I'm a North American uni student seeing all this shit go down and trying to figure out how to like, process? Justify feeling afraid? Vent? Idfk. Anyways this is a side blog so I'll be following from another account but feel free to chat!
I will be tagging:
#I/p
#Palestine
#Israel
#Jewish
#Jumblr
#north america
#universities
#antisemitism
And a very special tag just for #jvp
To organize things. Uh yea that's it I guess
EDIT: at grad school in israel. Don't update as often because this whole Thing isn't forced in my face every day.
A Boston principal wrote a letter apologizing to Muslim and Arab middle school kidsâ- because of a holocaust lesson, and the relation of it to antisemitism today. They felt âunseenâ and âuncomfortableâ.
So basically, a bunch of Arab and muslim kids (his OWN WORDS) got really annoyed about having to talk about antisemitism for a few minutes, went home and told their parents. Those parents got very upset that Jews were being portrayed in anything but an evil and oppressive lightâ and complained to that school. And this bitch of a principal capitulated.
I really hate the "Jerusalem is very important to three religions why would Judaism get full control of it" because its only important because thats where the JEWISH TEMPLE was and where the JUDEAN KINGS lived. just because people made religions out of fanficing Judaism means we have to give them equal slices of our own cultural history?
Why Jerusalem is important to Jews: Jerusalem held the center of our religion until it was destroyed, we've lived there for thousands of years, it's a major part of the land where our ethnic identity formed. It's not only about religion, it's where we became a People.
Why Jerusalem is important to Christians and Muslims: "this book we stole says it's very important"
In defiance of the hostile construction that may be put upon my words, I do not hesitate to say that our national defect is that we are not
Just remember that "Until we are all free, we are none of us free." was written by a Jewish woman who called for a Jewish state in our ancestral homeland up until her death - 13 years before the term Zionism was introduced to the world. She was talking about Jews, btw, so before you co-opt it for somebody else, remember where and who it's from.
She also said "we ignore and repudiate our unhappy brethren as having no part or share in their misfortunes- until the cup of anguish is held also to our own lips."
"In defiance of the hostile construction that may be put upon my words, I do not hesitate to say that our national defect is that we are not "tribal" enough; we have not sufficient solidarity to perceive that when the life and property of a Jew in the uttermost provinces of the Caucuses are attacked, the dignity of a Jew in free America is humiliated. We who are prosperous and independent have not sufficient homogeneity to champion on the ground of a common creed, common stock, a common history, a common heritage of misfortune, the rights of the lowest and poorest Jew-peddler who flees, for life and liberty of thought, from Slavonic mobs. Until we are all free, we are none of us free. But lest we should justify the taunts of our opponents, lest we should become "tribal" and narrow and Judaic rather than humane and cosmopolitan like the anti-Semites of Germany and Jew-baiters of Russia, we ignore and repudiate our unhappy brethren as having no part or share in their misfortunes- until the cup of anguish is held also to our own lips." - Emma Lazarus
Orthodox groups want the court to hear the case out of University Heights, Ohio.
Orthodox Jewish groups urged the Supreme Court to take up the case of an Orthodox Jewish man ordered by officials in University Heights, Ohio, to stop hosting prayer services in his home without a permit.
The amicus brief, which was filed Friday by the National Jewish Advocacy Center alongside the Orthodox Union and the National Council of Young Israel, comes years after Daniel Grand, a resident of the suburb of Cleveland, invited a group of Jewish men to his home for Shabbat services starting in January 2021.
At the time, University Heights, citing zoning laws, issued a cease-and-desist order blocking Grand from using his home for prayer.
Grand initially applied for a special use permit to use his home as âa place of religious assemblyâ in 2021, but later withdrew the application, saying he did not âwish to operate a house of worship as is defined under the zoning ordinance.â
According to the NJAC, the former mayor of University Heights, Michael Dylan Brennan, then encouraged Grandâs âneighbors to watch his home and report any sign of Jewish worship to the authorities.â
âWhat happened to Daniel Grand is not an isolated incident,â Rabbi Mark Goldfeder, the CEO of NJAC, said in a statement. âIt is the latest chapter in a long and documented history of municipalities using zoning laws to suppress Orthodox Jewish religious practice.â
The cityâs current mayor, Michele Weiss, who was elected last fall, told JTA that there was currently one residence in the city that had obtained a special permit to host worship gatherings and that another was currently in the middle of applying for one.
