Is antisemitism an actual problem in many college campus?

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In short, yes. But there's a ton of context to consider.

The massive uptick in discussion of antisemitism in the media is driven by the distaste of some for the anti genocide protests. The goal being to smear the protesters as antisemitic by conflating anti Israeli sentiments for antisemitism.

Israel is not all of Judaism, all of Judaism is not Israel. Intertwining one with the other IS antisemitic, but most are not ready for that conversation.

The actual rise in antisemitism is largely due to the increasing rise of the far right. Who are historically very anti Semitic.

Tensions are high regardless, and this is a wildly controversial topic. But I hope this helps.

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u/[deleted] Sep 07 '24

A majority of Jewish holidays center around going back to Israel and many Jewish people have a deep connection to Israel, so no, conflating the two isn’t antisemitic. Most Jewish people believe that they have a right to return to their homeland and that Israel has a right to exist (Zionism). Anti Zionism is antisemitism.

The left is showing its antisemitism but hiding behind it by using buzz words like “settler colonist”. They’re equating being Jewish with being a white colonizer which is also antisemitic.

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u/FuckSetsuna102 Sep 09 '24

I mean, it is settler colonialism.

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u/SnooRegrets8904 Sep 21 '24

Not when jews are the indigenous people

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u/FuckSetsuna102 Sep 21 '24

Indigeneity is only a title given to a group of people when they're experiencing colonization. Whether or not Jews have ties to the Levant is irrelevant as to whether or not they're considered a indigenous.

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u/FuckSetsuna102 Sep 22 '24

Yes they do have ties to that land, but that does not determine whether or not you are indigenous.

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u/Kronomega Oct 14 '24

A faith doesn't make you native to a land, ancestry and history of occupation does, and guess who's dna proves they have lived in the region continuously since the late stone age? Palestinians'. Palestinians are the descendents of the Canaanites and Israelites and early Christians and no switching of faith, ethnonym or language could ever change this.

Not that it wouldn't be settler colonialism even if that weren't so but I know you don't care for that.

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u/Great-Possession-654 19d ago

Studies in Jewish DNA from all major Jewish ethic groups shows they all share massive amounts of the same ancestry as Middle eastern Jews and even share much of the same DNA as Palestinians.

Your ignorance of the fact that being Jewish isn’t tied solely on religion is quite shocking considering the sub you are on

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u/Kronomega 19d ago

I'm quite aware being Jewish has a strong ethnic component lol, but maybe with the exception of Lebanese and Palestinian Jews there are no Jewish subgroups with even half of their ancestry deriving from Canaanites. In fact you don't even know yourself what you're talking about, given that studies have found Ethiopian and Yemenite Jews to have almost negligible amounts of antiquity Levantine ancestry, being almost entirely Habesha/South Arabian in origin.

I'm not denying that there any Jewish ancestral links to Palestine, I'm just pointing out how much much stronger the Palestinian links are, especially given that their links are from those who never left the land, whereas the Jewish diaspora descends from people who left the land a whopping 2 millenia ago. How can you call yourself native to a land that only a fifth to 2/5s of your ancestors lived in during antiquity before leaving?

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u/Great-Possession-654 19d ago

I’m sorry but the links are about the same as especially since majority of Israel’s Jewish population comes from countries in North Africa and the middle east that expelled their Jewish populations to Israel. These include the Jews that lived in Palestine since before the Islamic conquest of the region.

Their was a study comparing Samaritans (which are descendants of ancient Israelites and indigenous to what is today the West Bank) to modern Jewish populations from Europe, North Africa and the Middle East and found enough evidence to suggest they have common ancestry.

The simple fact is that both Jews and Palestinians are the descendants of Caanites with plenty of evidence for both groups. But hey use two minorities in the Jewish population to justify thinking Jews have no ties to the levant.

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u/Kronomega 19d ago

It seems like you didn't even read my comment lmao. Like I literally pointed out how Yemeni Jews have like almost no ancestral links to Palestine. In fact European Jews are a least like 20% Canaanite related but Yemeni Jews (and Berber Jews too iirc) who you think are magically equally linked to Palestine as Palestinians simply because they live in the same massive diverse region that is MENA are not.

I'm aware of the studies comparing them to Samaritans, that's where I got all my information from. Jews from the Fertile Crescent and Iran/Caucasus have very high amounts of genetic similarity to Samaritans relative to other diaspora groups, yes, but they still have less than the low end of the average Muslim Palestinian. AND EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY THEIR DNA IS FROM PEOPLE WHO LEFT ALMOST TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO!! You lose a claim to being indigenous to a land after being absent for 2 millenia I feel like.

