Anti-Semitism Revived on College Campuses II: Jewish Press August 2002

By Prof. Howard L. Adelson - published in Jewish Press: August 2002

There is an old Latin proverb that has often been quoted. "The populace wishes to be deceived, therefore let it be deceived." [Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.] In discussions of the conditions for Jewish students on campus that is a very apt statement. A rather imperfect poll was taken of a very limited number of college students (300 of whom four percent identified themselves as Jewish) that seemingly revealed that students on American campuses in mid-July favored Israel over the Palestinian Arabs by a margin of 4-1. Forty-three percent of the students, who were polled, including the Jewish students who participated in the poll, called themselves supporters of Israel. Only eleven percent of those polled identified themselves as pro-Arab, while twenty-nine percent took no position and asserted that the U.S. should extend equal support to both sides in the conflict. While half of the students favored the establishment of a Palestinian Arab State, thirty-one percent opposed the creation of such a State, and fifty-five percent stated in strong terms that the U.S. should use military force, if Israel came under attack.

This poll, which was carried out by pollster Stanley Greenberg of Washington, was underwritten by the American Jewish Committee as part of a very large project that they commissioned to assess American attitudes in general towards Israel. The result was very pleasing to the American Jewish Committee despite the anti-Semitic outrages at a number of American colleges and universities such as the University of Chicago, the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco State University. David Harris, the Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, expressed his satisfaction at the result by saying, "While several highly publicized anti-Israel demonstrations on the West Coast this spring gave the impression that campuses were unfriendly, the truth is that support for Israel among students is about the same as in the general population." How apt the Latin proverb with which we began this column appears to be!

No sooner did the American Jewish Committee begin to congratulate itself on the results of its poll than others began to attack the method for taking the poll and the results that were published. Gary Tobin, the President of the San Francisco based Institute for Jewish and Community Research, claimed that the poll was "absolutely not" a true reflection of what was the prevailing attitude on campus. Some have said in the strongest terms that the analysis of the results was, in fact, a distortion of the true conditions on campuses. Gary Tobin actually stated, "On college campuses, the overwhelming sentiment is about justice for the Palestinian (Arabs) with the solution of a Palestinian State." Tobin actually warned the Jews of this country by declaring the poll to be a "whitewash," and one that was unfortunately poorly done.

The arguments about the meaning of a poll of only 300 students when the same should have been at least 1,000 is relatively unimportant except that it reveals the tendency of many Jews to deceive themselves when they should actually face up to the facts. The obvious fact is that at the University of Colorado in Boulder, I am reliably informed, the administration was actually summoned to Denver to explain what is happening on at that campus. We cannot continue to place rose-colored paint on all bad news. We do know that at that campus, the University of Colorado in Boulder, presumably the Arab students, assisted by radicals on campus, desecrate an Israeli flag and chalked anti-Semitic slogans on the main campus walkway.

At the San Francisco State University, Laurie Zoloth, the Director of the Jewish Studies Program at that University, actually wrote a letter to her colleagues in May in which she charged that the campus "in the last moth has become a venue for hate speech and anti-Semitism." In that same letter she wrote, "After nearly seven years as Director of Jewish Studies, and after nearly two decades of life here [i.e. at San Francisco State University] as a student, faculty member, and wife of the Hillel rabbi, after years of patient work and difficult civil discourse, I am saddened to see SFSU return to its notoriety as a place that teaches anti-Semitism, hatred for America, above all else, for the Jewish State of Israel, a State that I cherish." She continued in her letter saying, "I cannot fully express what it feels like to have to walk across campus daily, past maps of the Middle East that do not include Israel, past posters of cans of soup with labels on them of drops of blood and dead babies, labeled 'canned Palestinian children's meat, slaughtered according to Jewish rites under American license,' past poster after poster calling out 'Zionism=Racism, and Jews=Nazis.'"

Laurie Zoloth's description of how the Arabs and their supporters attempted to disrupt a Peace in the Middle East Rally organized by the Hillel students is truly blood curdling. Arabs and their supporters shouted, "Go back to Russia," and yelled that they would kill the students who were participating in the rally. The threatening Arabs began to push the elderly individuals, many Shoah survivors, who had joined the rally, and clearly those Arabs were attempting practice physical intimidation. These counter-demonstrators poured into the plaza which was the scene of the rally, shouting, "Get out or we will kill you," and "Hitler did not finish the job." Laurie Zoloth appealed to the police and to the administrators to remove these violent demonstrators as least 100 feet from those at the rally. That had been promised to her before the rally. The police told her that they had been told not to arrest anyone because that might start a riot. Laurie Zoloth appealed to Dean Saffold for police protection for those at the rally but she was told that the police would do nothing more than to surround the Jews at the rally who were outnumbered by the Arabs and their supporters. The administrators did nothing! They didn't even stand with the threatened students. The students had to be marched back to the Hillel House under guard by the San Francisco police. Students found it difficult to comprehend the degree to which anti-Semitism had infected that campus.