âMy perspective is that everyone has a right to worship in their home with a small group of people (a minyan) without city involvement, just like a book club might do,â Weiss, who is the first female Orthodox Jewish mayor in the United States, wrote in an email to JTA. âIf a congregation wants to worship in a residence with a proper congregation then each city should have a way forward through their planning commission.â
In September 2022, Grand filed a lawsuit against the city and Brennan, alleging that the former mayor was motivated by âanimus against Orthodox Jews.â He maintained that the actions blocking him from conducting services in his home were part of a âsystematic campaignâ to prevent the Orthodox community from growing in University Heights, according to the Cleveland Jewish News.
In January, Weiss told JTA that University Heightsâ Jewish community had grown a âtremendous amountâ in recent years, and was the âlargest Orthodox contingency of residents in the state of Ohio.â
Brennan, who was twice censured by the city council for âinappropriate language,â had faced criticism from the cityâs Jewish community during his tenure. In November 2024, he drew backlash for criticizing voters in a heavily Jewish neighborhood who supported Donald Trump, and in April 2025, he accused the volunteer-run Jewish ambulance service Hatzalah of âjeopardizing public safety.â
In October 2024, the U.S. District Court of Northern Ohio ruled in favor of University Heights, and the Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals later upheld the ruling in November 2025.
A petition for Supreme Court review is currently pending, and a decision on whether it will be heard is expected in the coming months, according to NJAC.
âThis case deserves Supreme Court review because, across the country, Jewish religious practice has repeatedly been constrained through the neutral application of rules in ways that disproportionately burden visible Jewish life,â David Benger, the litigation counsel at NJAC, said in a statement.
I... what? I grew up in University Heights. My family still lives there. There were informal minyans in private homes all the time (sometimes to absurd and/or dangerous degrees). How is this the first time I'm hearing about this?
So I just talked to my sister, who is living in the neighboring suburb, and she pointed out that things have changed a lot since I moved out; there are a lot--a LOT--of former NYC Orthodox who have moved there in search of affordable housing (compared to NYC pricing, at least), and the culture of the neighborhood has changed to suit, with multiple synagogues under construction.
I knew about some of that boom--the "absurd and/or dangerous" example that I was referencing in my first reblog was from a house down the street from my parents whose resident had been running a shul out of his house, and kept expanding it... by cutting into the walls and adding illegal additions. The housing inspector who looked it over condemned the house because he'd removed load-bearing walls and rendered it "unfit for human habitation"! They ended up knocking it down (before he could have it collapse on their heads on his own), and he rebuilt it as a synagogue properly a few years ago. That example I knew about, and at first, I thought that this was that case.
It isn't.
This is a different case, and it's hard not to argue that this is targeted harassment of Jewish religious observance. Are there are lot of synagogues in my old neighborhood? Oh yes. Even before I left, well...
Here, this isn't doxxing, because the name of the neighborhood is listed on the article and I used incognito so it doesn't accidentally show my family's addresses:
This is University Heights (named because John Carroll University is there at the lower left corner) and Beachwood. You can see just how many synagogues there are on the map--and this isn't even all of them. I know of several--including the one I mentioned above--that aren't listed for whatever reason (check out Synagogue Row on Green Road there in the middle).
So, sure, there are already a lot of synagogues in the area. But I would argue that this isn't any more dense in terms of synagogues than your average American city has churches, and this area has one of the highest population densities of Jews outside of Israel. But you wouldn't see them saying, "You can't have a Christian prayer meeting in your house".
