“Don’t Believe What You’re Being Told About ‘Campus Antisemitism’”

(This article was published the evening of April 23, and updated with additional photos the morning of April 24.)

The statement below appeared on April 23 on the Substack page Zeteo. The author is Johnathan Ben-Menachem, a graduate student at Columbia University and a participant in the recent protests on that campus. The ongoing student actions oppose Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and demand that Columbia “Divest all finances, including the endowment, from corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine.”

Similar protests have spread on campuses and elsewhere across the United States. “Less than a week after the arrests of more than 100 protesters at Columbia,” the New York Times reported April 22, “administrators at some of the country’s most influential universities were struggling, and largely failing, to calm campuses torn by the conflict in Gaza and Israel.”

Protests are taking place on a growing list of U.S. college campuses, including New York University, Yale, Harvard, Tufts, Emerson, Brown, Ohio State University, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, University of California at Berkeley, University of Southern California in Los Angeles, University of California in San Diego, University of Texas in Austin and Dallas, and the Hillsborough Community College-Dale Mabry Campus in Tampa, Florida.

“The events of the past week are the latest crescendo in a movement that has seen more than 8,000 pro-Palestine protests in over 850 cities and towns across the U.S., according to data compiled by researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School and the University of Connecticut,” reported the Wall Street Journal on April 24.

The recent Columbia protest appears to have inspired others. It has seized the nation’s attention. On April 18, university president Nermat Shafik called in the New York City police in an attempt to shut down the action. Police arrested more than 100 students. But the protest has continued. Students have vowed not to end their encampment on the campus.

On April 17, the same day the students set up their encampment, Shafik testified at a public hearing of the U.S. Congress concerning alleged antisemitism at Columbia. Obsequiously seeking to please members of Congress who falsely identify anti-Zionism with Jew hatred, Shafik promised a harsher clampdown on democratic rights and academic freedom.

“The co-chair of the university’s board, Claire Shipman,” reported the Times, “declared that there was ‘a moral crisis on our campus.’ And Dr. Shafik went so far as to detail some of the disciplinary actions underway, including suspensions and firings.”

This has turned out not to be enough for the witch-hunters at the U.S. House of Representatives. “Dr. Shafik was castigated on Monday [April 22] by the very people she was accused of appeasing,” the Times reported, “when at least 10 members of the U.S. House of Representatives demanded her resignation.”

“Over the past few days, anarchy has engulfed Columbia University,” Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York and one of Shafik’s chief interrogators last week, said in a statement she co-signed with other lawmakers. “As the leader of this institution, one of your chief objectives, morally and under law, is to ensure students have a safe learning environment. By every measure, you have failed this obligation.”

The Columbia University Senate, made up of faculty, students and administrators, is expected to consider a motion to censure Shafik but for entirely different reasons. “A draft of the resolution,” reported the Times, “accused Dr. Shafik of violating ‘the fundamental requirements of academic freedom,’ ignoring faculty governance and staging an ‘unprecedented assault on student rights.’”

In the wake of these events, Ben-Menachem’s statement is a welcome response. Particularly noteworthy is the way he responds clearly and directly to isolated instances of overt Jew hatred that have been used in an attempt to smear the student protest. These reactionary attacks have included a small group of individuals outside Columbia shouting at Jewish students “Go back to Poland,” and menacingly yelling at them “Jew, Jew, Jew!”

Ben-Menachem writes:

It’s true, the fact that CUAD [Columbia University Apartheid Divest] organizers fundamentally reject bigotry and hate has not stopped unrelated actors from exploiting opportunities to shamefully harass Jewish students with grotesque or antisemitic statements. I condemn antisemitism — which should seem obvious since I have experienced it many times myself. (This likely won’t keep controversial Columbia Business School professor Shai Davidai from calling me a kapo^[1].) But the often off-campus actions of a few unaffiliated individuals simply do not characterize this disciplined student campaign. The efforts to connect these offensive but relatively isolated incidents to the broader pro-Palestinian protest movement mirror a wider strategy to delegitimize all criticism of Israel.

World-Outlook has also answered the false claim that opposition to Zionism is antisemitic in its February 9 article In Defense of Free Speech; Anti-Zionism is Not Antisemitism.

We believe World-Outlook readers will also find of interest a statement issued by a broader group of Columbia University students:

Statement on Columbia’s Gaza Solidarity Protest Community Values

We are student activists at Columbia calling for divestment from genocide.

We are frustrated by media distractions focusing on inflammatory individuals who do not represent us. At universities across the nation, our movement is united in valuing every human life.

Our members have been misidentified by a politically motivated mob. We have been doxxed in the press, arrested by the NYPD, and locked out of our homes by the University. We have knowingly put ourselves in danger because we can no longer be complicit in Columbia funneling our tuition dollars and grant funding into companies that profit from death.

As a diverse group united by love and justice, we demand our voices be heard against the mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. We’ve been horrified each day, watching children crying over the bodies of their slain parents, families without food to eat, and doctors operating without anesthesia. Our university is complicit in this violence, and this is why we protest.

We firmly reject any form of hate or bigotry and stand vigilant against non-students attempting to disrupt the solidarity being forged among students — Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, Black, and pro-Palestinian classmates and colleagues who represent the full diversity of our country.

We have been peaceful. We follow in the footsteps of the civil rights and anti-war movements in our quest for liberation. 

We will remain until moved by force or Columbia concedes to our demands:

1. Divest all finances, including the endowment, from corporations that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation in Palestine,
2. Complete transparency for all of Columbia’s financial investments.
3. Amnesty for all students and faculty disciplined or fired in the movement for Palestinian liberation.

Ben-Menachem’s statement follows with the headline as it appeared in the original. Photos and notes are by World-Outlook.

