-hatred? As an expat, I’m not the one to provide answers. But because Jews are prominent in the government, in education, in the professions, and in business, they should be able to influence public policy. The US is already on the anti-racism bandwagon. Perhaps more should be done to include Jews in the multiplicity of minorities being protected. In the meantime, Jews should be educating themselves about the hatred which is poisoning the young Jewish population.
Note: For more info on the campus situation see: https://www.jewishpress.com/
Liberal Jews are partially at fault!
Plenty of antisemitic Jews in academia & Gov!
Zuckerberg cheated with his $1/2 billion injected in the dems 2020
Soros destroying the legal system
Bloomberg?
FTX, S B Fried another “f..king” Jew interfering with the 2022 elections
And it goes on and on and on ..
@Sebastien Zorn
That’s when they compare their life in Israel with their good life in the US or other countries under normal circumstances.
But the circumstances are no longer normal – things are getting worse and worse for the Jews in the Diaspora and they are not at their worst yet.
When the new elites who owe so much to the Jews start attacking them openly and viciously, citing freedom of speech, you must know that it is time to get out and there won’t be a choice of coming back.
All this talk about “fighting antisemitism” and “containing antisemitism” is denial in the 1000th degree – it is like telling the German Jews to keep containing antisemitism in Hitler’s Germany.
@Reader Too many Jews wind up having to leave after having made aliya.
@Sebastien Zorn
If there is enough pressure from aliyah, they will have to start acting (developing the Periphery, transportation, building new hospitals and housing, settling Judea and Samaria, fighting terrorism) instead of playing games and giving the “right-wing” speeches to please their voters like they do now while in reality working to implement the TSS.
Though while we’re on the subject of aliya-shaming:
Absurd and either uninformed or intellectually dishonest article. I don’t care where he lives. Author confuses and conflates ordinary homicide with homicide – including thwarted attempts – against Jews by eliminationist antisemites which is a daily thing in Israel and comparatively rare in the US.
Does the author read the Defence/Security section of Arutz Sheva every day as I do? The other news outlets don’t report on most of it.
Israel needs to deal with it’s own internal fifth column. That’s the priority both for Jews there now and any future immigrants. It also has to become more affordable and solve the housing crisis aggravated by apartheid against Jews.
This is EXACTLY WHAT CAUSES antisemitism – the Jewish visibility in all sorts of important areas.
Just wait and see what will happen to the “Jewish influence” when the economy crashes.
Jewish influence is an illusion – in the US 150 million people hold ~500 million guns (legally).
What are 4-5 million of the unarmed Jews going to do against even a couple of million armed people who are convinced that they know who caused all the problems the country is suffering from?
How much could all those prominent Jews and conversos use their influence to stop the Jews from being expelled from Spain in 1492?
It would be better if the Jewish homeland drastically increased its support for aliyah instead of dumping the impossible task of “fighting antisemitism” on the Diaspora Jewry.
It is obvious that the Jewish history is repeating itself, this time in the US.
The situation is far worse than it would otherwise be because you have prominent Jews like Chuck Schumer, who should be speaking out about and condemning this problem, but is not. Instead, for example, he is not simply ignoring the overt antisemitism that has taken hold of his Party, but is protecting and defending the ever-increasing number of outspoken antisemites within that Party.