There's also accessibility issues and the like at hand as well; while I doubt that it's the situation for this particular case, I've been to minyans in houses where the resident had limited mobility and wanted to say kaddish, not to mention Shiva calls. Is it against zoning to have a group prayer in the house of someone grieving the loss of a close relative?
I don't see how this isn't a violation of the First Amendment. (Not to mention that University Heights has a history of harassing Jews, including my own family when I was growing up). So... I Am Suspicious.
In fairness, it is technically possible Grand is lying, for some reason. But I doubt it, considering the following other events of Brennan's mayorship:
The city of University Heights hired a private investigator at an undisclosed cost to observe Jews entering and exiting the Aleksander Shul
University Heights City Council members criticized Mayor Michael Dylan Brennan for his failure to communicate with council and for âillegal
The Aleksander Shul is the one I mentioned that was the house that needed to be torn down because the house had been rendered structurally unsound. So that was probably their rationale for why they did the observation--"make sure that nobody goes into the condemned house that has the exterior peeling away from the brick structure." Still creepy as shit, and the situation with Grand is something I'm reaching out for more context on from my family. (This is not me defending the former mayor at all, it's me giving more context).
I don't think goyim should be included in discussions about whether or not being jewish makes somebody "white(r)" vs "less white". hatred of jews predates the concept of race and I'm tired of getting weird looks when I try to explain that being jewish often means existing outside of the modern white/POC racial dichotomy.
like, race is a concept that so many people consider biological/set in stone and strictly define by blood quantum, but for whatever reason, that logic doesn't apply to jews - we're always whatever racial category goyim hate the most: to conservatives, we'll never truly be white. to leftists, we'll always be white (and in extreme views, we're even whiter than the whitest christians!) unless we have Leftist Council-Approved Person of Color status due to additional heritage in our immediate bloodline(s).
tl;dr: do I think jews are inherently POC by virtue of being jewish? no. ("people of color" as a term was coined for a very specific western movement of solidarity, specifically with the intention of amplifying black and indigenous voices re: defining their relationships with their phenotypical traits and bloodline-based heritage. many jews are poc, but imho, being jewish doesn't necessarily make someone a person of color.)
on the other hand, are jews inherently nonwhite by virtue of being jewish? yes.
it's like simultaneously existing outside of race while also being shoved into the cracks between every other race, prohibited from identifying with any of them - we have to take on whatever racial identity outsiders assign us.
Rules for commenting on this take: at least understand the smallest bit of race theory - especially how race isnt JUST skin tone, its not the same as ethnicity, its a complex social construct made for oppression. I don't wanna hear some american goy in my ear about how the only two races are black (anyone whos brown) and white (highly specific lightskinned europeans)
For the record, it appears as if sada news is based in the palestenian territories, so I'm gonna go ahead and call this legitimate, to the best of my knowledge right now.
Reminder that the Iranian regime backs the Hamas terrorist dictatorship in Gaza which has brutally oppressed and murdered Palestinians there for decades.
If you said nothing about the tens of thousands of people the Islamic Republic massacred last month but suddenly care about Iranian lives now that this occupying regime is under attack, your so-called concern is actually performative. It was never about humanity and dignity for you; it's about ideology, and in this case, your ideology has driven you to the side of dictators and terrorists.
#that said I am very worried for Iranian civilians#I heard that the US may have hit a girls school?#please don't let that be true
Hey, thanks for your response! I just wanted to add some context here.
The "school attack" has actually been debunked on several levels as regime propaganda. In general, the regime is pulling a stunt of wanting to embed itself among civilians to maximize civilian casualties, which is a violation of international law.
In this case of this school, an account with familiarity this this has posted the following tweet:
Someone else has also pointed out that the only footage of this event has come from the regime, suggesting that this is something that has been set up or being mischaracterized for propaganda purposes.