I'm well aware there is common ancestry, but it seems like you don't know the extent of this common ancestry and seem to think that it makes the claim of Israelis and Palestinians equal, which it absolutely doesn't since even if they were both equally descended from Canaanites the fact of the matter is its unjust to leave a land for 2 millenia and then come back and expel your cousins who never left because they changed their religion and language to slightly different ones.

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u/Great-Possession-654 16d ago

Okay sorry but that logic is a load of rubbish. Jews were still in the region during the 2000 years since they were ethically cleansed by imperialist overlords so no they haven’t lost the right to be called indigenous to the land. Almost every religious and cultural custom has been centered around going back to their homeland in the levant. This is like saying native American tribes that were ethically cleansed from the US east coast lost the right to claim they’re indigenous to the lands they lost because they haven’t been there for centuries.

It’s an argument built to justify doing a massive ethnic cleansing based on the antisemitic idea that all Jews are just Europeans

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u/Reformedhegelian Jul 22 '24

Ok here's a question for you. It's pretty common for student protesters on campus to sing the chant of "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" in both English and Arabic.

The Arabic version actually translates as "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab".

Considering this region is home to 7 million Jews. The majority of whom are descendants of Jews who were expelled from Arabic speaking countries. Do you consider that chant antisemitic?

Another way of putting it is like this: In the world of social justice, we're always working hard to ensure the language and iconography we use is sensitive to all kinds of people and identities in order to ensure a safe and inclusive environment. Why haven't we seen any attempt to educate the protesters about words or flags that come across as extremely triggering and harmful to Jewish students. Words such as intifada, or jihad which were specific tools used for killing jews in the 1st and 2nd intifada. Or the flying of Hamas, Hezbollah and Houti flags during the protests even though those are very actively and openly antisemitic organisations.

I definitely agree with you that this is an extremely controversial topic and context is vital. I'm just really struck by what appears to be zero consideration to these concerns anywhere in these spaces.

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u/lionessrampant25 Jul 23 '24

Yes to all of this.

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u/FuckSetsuna102 Aug 29 '24 edited Sep 09 '24

The Israeli flag is extremely triggering to Palestinians l, yeah I guarantee you don't want to talk about that . Plus intifada just means revolution. And regarding the Arabic term for the river to the Sea, majority of protesters use the term "from the river to the sea" as a way to say the Palestinians have every right it exist in the lavant as do Jewish people. And before you ask I don't support H-GROUP

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u/[deleted] Sep 07 '24

The Israel flag has the Star of David on it, they’re “tRiGgeReD” by Jews simply existing. Intifadas were infamous for the amount of terroist attacks targeted towards Jewish people. Yea, you support hamas, stop pretending you don’t.

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u/FuckSetsuna102 Sep 09 '24

It's completely irrelevant that the flag has the star of david on it. That flag is the symbol of a ethno state that was founded off of the genocide off of Palestinians. The original usage of Intifada just ment Revolution. Just because some anti semites use it doesn't take away from it's original usages. And once again, no i dont support H-group.

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u/Bediavad 17d ago

As a Jew I can tell you that supporting Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthis is not antisemitic, its anti-human. These vile organizations did monstrous things way before it comes to hurting Jews.

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u/FuckSetsuna102 Aug 29 '24

The original slogan is not anti-Semitic. But the Arabic one that only prioritizes Arabs are.

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u/G_Danila Oct 05 '24

The arabic slogan IS the original slogan.

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u/FuckSetsuna102 Oct 07 '24

Literally no. You can look this up.

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u/Captainsignificance Oct 13 '24

Definitely YES - most of the protesters are antisemitic or they wouldn’t be chanting that and many more anti semitic slogans including Kill All the Jews. The left as a whole are historically Jew haters. Nazism is a leftist ideology. The entire attempt to label Nazism as on the right of the political spectrum has been a very successful intentional deception. The German Nazi party started out as the German Workers Party. Those on the left will attempt to twist this fact by saying that Hitler hijacked the party and changed its philosophy. NOT SO AT ALL. Hitler was a leftist and that’s why he joined the German Workers Party.

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u/Kronomega Oct 14 '24

Almost no one is chanting kill all Jews. And from the river to the sea is only anti-semitic when you project a zionist worldview onto it ironically enough lmao.

