Monday, December 14, 2020

The Hate That Can’t Be Contained

 From The Tablet:

There is a common narrative that circulates in the liberal Jewish community when it comes to anti-Semitism on campus. It goes like this: Jewish students who complain are fragile. They hear the slightest criticism to the pro-Israel orthodoxy they grew up with, the slightest contradiction to all the wonderful things they learned about Israel at summer camp or on Birthright, and their emotions get the better of them and they cry “anti-Semitism!” when none is present at all.

Those who broadcast the stories of troubled Jewish college students? They are right-wing political operatives. They are engaging in smear campaigns against Palestinian liberation movements, blowing up what amount to silly tempests in teapots in order to sell the false and dangerous reality that leftist anti-Semitism is just as big of an issue as right-wing anti-Semitism. This is what I myself used to say. It’s certainly what I assumed when I arrived at school in the fall of 2018.

I landed on campus identified as a progressive activist, ready to spend my weekends marching the streets of D.C. against the Trump administration, against Brett Kavanaugh, against the evils of capitalism and corruption. Of course I had heard rumors of anti-Israel activism that occasionally “crossed a line,” but these stories came from them. You know...The AIPAC Jews, the Trump Jews, the right-wingers.

That was then. Two years later, I am sitting in my childhood bedroom comforting dozens of Jewish students scattered across the country on social media.

On this particular October night, the flashpoint is Northwestern University. There, a student organization called Northwestern University Community Not Cops was ostensibly undertaking an effort to protest the presence of police on campus. Somehow, part of their work involved branding Morty Shapiro, the school’s religiously observant Jewish president, “piggy Morton” and burning a school banner in front of his home. Shapiro accused the organization of anti-Semitism. (Read more.)
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