Great tags that need to be shared via @pothead-paisan:
#watching people fall for regime propaganda in real time is so depressing. every single time#before you reblog something with breathless abandon consider waiting to get some actual facts and not just reacting to rumors online#the reality is you can't know either way in the immediate aftermath of an event. 'fog of war' is real and stronger in the internet age#where rumors and misrepresentations can be memed and reposted 1000x before the truth has a chance to emerge#this is not to say i think entering into a regime change war with iran was smart. i do not.#also hmmm who else does this sound like? islamist regimes have one playbook and it preys on well-meaning westerner's values#free iran#fuck the irgc
The outlet that the Arab world brands as a propaganda arm of the Zionist entity has never touched a comma of my criticism
I studied mass communication in Qatar â a country routinely described as a heaven for journalists, though the description has always struck me as more aspirational than empirical. I completed my masterâs thesis on Israeli media framing of Morocco across three distinct phases â before normalization, after normalization, and during the Gaza war â analyzing the coverage according to three distinct editorial ideologies: left, center, and right.
I arrived at the subject carrying every assumption my academic environment had furnished me with: that Israeli media operates under military censorship so pervasive it functions as state propaganda, that the press serves as an extension of the security establishment, that the entire information ecosystem is engineered to manufacture consent for occupation. I was trained to see Israel as the graveyard of journalism.
What I found, when I actually engaged with the material â and later, with the institutions themselves â was something my professors in Doha had never prepared me for: a media landscape so free, so plural, so aggressively self-critical that it makes every Arab media ecosystem I have encountered, including the Moroccan one I belong to, look curated by comparison.
Let me begin with my own experience, because personal testimony is harder to dismiss than theory. I have written for The Times of Israel and continue to contribute to it to this day. Not once â not a single time â was any article of mine rejected, altered, or suppressed. I wrote pieces critical of Israeli government policy. I wrote pieces questioning Zionist narratives. I wrote pieces that would have made any nationalist editor in any Arab country reach for the delete button before finishing the first paragraph. Every single one was published. Every single one. I want the reader to sit with that fact for a moment, because it is not a small thing.
Here is a news outlet, operating in a country that much of the world has declared a pariah state, that accepts opinions from a Moroccan journalist even when those opinions challenge the very ideological foundations upon which the state was built. Name me one Arab outlet that would do the same in reverse.
Would Al Jazeera â which presents itself as the gold standard of Arab journalism, the fearless voice of the voiceless â publish an op-ed praising Zionism? Would it run a piece arguing that Israelâs existence is legitimate and its security concerns are valid? The question answers itself, and the silence that follows is the sound of a double standard so enormous it has become invisible.
In fact, I have been contributing to the Times of Israel since 2023 â writing freely, publishing without interference, never once told what to say or what to soften. The outlet that the Arab world brands as a propaganda arm of the Zionist entity never touched a comma of my criticism. It was not Israel that silenced me. It was Qatar. The university itself â the very institution that taught me to champion press freedom, to interrogate power, to speak truth without flinching â instructed me to stop writing for an Israeli publication.
The irony is not subtle; it is obscene. The country that hosts Al Jazeera, that markets itself as the citadel of Arab journalism, that hands out press freedom awards and convenes media ethics conferences in five-star hotels, could not tolerate a graduate student publishing opinion pieces in a newspaper three thousand kilometers away.
And the excuse will come â it always does â that these are merely opinions, that opinions do not represent the outlet, that the disclaimer at the bottom of every op-ed absolves the platform of its contributorâs views. Fine. Then explain to me why, if opinions truly do not represent the outlet, Arab media treats them as if they carry the explosive force of state policy. Explain why editors in Cairo kill columns that question normalization. Explain why Algerian platforms scrub comments that deviate from the regimeâs position on Western Sahara. Explain why Qatari institutions panic at the sight of a Moroccan byline in an Israeli newspaper.
If opinions are harmless â if they are, as every Arab editor insists, the sole responsibility of their authors â then why does the entire Arab media establishment behave as though a single dissenting paragraph could bring down the house? The answer is that Arab media does not fear opinions. It fears the precedent of allowing them â because once you permit one voice to think freely, you lose the ability to guarantee that every other voice will remain obedient. And obedience, not journalism, is the product that Arab media actually manufactures.