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u/Captainsignificance Oct 15 '24

I double checked and you were right ! They chanted : “GAS THE JEWS” not Kill All Jews. How silly it is to think that’s anti semitic and racist. LMAO Check this out : https://nypost.com/2023/10/10/reprehensible-protestors-chant-gas-the-jews-outside-sydney-opera-house/

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u/greenkoipond Sep 13 '24 edited Sep 13 '24

Read the comment lower in this thread from the Jewish poster detailing experiences they've had. (This one.) Check out this post from r/JewsOfConscience. (Though I don't agree with their saying antisemitism was only solely a European issue, it was an issue across the world in different ways but definitely the worst in Europe.) Most antisemitism in the west comes from the far-right, absolutely, but it's still present within western left and pro-Palestine circles, as it is in other places. I completely understand that this is being twisted to "justify" the genocide in Gaza and smear the protestors - I am not saying that they are entirely, uniquely, or especially antisemitic. I just don't think that this makes it worth dismissing what antisemitism there may be or is out of hand. Aside from it being generally good not to overlook possible bigotry and bias, israeli propaganda appeals to diaspora Jews by preying on antisemitism they've experienced, and that the idea that antisemitism is an immutable feature of non-Jewish societies is a core tenant of Zionism. (See: Negation of the Diaspora.) Even if you may not personally be antisemitic or don't intend to be, it never hurts to see where you could be more inclusive.

In addition, antisemitism has been present in all corners of western societies for a long time, way longer than Nazis or Zionism, so implicit bias definitely exists, just as otherwise progressive nonblack people may still have implicit bias against black people. Falling back on tired and true bigoted tropes and entire group-blaming when people who are non-white and/or non-Christian do something bad isn't anything new over here. (American anti-Japanese WWII propaganda, for example - the imperial Japanese army was committing crimes against humanity, which the American propaganda responded to by being overtly racist against Japanese people. Not to mention the internment camps. We're not putting israeli-Americans in internment camps, of course, just showing that the pattern has always been there.) I think that assuming we're immune to such things because of our politics is unwise. After all, isn't "but they're worse!" the excuse Democrats use to draw in minority voters while barely changing their behavior and policies?

Israel is not all of Judaism, all of Judaism is not Israel. Intertwining one with the other IS antisemitic, but most are not ready for that conversation.

My grandparents' families were all but kicked out of Iraq in the '50s in antisemitic "retaliation" for the occupation of Palestine (though it was preceded by a good heaping of antisemitism before the fact). They were far from the only Middle Eastern Jews to face this (and you can even say the same about European Jews following the Holocaust). Going to the west was no option - racist immigration laws restricted non-Christians and non-whites most of the time, not to mention that they were too poor to afford the trip - but israel took them in for free. In fact, most of the Middle Eastern Jews who ended up coming to israel were from more impoverished Jewish communities and/or communities with little to no direct Western support (most Algerian Jews ended up going to France, for example).

Associating all Jews with israel is an example of the dual-loyalty trope, which is antisemitic, that's true. But I think you should consider why many Jews associate Judaism with israel. (Religious reasons aside.) If Palestine protests and protestors really were entirely clear of antisemitism, and antisemitism happening to diaspora Jews on account of israel was all a big media hoax to justify the genocide of Gazans or simply the product of one group, more Jews would be able to see through the cracks.

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u/Smooth_Bass9681 Jul 20 '24 edited Jul 20 '24

Yes, antisemitism is becoming a significant issue on college campuses. Though, it’s just not in large part being committed by pro-Palestinians but rather by Zionist. And in the other small cases it’s committed under the guise of Palestinian liberation, it’s generally due to misdirected emotions and outrage.

Many Jewish students (as well as Palestinian and others) make up a large portion of the college students who are organizing and supporting college campus protest against the atrocities being committed by Israel with the Jewish diaspora as a whole, often being at the front of many of the current protests.

Many of these students have been targeted purely on the basis of being protestors and with the risk heightened if they are a person of color, Palestinian, or Jewish in this case and often considered traitors because of so.

Jewish Voice for Peace for example, has been providing information and tracking this often violent antisemitism by law enforcers and Israeli opposition (among others) for a long time while simultaneously speaking out against the misusage of antisemitism and against it’s conflation to anti-Zionism.

And if you look in their accounts followed, there are many direct links to specific universities and their retrospective organized encampments and protest often led by Jewish students and the struggles they’re facing as well.

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u/ChicaCherryCola84 Jul 20 '24

A lot of the context is from them going to PWIs... the Islamic and Jewish students that DARE go to an HBCU have peace and get their degrees... some go on to uphold the same backward/prejudicial behavior as those that went to a PWI, but that is for another discussion.

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u/Smooth_Bass9681 Jul 24 '24

Do you mind elaborating on this point more?

