Antisemiticism On the College Campus

Why??????

On October 7th, 2023, thousands of Hamas soldiers poured over the Israeli border, butchered about 1,200 people, and kidnapped another 250. During this assault, men committed acts of savagery beyond imagination. The sexual crimes were particularly horrific.

From the very beginning, we all knew about the sexual crimes. After I saw the picture of the poor girl with the bloody sweatpants, I didn’t sleep that night. Eye witnesses, autopsies, and bodycam pictures from the Hamas soldiers revealed that girls were gang raped and mutilated. While girls were being raped, some had their breasts cut off, and their heads blown off.

Men continued to rape bodies that lacked breasts and heads. Think about that.

Because these rape stories were not getting enough attention by the media and were even ignored by the UN, Israel started a major information push this week. The stories that have come out are even worse than I heard the first week. I’ve been retweeting these stories on X to support their efforts.

Despite the widespread exposure of atrocities, college kids don’t seem to have gotten the memo. Ultra-privileged kids on the nation’s most elite colleges are marching through their campuses shouting anti-semitic slogans and rallying behind the rapists. College presidents from Harvard, Penn and MIT were grilled on these matters before Congress on December 5th. Why is everyone upset about October 7th except for college students? I have several theories.

Theory One — Adults Condone It

The college presidents did not have a good day in Congress. Their failure to define anti-semitic statements as “hate speech” has been widely ridiculed on social media. For some, it confirms their belief that colleges are places where leftist insanity has been allowed to flourish.

But having worked on college campuses, I know that all professors are not alike. I can’t imagine that the sizable number of Jewish professors, students, and donors are supportive of these protests. My guess is that university leaders have no idea how to squelch these protests without igniting something worse. At best, all college presidents are risk-adverse, who just want to make sure that their schools get those big donations, and that they keep earning their million dollar salaries.

I think that most adults, whether a college president or not, are absolutely disgusted by October 7th. Those young people lying in bloody heaps at the music festival could be my kids, your kids, our family. Beautiful people dancing like fools at a concert were turned into meat. No sane adult can look those events without feeling horror.

Theory Two — Social Media Sucks

Young people get their information from really different sources from those us oldies. That’s why we’re seeing such a huge generational divide on this issue.

When this event was unfolding, my son, whose politics are usually center-left, had the typical young person response — little attention to Hamas and outrage about the war in Gaza. Why? Because he gets all his information from Reddit, where young people talk to young people. They have few facts, just slogans and headlines.

After I got my son up to speed on exactly what happened on October 7th and other pesky facts, like the tunnels and guns under the hospitals, then he had a more nuanced response. But he needed me there to tell him in graphic terms exactly what happened in the desert.

My hairdresser is Palestinian and has some very troubling beliefs that I’m trying to ignore because she does a great job with my hair. I follow her on Instagram, where she uses Instagram Stories to pump out Hamas lies. I read it, because I want to know what the other side is saying.

Hamas has a team of social media pros that create AI images and misleading headlines that can be easily shared on social media. For example, they are claiming that the IDF killed the kids at the festival and that they raped the girls. My hairdresser believes all this, because she wants to. She has family in Gaza, where her family owns many buildings and is very wealthy. Nobody in her family was killed, but those apartment buildings are now dust.

While American Palestinians might have a real interest in believing Hamas, others believe it because it fits the simplistic narrative that fits their world view.

Theory Three — Good Guy/Bad Guy Mentality

Young people like purity. They want the world to be divided up neatly with good guys and bad guys. They want to champion the downtrodden, the disadvantaged, the underdogs, which is a very admirable instinct. I hope that I’ve taught my kids to care about disadvantage people and to fight for greater opportunities for everyone.

However those positive instincts have become twisted into a very simplistic formula. Now, the good guys are dark skinned, beautiful, and young, while the bad guys are older and whiter. They see themselves as champions and fighters for justice. They wrote their college essays talking about the racism in the suburbs and the pain of getting mis-gendered. I’m sure that there is racism in the suburbs and it’s painful to be misgendered, but it’s problematic to center one’s whole identity around painful experiences.

My kid has autism; both he and I have experienced enormous ignorance and bigotry. Public schools actually put kids like him in the basements of their buildings; when it comes to autism, schools have no problems with a separate and unequal education. Yet, I don’t center my entire identity around those mistreatments, because there lies madness.

Young people have a really hard time putting Israel and Hamas into the neat boxes of good guys and bad guys. They were told that Israel invaded Palestinian and kicked them out of the country. Colonizers! So that checks a big box for them. They see black political leaders lining up behind Muslim political leaders. Another box checked. And that’s all they need to know.

Theory Four - It’s All of the Above

Young people with bad information and a simplistic worldview are making bad choices and are left unchecked by the spineless college leaders. That’s what’s going on. All of the above.

In the meantime, check in with your Jewish friends. They are not okay right now. If you’ve been quiet on Facebook, because you are afraid of backlash, say something. Text them. Tell them that you are personally disgusted that Jewish girls were turned into hamburger in the Israeli desert.

Then teach your kids about how to read an actual newspaper and not get their information from TikTok. Teach them that good and evil may not come in simplistic, color-coded packages. Teach them to go beyond even the reputable news sources, but to read deeply about geo-political events in books, study those subjects in college, and just to care. It’s so important.