A volatile marketplace of ideas
Israel is a country where Haaretz â a mainstream, widely read daily newspaper â routinely describes its own governmentâs policies in the occupied territories as apartheid, as ethnic cleansing, as moral catastrophe. Where +972 Magazine operates openly, publishing investigations that would land journalists in prison in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in Algeria, in my own Morocco.
Israel is a country that does not fear outside critics because it manufactures its own critics in industrial quantities, funds their newsrooms, protects their legal right to publish, and tolerates their conclusions even when those conclusions accuse the state of war crimes. Israel investigates its own military, publishes its own failures, airs its own atrocities on its own evening news â and then watches as Arab networks repackage that self-criticism as evidence of Israeli villainy, without ever pausing to ask why no equivalent self-criticism exists in their own countries.
Where far-right outlets like Israel Hayom and Arutz Sheva push narratives so nationalist they would make the most hardline settler blush â and all of these exist simultaneously, in the same media market, funded, read, and debated without anyone being detained at three in the morning for what they wrote.
This is not a controlled information environment. This is a marketplace of ideas so volatile, so unmanageable, so ferociously competitive that it produces more self-criticism per square kilometer than any country in the Middle East and North Africa combined.
Consider i24News, which broadcasts in four languages â English, French, Arabic, and Hebrew â each with a distinct editorial personality. The Arabic edition operates with such sensitivity to Arab audiences that it frequently feels less like an Israeli channel than a Palestinian one broadcasting from inside Israel. Arab citizens of Israel operate their own media outlets â Makan, Panet, Arab48, Kul al-Arab â covering their communities in Arabic, criticizing Israeli policies, advocating for Palestinian rights, and doing so under the legal protection of the very state they critique.
Where else in the region does this exist? In Morocco, where the majority of the population is Amazigh, we struggled to secure a single television channel in Tamazight until 2010 â and even now, its editorial independence is a subject best discussed in whispers.
In Qatar, where Al Jazeera is headquartered, can any journalist publish a critical investigation into the Emirâs finances? Into the Al Thani familyâs real estate empire across London and Paris? Into labor conditions that built the studios from which Al Jazeera broadcasts? Into Dohaâs documented channels of support for the Muslim Brotherhood, for Hamas, for Islamist movements across the region that every neighboring Gulf state has designated as threats to national security? Into the billions spent on a World Cup built on the backs of migrant workers whose passports were confiscated under a kafala system that human rights organizations have called modern slavery? The answer is not merely no â the answer is that the question itself is dangerous to ask.
âGraveyard of journalism?â
The accusation that Israel is the graveyard of journalists has become a reflex, repeated so often it has acquired the texture of established fact. And yes, journalists have died in conflict zones where the IDF operates â deaths that deserve investigation, accountability, and institutional reform. I do not dismiss them.
But the phrase âgraveyard of journalismâ implies the systematic destruction of press freedom as institutional practice, and that is a description that applies far more accurately to the countries making the accusation than to the country being accused. Journalists in Egypt rot in prison for years without trial. Saudi Arabia dismembered one inside a consulate. Syria buried its press corps under barrel bombs. Algeria prosecutes reporters under counterterrorism laws for covering protests.
And yet it is Israel â where Cabinet ministers are called criminals on the evening news, where a sitting prime ministerâs corruption trial is broadcast live, where the Supreme Court is criticized and defended in the same newspaper on the same day â that the Arab world has decided is hostile to journalism.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history, has been called a fascist by Haaretz columnists, a dictator by protest movements covered sympathetically on prime-time television, and a criminal defendant in a corruption trial that Israeli media broadcasts live, dissects nightly, and editorializes about with a ferocity that would be unimaginable in any Arab capital.
President Isaac Herzog fares no better â routinely dismissed as ceremonially irrelevant by right-wing commentators and criticized as insufficiently vocal by the left, his every public statement parsed, challenged, and often ridiculed in real time across Israeli social media and broadcast networks.