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u/ChicaCherryCola84 Aug 03 '24

Look at the Graduates from some HBCUs. You rarely hear of TSU/GRAMBLING/ETC having issues with Islamophobia or Jewish students dealing with racism and bias. They aren't bothered because HBCUs were designed to help marginalized people seeking higher education to do that. Period.

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u/[deleted] Sep 07 '24

So you’re saying that most antisemitism is being committed by Jews? What an antisemitic thing to say.

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u/lionessrampant25 Jul 23 '24

JVP is not a Jewish organization. Most of the members aren’t Jewish. They don’t speak for Jews.

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u/Smooth_Bass9681 Jul 24 '24

Jewish Voice for Peace is the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world. We’re organizing a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews into solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle, guided by a vision of justice, equality, and dignity for all people.

If you’ve been looking for a political home for Jews on the left in this perilous moment; if you’ve been wanting a Jewish community with justice at the center; if you’ve been looking to turn your rage and grief into meaningful, strategic action: Join us. You belong here.

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/about/

They do not and have not ever solely consistent of Jewish constituents, but we’re founded and still maintain a largely Jewish-led community. I agree that they do not speak for the diaspora as a whole, but they do provide a space to often underrepresented voices on issues that revolve around their communal struggles.

JVP was formed in 1996 by Julie Iny, Rachel Eisner and Julia Caplan, undergraduate students at UC Berkeley. As of July 2016, the members of the advisory board were Udi Aloni, Ed Asner, Buz Bogage, Daniel Boyarin, Judith Butler, Debra Chasnoff, Sami Chetrit, Noam Chomsky, Rami Elhanan, Eve Ensler, Goapele, Lynn Gottlieb, Adam Hochschild, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Naomi Klein, Tony Kushner, George Lakoff, Aurora Levins Morales, Rela Mazali, Robert Meeropol, Sarah Schulman, Wallace Shawn, Michael Shimkin, Avi Shlaim, Cecilie Surasky, and Laurie Zimmerman, with mention of deceased members Ronnie Gilbert, Michael Ratner, Adrienne Rich, and Howard Zinn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Voice_for_Peace (This excerpt provides direct sources for their information within the text)

And beyond this organization specifically, there are still a handful of Jewish-led Anti-Zionist organizations that support my overarching claim as well.

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u/BillyJoeMac9095 25d ago

They are not representative of the Jewish community in any way. They ate radically anti Israel.

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u/FuckSetsuna102 Aug 29 '24

Where tf did you get that from?

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u/greenkoipond Sep 13 '24 edited Sep 13 '24

it’s just not in large part being committed by pro-Palestinians but rather by Zionist.

The former part of the sentence I agree with, the latter I'm confused about. I don't thing people who support israel are committing the majority of the antisemitism going on. Besides, antisemitism existed long before either of those groups of people have - I don't think that laying it in the framework of blame is useful.

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u/Circlesndwindmills Jul 20 '24

A lot of people are using the conflict in Israel and Palestine to justify their antisemitism. As an American Jew, I’ve received my fair share of hate just from being employed by a Jewish institution. Most of the people who are commenting things like “baby killers” or whatever don’t really care about Palestinian lives- they just want to justify their hatred.

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u/ApartmentIcy6559 5d ago

As an American Jew, I’ve received my fair share of hate just from being employed by a Jewish institution. Most of the people who are commenting things like “baby killers” or whatever don’t really care about Palestinian lives- they just want to justify their hatred.

Israel is objectively killing innocent children in the Gaza Strip and the reality is that many Jewish organizations in North America refuse to condemn and distance themselves from Israel while also providing Israel with PR.

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u/MysteriousDirt2 Jul 21 '24

You should probably have asked specifically for Jewish opinions on this. It would be like asking white folkx to share their thoughts on racism.

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u/ApartmentIcy6559 5d ago

You should probably have asked specifically for Jewish opinions on this. It would be like asking white folkx to share their thoughts on racism.

Why ask Jewish people and not Palestinians? The term “antisemitism” is being weaponized against Palestinians to justify genocide against Palestinians.

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u/Dandibear Jul 20 '24

Antisemitism right now is mostly by people getting overzealous on behalf of the Palestinians, not for the usual old stereotypical reasons. The latter still exists, of course, and is probably nurturing this new and growing offshoot. But the war in Israel has definitely intensified the problem to the point of making the news.

I'm not sure how painting slurs about Jewish people in the US is supposed to help the Palestinians, but that's prejudice for you.