— World-Outlook editors

*

I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Don’t Believe What You’re Being Told About ‘Campus Antisemitism’

Smears from the press and pro-Israel influencers are a dangerous distraction from real threats to our safety.

By Jonathan Ben-Menachem

Apr 23, 2024

“Reprehensible and dangerous.” “Terrorist sympathizers.” “It’s not 1938 Berlin. It’s 2024, Columbia University, NYC.”

The White House, Congressional Republicans, and cable news talking heads would have you believe that the Columbia University campus has devolved into a hotbed of antisemitic violence – but the reality on the ground is very different. As a Jewish student at Columbia, it depresses me that I have to correct the record and explain what the real risk to our safety looks like. I still can’t quite believe how the events on campus over the past few days have been so cynically and hysterically misrepresented by the media and by our elected representatives. 

Last week, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, representing more than 100 student organizations, including Jewish groups, organized the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, a peaceful campus protest in solidarity with Palestine. CUAD was reactivated after the university suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace in the fall. On Wednesday morning [April 17], hundreds of students camped out on Columbia’s South Lawn. They vowed to stay put until the university divests from companies that profit from their ties to Israel. Protesters prayed, chanted, ate pizza, and condemned the university’s complicity in Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Though counter-protesters waved Israeli flags near the encampment, the campus remained largely calm from my vantage point.

Columbia responded by imposing a miniature police state. Just over a day after the encampment was formed, university President Minouche Shafik asked and authorized the New York Police Department to clear the lawn and load 108 students – including a number of Jewish students – onto Department of Corrections buses to be held at NYPD headquarters at 1 Police Plaza. One Jewish student told me that she and her fellow protesters were restrained in zip-tie handcuffs for eight hours and held in cells where they shared a toilet without privacy. The NYPD chief of patrol John Chell later told the Columbia Spectator that “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.” 

Since then, dozens of undergraduates have been locked out of their dorms without notice. Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia, notably gave students just 15 minutes to retrieve their belongings after returning from lockup and finding themselves evicted. Suspended students cannot return to campus and are struggling to access food or medical care. Students who keep Shabbat, and do not use electronics on the Sabbath, were forced to rely on technology in order to secure food and emergency housing. This crackdown was the most violence inflicted on our student body in decades. I implore you, as our Jewish Voice for Peace chapter does, to consider whether arresting Jewish students keeps us and Columbia safe.

Smears from the press and pro-Israel influencers, who have levied charges of antisemitism and violence against Jewish students, are a dangerous distraction from real threats to our safety. I saw politicians compare student organizers to neo-Nazis and call for a National Guard deployment, apparently ignorant of the lives lost at Kent State and in Charlottesville, and with very little pushback from national media. This is a repulsive form of self-aggrandizement that I can only assume is intended to preserve relationships with influential donors. Calls to more heavily police our campus actively endanger Jewish students, and threaten the regular operations of the university far more gravely than peaceful protests. 

It’s true, the fact that CUAD organizers fundamentally reject bigotry and hate has not stopped unrelated actors from exploiting opportunities to shamefully harass Jewish students with grotesque or antisemitic statements. I condemn antisemitism – which should seem obvious since I have experienced it many times myself. (This likely won’t keep controversial Columbia Business School professor Shai Davidai from calling me a kapo.) But the often off-campus actions of a few unaffiliated individuals simply do not characterize this disciplined student campaign. The efforts to connect these offensive but relatively isolated incidents to the broader pro-Palestinian protest movement mirror a wider strategy to delegitimize all criticism of Israel.

As this national discourse over “campus antisemitism” reached a boiling point over the weekend, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment saw CUAD organizers lead joint Muslim and Jewish prayer sessions and honor each other’s dead. This is wholesome, human stuff – it doesn’t make for sensationalist headlines about Jew-hating Ivy Leaguers. 

On Monday [April 22], I joined hundreds of my fellow student workers for a walk-out in solidarity with the encampment; we listened respectfully as a similarly sizable group of Columbia faculty held a rally on the library steps. Frankly, it didn’t feel much different from the environment during my union’s most recent strike on campus – I felt inspired again by my colleagues’ commitment to making Columbia a safer and better place to work and study. 

Later that night, a Passover Seder service was held at the encampment. Would an antisemitic student movement welcome Jews in this way? I think not. 

Here’s what you’re not being told: The most pressing threats to our safety as Jewish students do not come from tents on campus. Instead, they come from the Columbia administration inviting police onto campus, certain faculty members, and third-party organizations that dox undergraduates. Frankly, I regret the fact that writing to confirm the safety of Jewish Ivy League students feels justified in the first place. I have not seen many pundits hand-wringing over the safety of my Palestinian colleagues mourning the deaths of family members, or the destruction of Gaza’s cherished universities. 

I am wary of a hysterical campus discourse – gleefully amplified by many of the same charlatans who have turned “DEI” into a slur – that draws attention away from the ongoing slaughter in the Gaza Strip and settler violence in the occupied West Bank. We should be focusing on the material reality of war: the munitions our government is sending to Israel, which kill Palestinians by the thousands, and the Americans participating in the violence. Forget the fringe folks and outside agitators: the CUAD organizers behind the campus protests have rightfully insisted on divestment as their most important demand of the Columbia administration, and on sustained attention to the situation in Palestine.

And we are not alone. College campuses across the United States have followed Columbia’s lead. 

And so, it is my hope that we can all learn from their examples to remain clear-eyed about the stakes of this crisis and focus on the actual violence being perpetrated in all of our names. 

Jonathan Ben-Menachem is a PhD student at Columbia University.

NOTES

[1] A kapo or prisoner functionary (German: Funktionshäftling) was a prisoner in a Nazi camp who was assigned by the Schutzstaffel (SS) guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks. Some were Jewish.

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