These are not fringe voices operating from exile. These are mainstream journalists, on mainstream platforms, in mainstream Israel â treating their most powerful leaders not as untouchable sovereigns but as public servants accountable to public scrutiny. Now ask yourself: in which Arab country can a journalist call the head of state a criminal on the evening news, keep their job, and sleep in their own bed that night?
This is not analysis. It is projection. Arab media establishments that cannot tolerate a cartoon mocking their head of state have appointed themselves arbiters of press freedom in a country where the head of state is mocked, investigated, indicted, and satirized as a matter of daily routine. The hypocrisy is not subtle. It is architectural.
Let me be clear: Israeli media is not perfect. Military censorship exists on narrow security grounds. Editorial pressures operate, as they do everywhere. But the distance between Israelâs media reality and the Arab worldâs media reality is not a gap â it is a chasm so wide that the two sides cannot see each other.
When Arab media reaches the minimum threshold of allowing a journalist to call the president a liar on national television without disappearing the next morning, then â and only then â will the accusation that Israel is a graveyard of journalism deserve to be taken seriously. Until that day, the charge is not criticism. It is confession dressed as accusation, and the Arab world would do well to look in the mirror before pointing at Tel Aviv.
"but it's an islamic holy site!" Ok, well, I've just declared your house a holy site in my new religion, "all your stuff is really mine-ism", which you have to respect, so get the fuck out and let me in to my house to worship, coloniser. Also, that woman there? Not really your mom, she's my mom and always has been. If you disagree, you're being racist against "all your stuff is really mine-ites"! Oh yeah, and it's offensive to my religion for you to show your face here in my new house, so it's only civilised to try to kill you if you try to come back.
What so many Lefties don't understand is that the Al-Asque Mosque was built on top of the Jewish Temple Mount for the same reason that Mount Rushmore was carved over the Six Grandfathers.
by Alexander Sankey Alexander is proud of his heritage and background from the Kiowa and Northern Arapaho tribes. He is a Junior at the Univ
"Oh, this site is sacred to you?" *carves over it* "Not anymore, it's mine now. :) And you can't go near it. And if you try, I'll kill you and say you were trying to steal what was always mine. :) "
And they'll claim umar was super friendly and respectful of Jews and christians. đ Was literally just reading that claim yesterday in some apologetics about the daily islamic prayer making a not so oblique reference to their claim elsewhere in quran that their god* hates Jews. (*I refuse to entertain either muslims' or christians' claim that they follow Hashem and not just human idols.)
And not only Jews aren't allowed to go anywhere near there. I saw a post a day or two ago by an American muslim ally who visited al aqsa while wearing a yellow ribbon and was harassed, detained, and interrogated like a criminal for it.
Some of those listed reside outside of Israel, including in the United States of America.
The Punishment for Justice Movement website offers $50000 for murdering a targeted Israeli academic, $100,000 for the murder of "special targets," and other financial awards for providing information on them or committing acts of intimidation.
"The group lists the alleged home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, social media accounts, and even identification numbers of hundreds of academics from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Technion, the Weizmann Institute, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University, Harvard University, Oxford University, and the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Some of those listed reside outside of Israel, including in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Some of the profiles mentioned the names and details of family members"
They are literally doxxing people and providing allegedly correct home addresses, on top of essentially trying to organize contract killing. Nazi behavior
The Jewish chancellor of UCLA comments on antisemitism in higher education.
