David Harris, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, says there’s a new nexus of antisemitism: “fragile… vulnerable” young Jews join campus groups such as the “hip hop club” where they are indoctrinated into anti-Israel attitudes.
These antisemitic beliefs are pervasive on campus, Harris explained on an AJC webinar (Facebook, YouTube) about Jew-hatred last week. They penetrate “every nook and cranny of the college campus” and push students into the “anti-Israel crowd.”
“We need help,” Harris said.
American Jewish organizations have to provide “spinal transplants” to young Jews who know that being Jewish means being connected to Israel but who find themselves extremely isolated on campus. Many of these young Jews end up being used “as props” by the “most vicious, virulent antisemitic anti-Zionist groups.”
Harris declared war on these Jews, who believe that to be a “good Jew,” they need to throw Israel under the bus.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m a good Jew who disassociates himself from Israel, throws Israel under the bus, sacrifices Israel on the altar of social political expediency in order to somehow get along.
Harris’s comments sound a bit like Reefer Madness, but they express Zionist ideology: support for Israel is a core component of Judaism, so criticism of Israel is antisemitism. “As a Jew I believe.. that to be a Jew is to be associated with three things, a faith tradition, a sense of peoplehood, and a connection to a land,” Harris explains. “Those are the essential building blocks of Jewish identity. I’m not going to amputate the connection to a land simply because it creates uncomfortable situations either in a classroom or perhaps on the street.”
Of course, many young American Jews have rejected the idea that religion calls on them to support Israel; their belief in equality stands opposed to what leading human rights groups call an “apartheid… regime of Jewish supremacy.” In his webinar, Harris simply ignored the real reasons young Jews are deserting Israel– the mounting evidence of human rights violations, and mounting Palestinian body count— in order to maintain his ideal of Israel as the liberator of European Jewry.
The 71-year-old CEO’s comments reflect the growing defensiveness of a Jewish establishment alarmed by a survey that shows 38 percent of young Jews regard Israel as an apartheid state. He presents himself and older Jews as lonely defenders against an antisemitic leftwing tide that is sweeping up vulnerable Jews.
Harris said that young Jews who have been to Israel and are proud of the country need to be supported by Jewish organizations like his own. Because those young Jews can be picked off by the antisemites.
They need to be seen as being on the front lines. It can be very difficult at the age of 18 or 20 to find yourself in a classroom where a professor is using the classroom not to teach and to open minds, but to propagandize and to close minds, to intimidate those who may have a contrary point of view… We know where this intellectual bullying and social intimidation is happening.
It can be very difficult for those students to walk across the quad and see Israel vilified and demonized as some kind of ethnic cleansing apartheid state when nothing of the sort is true. But again, we are dealing with young people who are vulnerable, who are fragile who want to be experiencing great college years. So we need to support them.
The antisemitism begins before college. A student at a prestigious private school in New York told the AJC about the chair of the social studies department at his school who “would not even put a map of Israel alongside all the other countries in the world,” Harris said.
The AJC has been running a young leaders program to help give a spine to students who face social isolation over their views. The program tries to create “an inner sense of identity… of pride… of confidence… We are affirming Jewish identity… and in some respects we are trying to strengthen spines or… even creating spinal transplants.”
“After all, why would someone go on campus and be socially isolated or intimidated by a professor by other students, on social media, unless they know what they are standing for? If I’m going to be attacked for being a Jew. Or I’m going to be attacked for being a friend of Israel, I sure as heck want to know why being Jewish should matter to me, why Israel should matter to me.
The spinal transplants are necessary because of the pervasive antisemitism on campus, in every nook and cranny. And yes– the Hip Hop Club!
“I want them to know that we have their back…. I want to hear their real life stories, like the student at Columbia University for example who told us when I was a freshman I wanted to enroll in some of the clubs at the university, they were all out there on the quad recruiting, and when I discovered that even the hip hop club– which was the kind of music he liked– even the hip hop club had signed on to some BDS campaign, isolating and demonizing Israel, he realized, this has gone way out of control. This is not just about friends of Palestinians and friends of Israel having these debates, whether in the classroom or on campus– fine, that’s part of college, you meet people with whom you agree and with whom you disagree and you learn from experience.
This was about something else, this was a kind of penetration of just about every kind of nook and cranny of a campus and pulling it into the anti-Israel crowd. So my hat is off to these students whom I have met.
Jewish students without a spine become “props” for antisemitism.
“I see today in some of the most vicious virulent anti-semitic anti-Zionist groups, some Jews who are kind of used as props…. [They say] How can we be antisemitic… People who actually publicly endorse the dismantlement the one Jewish majority nation on earth, a nation that occupies a vast landmass equal to the size of New Jersey. This one little sliver of land, this one little place where Jews can exercise sovereignty… whereas in our history we know that we have not been able to exercise sovereignty we have lived by the will of the majority and look at the results. Look at what happened to my wife and her family, look what happened to my mother and her family.
But that one little sliver of land is “too much for some Jews who are willing to sell, throw millions of other Jews under the bus.”
Harris is just recycling the old antisemitic Zionist claim that a Diaspora Jew is defective unless he supports the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in order to complete the Zionist theft of Palestine from the natives.
Not only is Harris murderously genocidal and racist toward Palestinians, but he is also viciously antisemitic toward a genuine Jew like me.
The premise, the fear, the whole world is against us is an unfortunate perspective. However it is useful for manipulation. One can get away with lots of questionable doings by maintaining, “If I hadn’t done that, a bunch of bad things would have happened. I did it because I was afraid.”
My God, tell me they aren’t listening to Hip Hop! Face it that’s just a gateway drug for Jazz, Rock and other Afro-American forms of art. As long as our youth don’t start dancing or engaging in other such “comingling”….but still….I mean “getting along”! What has the world come to?
“Harris’s comments sound a bit like Reefer Madness”
I just have to share this. Years ago Reefer Madness was shown in a movie theatre in Toronto, and it was reviewed in the newspaper. The reviewer said that at one point, a sweet young thing was about to take the first puff that would send her down into the depths of degradation, and someone in the audience called out, “Don’t do it!” — and brought the house down.
I should also perhaps tell non-Canadians that the Canadian Green Party is in deep doo-doo, in an election! The leader is a convert to Judaism, and I expect that she was taught that all Jews must support Israel.
There are – or were – only three Green MPs. Two of them made statements supporting the Palestinians. They were attacked by a senior advisor to the Green leader, who promised to campaign against them (!!!), ending his statement “Am Israel Chai!” (One of them then crossed the floor and joined the Liberal Party.) The leader has fired this advisor, but never disassociated herself from his Zionism.