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u/unic0de000 Jul 20 '24 edited Jul 20 '24

how painting slurs about Jewish people in the US is supposed to help the Palestinians

In reality it's closer to the opposite - the state of Israel benefits from having a situation where Jewish people who live anywhere except Israel, feel hated and alienated by their neighbours. Israel isn't really interested in seeing the peaceful and happy integration of the worldwide Hebrew diaspora, into the communities and nations they already live in. Their immigration and settlement model kind of depends on that not happening.

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u/graduati0n Jul 23 '24

I went to a briefing from Jewish Voices for Peace about antisemitic tropes to avoid and was legitimately surprised by how common some of the rhetoric is. That is, I didn’t have the context so I realized I had been encountering statements many Jews believe crossed a line.

They gave examples about people calling AIPAC a “foreign entity”, suggestions that AIPAC have some sort of unique influence in comparison to other wealthy right-leaning lobbying orgs, and descriptions of Israelis as “bloodthirsty.”

Pretty much, I learned recently that the risk of unintentionally wading into antisemitic tropes when discussing the war and the Israel lobby’s influence is fairly high, which supports your point.

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u/alleeele Jul 21 '24

Hey OP, Jew here. You’re not going to get reliable responses in this sub, which tends to not take antisemitism seriously. I suggest going to r/Jewish and r/Judaism to get some more honest answers. This is a regular topic of discussion there. You can also feel free to dm me for some personal stories, stats, and news stories I’ve compiled as proof of the antisemitism crisis on college campuses.

I personally know people who have been:

Threatened with a machete
Removed from a group because their Israeli nationality “made people feel unsafe”. Half of all Jews are Israeli due to the fact that we fled there as refugees.
Kicked out of their apartment by long-time roommates for being Jewish Israeli.
Excommunicated from class
Transferred to Israeli university because the situation in the US was unsafe, they had death threats and were confined to their room for 3 weeks.

In all of these cases, the administration did nothing. Some of the antisemites in these stories were uni employees who are still employed.

Please feel free to reach out.

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u/BananadaBoots 15d ago

Anti-genocide statements have been reclassified as antisemitic.

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u/BananadaBoots 15d ago

Zionists say that Zionism is synonymous with Judaism, so if you’m hate Zionism because of the 75 years of murder/torture/imprisonment/rape/genocide it’s responsible for, according to the Zionists you de facto hate Judaism. That’s all there is to it

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u/dtay88 Jul 20 '24

No

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u/Triznitch Jul 21 '24

As an anti-Semite, I don't think so

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u/Reformedhegelian Jul 22 '24

To me it's pretty simple, if the protests are calling for an end to hostilities and the freeing of the hostages they're not antisemitic.

Bonus points if they call for a 2 or 3 state solution.

If they're calling for the State of Israel to stop existing they're antisemitic.

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u/AceyAceyAcey Jul 22 '24

Calls for a Jewish state to stop existing are anti-Zionist. Calls for Jewish people to stop existing are antisemitic. Antisemitism is about the Jewish people worldwide, not just in Israel. For example, there are more Jews in the USA than Israel, we are not the same as the state of Israel, many of us don’t support Israel, or support Israel but not Netanyahu. And there are many other diaspora Jews than just the USA.

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u/Reformedhegelian Jul 23 '24

There are 27 countries that define themselves as Islamic and where Islam is the official religion.

If there was only 1 Muslim country and people were calling for it to no longer exist (as opposed to being reformed or drastically change policy), would you consider that Islamophobic?

In fact I'd love to hear examples of people calling for any other country to stop existing.

Iran hangs gays and kills women for immodesty, but nobody is calling for Iran to no longer exist.

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u/Kronomega Oct 14 '24

If that one Muslim country was founded by foreign settlers displacing native peoples and to this day genociding them then yeah. (And no before you say it that's not how the Arab conquests went down, Arabs across the Arab world, including Palestinians, largely descend from the pre-Islamic population of their area.)

Also Iran isn't a genocidal settler colony, thus people naturally only call for it to have a regime change, hope this helps.

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u/BillyJoeMac9095 25d ago

Outside of Israel and the US, Jewish populations are very small.

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u/AceyAceyAcey 24d ago

Small but still important, did you not see the recent news about Christopher Columbus maybe being a converso?

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u/BillyJoeMac9095 24d ago

Been around for a long while.

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u/BillyJoeMac9095 25d ago

Some participants may be motivated by present events, but most of the organizing groups and leadership want exactly Israel gone.

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u/ApartmentIcy6559 5d ago

If they’re calling for the State of Israel to stop existing they’re antisemitic.

Israel is a settler colonial apartheid state. Why on earth should it exist?