By May 7th the situation on the campus at San Francisco State was so threatening that it was feared that violence would erupt. The authorities at the San Francisco campus were quite literally forced to suspend funding for the General Union of Palestine Students, and as a misguided attempt to balance the punishments meted out to each group, a letter of warning was sent to the local Hillel House Chapter. The administration of the university viewed the videotapes and questioned witnesses of the confrontation. It was ascertained by the university administrators that the anti-Israel demonstrators had violated the campus rules by yelling racial epithets and ethnic insults, utilizing bullhorns and drums, while refusing to remain in the area designated for them. Among the insults hurled by the Arabs were, "Die you racist pigs," and "Hitler should have finished the job." This, however, constituted a contradiction from the Holocaust denial propaganda that these same Arabs placed on their web page. In addition, the spokeswoman for San Francisco State told the Los Angeles Times that the web site of the Palestinian Arab students had been closed because it displayed an animated picture showing rocks being thrown against a Star of David, and it carried a link to another web site that was furnished by the professional anti-Semites that accused the Jews of ritual murder. By way of comparison, the Hillel students were accused by the San Francisco State administrators of having some number of individuals who also resorted to ethnic insults in answer to the Arabs, and of hanging flags in the Student Center without having received permission to do so. In addition, there was a charge that a single Jewish student had used a bullhorn.

Supposedly the University authorities initiated disciplinary action against three unnamed students and started a series of, not very original, steps including retreats for representatives of the two groups for discussions. Obviously the authorities felt that the Arabs had begun the confrontation, but those same administrators were afraid to speak out clearly.

This situation on the campus at San Francisco State University calls for action. Strangely enough, however, one hears nothing but deafening silence from the well-funded Jewish defense organizations. Perhaps the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is attempting to encourage the administrators simply to arrange for a series of meetings between the Arab leaders and the Jews of the Hillel organization. If that is true, it is certainly insufficient. What happened at San Francisco State University cries out for more determined action on the part of the wealthy Jewish defense organization that was supposed to defend Jews from such outrageous, unjustified attacks. The administrators of the University must be brought to the realization that they have failed in carrying out their responsibilities to maintain peace on campus. If they are so incapable of maintaining a proper atmosphere on campus, they should be replaced. The question must be asked, where is the ADL?

The situation at San Francisco State was allowed to fester while the Jewish defense organizations, chiefly the Anti-Discrimination League, did virtually nothing to prevent this condition from reaching the nadir of threatened violence. It is, however, not a unique event. Unless steps are taken to correct situations on other campuses, we shall witness repetitions of the horror of San Francisco State. At the University of Chicago the deterioration began with a series of incidents that were initiated in classrooms in the autumn of 2001. John E. Woods, the Director of the University of Chicago Center for Middle Eastern Studies was a guest lecturer in the introductory course on Islamic Civilization where he was supposed to speak about the geography of the Middle East. As soon as he mentioned Israel there was a series of rude outbursts and interruptions from Arab students. In order to continue with his presentation he chose to refer to Israel as Palestine for the rest of the lecture. That is clearly a perversion for what should happen in an American classroom at a university.

This was not a surprising incident because the University of Chicago Center for Middle Eastern Studies has been the address of Rashid Khalidi, one of the most vitriolic and militant Arabs to infect American academic life. One can only recall the conduct of the stone-throwing Edward Said, who was the Khalidi counterpart at Columbia University in New York, and who tried to stone the Israelis from across the Lebanese border fence. Khalidi is reportedly an absolutely devoted hater of Israel and a devoted propagator of a doctrine involving the destruction of the Jewish State and the liquidation of its Jewish population. His presence on the campus of the University of Chicago is virtually a call to such violence. His baleful influence has permeated the University and led to the great decline in the tolerant, liberal atmosphere that has been so evident at the University of Chicago during its past years of greatness.

The numbers of evil incidents that have occurred on the University of Chicago campus is very large. In a future article a great many of the most outrageous of those events will necessarily be treated in somewhat greater detail. They will require rather full exposition because they reflect a concerted effort to destroy the traditional atmosphere of liberal education and discourse that was so important at the University of Chicago. What is at stake here is not a series of unconnected incidents but in fact a rather complete campaign to force the University to become a center for Arab propaganda. It involves such things as harassing Jewish students, tearing down notices of events in support of Israel, a film festival to propagate anti-Israel attitudes, demonstrations to interfere with the celebration of events in support of Israel, and the spreading of Arab propaganda. In this effort some individual members of the faculty have given these full support while others have, in effect, been terrorized and have yielded to the militant Arab Palestinians and their radical supporters. Obviously mendacious statements have been made by supposedly authoritative figures on the University of Chicago campus without any attempt at correction. Fred Donner of the University of Chicago Center for Middle Eastern Studies was quoted in one of the campus newspapers, the Chicago Weekly News, as declaring that Israel is the only state in the Middle East receiving U.S. foreign aid. That is arrant nonsense! This campaign at the University of Chicago not only attacks Israel and Jews but Judaism as well. This is an indication of the nefarious, maleficent nature of this concerted campaign that we will have to cover in yet another article.