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Anti-Semitic incidents have been increasing at American universities since the war in the Middle East. Jewish students are threatened and no longer feel safe.
In the last few days, several parliamentary commissions have dealt with the issue of anti-Semitism at universities in an annex to the Capitol. The focus is particularly on renowned elite universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Columbia and Cornell University.
If you see a Jewish person on campus, follow them and slit their throat.
Amanda Silberstein studies there. She tells how she and her fellow Jewish students were threatened with online hate messages. It said, for example, that everyone in the only kosher canteen on campus would be shot at and that houses and facilities they visited would be bombed, Silberstein describes at this hearing.
Another message read: “If you see a Jewish person on campus, follow them and slit their throats.” A student has since been arrested and charged as he is accused of being the author of these messages. A professor was suspended for glorifying Hamas online.
Cornell University has now increased its police presence and security measures. Another student, Talia Dror, is convinced that it even got this far is also due to Cornell University’s initially hesitant and ambivalent reaction.
In its first statement, the university compared the loss of life in the Middle East to deaths from natural disasters, says Dror: “It allowed tensions to simmer on campus, for professors to sympathize with terrorists and for Jewish students to be targeted on their campus became.”
We hear of Jewish students being attacked or harassed, of vandalism to their property.
Cornell University is not an isolated case. Kenneth Marcus is the founder and director of the Louis Brandeis Center, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the civil and human rights of Jews.
Legend:
At American universities, solidarity with the Palestinians sometimes turns into hatred against fellow Jewish students. Image: Pro-Palestinian rally on the Columbia University campus in New York (November 15).
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
He says it’s alarming how the number of anti-Semitic incidents at universities has skyrocketed since October 7: “We hear about Jewish students being attacked or harassed, about vandalism to their property. And not just at a few universities that could be described as hotspots, but at so many that you can’t identify a single safe place.
Adam Lehman, the CEO of Hillel, the world’s largest Jewish student organization, which is present at around 700 universities in the USA, observes something similar. He describes how Jewish students on campus were spat on, beaten with Palestinian flagpoles or physically attacked because they put up posters commemorating Israeli hostages.
Lehman emphasizes that no one wants freedom of expression or academic freedom to be curtailed. There should be space for debate on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other geopolitical issues, including space for those who advocate for Israelis and Palestinians. “But neither freedom of expression nor academic freedom are free passes for targeted harassment, threats, discrimination and violence directed against Jewish and Israeli students.”