Almost one century ago, countless families were forced to flee the country that then housed the best universities in the world. One of those families was mine. My paternal grandparents left Germany in the 1930s with my father, who was 6 years old, and my aunt, who was 4. They were driven out of their home by an intolerable climate of antisemitism. Members of my family who did not make that decision perished.Â
Against todayâs backdrop of rising antisemitism across the nation, and as university leaders like me decide how to keep our Jewish students safe, I am reminded of my familyâs experience.Â
A longstanding aspiration of universities has been to serve as exemplary institutions. This means that, through the values they profess and the behaviors they exhibit, universities can be models for the larger society of which they are part. When it comes to the fight against antisemitism, however, many universities are failing to fulfill this social obligation.Â
Violence and hate crimes toward Jewish people have surged in recent years. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Americans â already the most likely targets of religiously motivated hate crimes â have experienced an 84% increase in antisemitic incidents on campuses since 2023.Â
This moment calls for decisive action grounded in moral clarity. We have a duty to lead the charge against hatred not only in our institutions but in society as a whole.Â
Rooting out antisemitism and all forms of discrimination will take thoughtfulness, commitment, and a sustained effort across communities. We are eager to work with all leaders to reach that goal.Â
What will not help these efforts, however, is the suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars for research grants. Like other top universities, UCLA was informed this summer that the federal government had halted funding in the name of combating antisemitism.Â
What kinds of work do these grants support? Clinical trials on therapies for lung cancer, data solutions that strengthen American cybersecurity, and research that helps farmers grow more food for families across the nation, among many other life-saving and life-transforming projects. Suspending this type of work affects not just those on campus, but everyone whose livelihood, health, and future depend on the groundbreaking research happening at U.S. universities like UCLA.
Certainly, our Jewish students do not benefit from fewer medical advancements, less prosperity, or new technologies ended before they are realized. They will not be safer if we are no longer defending our country from cyber attacks or safeguarding the future of our planet.Â
Instead, we must prevent and combat discrimination by recognizing the inherent dignity of every human being. Nobody on our campus should feel unsafe because of who they are or what they believe in. This is why at UCLA we have launched a comprehensive Initiative to Combat Antisemitism â an essential element of our broader determination to end all forms of prejudice and intolerance on campus.Â
As chancellor, I am having thoughtful conversations with colleagues to ensure that our policies against discrimination do not infringe on other core values. Together, we are ensuring that UCLA not only tolerates but cultivates diversity of thought, through reason and dialogue, while standing against dogma, conformity, and indoctrination. This is difficult, and our faculty, staff, and students will not always agree, but it is very much worth doing. The soul of our universities is at stake.
As I stated in my inaugural address last June, we must respect each personâs right to embrace all dimensions of their identity. At the same time, we must resist the corrosive tendency to see people solely through identity-based categories, flattening individual identities and turning entire groups into the âother.â That is the ultimate form of dehumanization â and history teaches us that the stigmatization of groups, if left unchecked, has led to the worst atrocities.Â
When Jewish families like mine fled the murderous Nazi regime in Europe, many brilliant researchers found intellectual homes at American universities. Through their determination to advance the creation and application of knowledge, they contributed to the defeat of the Nazi regime and helped launch a golden age of scientific discovery in the United States.Â
But here is a crucial historical lesson: Today, American universities occupy the top global position that German universities held 100 years ago. In fact, some of the defining features of American higher education â most notably, its research mission â were originally modeled on the German system. Eight decades after the end of World War II, German universities have not regained their past global preeminence.Â
That remarkable decline began with antisemitism. It led to an irreparable loss of talent, including many of the physicists who fled to the U.S. and helped it win the war. Worse, antisemitism corroded the core of the university itself. German universities fostered the pseudoscience that justified racist laws. Professors in German medical schools sanctioned and, in many cases, designed the horrific experiments carried out on concentration camp prisoners â the worst breach of medical ethics in history, as documented by the Lancet Commission on Medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust.
American universities need to learn this historical lesson. There are three reasons to combat antisemitism. The first is to protect our Jewish students, faculty, and staff. The second is to protect the non-Jewish members of our community, since we know that once bigotry against one group is tolerated, no one is safe. The last reason is less obvious, but if the history from a century ago teaches us something, it is that we must fight antisemitism to save our universities themselves.
The list of signatories includes leaders of some of the largest synagogues in New York City, representing all the leading Jewish denominatio
Over 650 rabbis from around the country signed on to an open letter on Wednesday voicing concern that, if elected New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani would threaten âthe safety and dignity of Jews in every city,â citing the Democratic nominee and frontrunnerâs antagonistic views towards Israel.Â
âAs rabbis from across the United States committed to the security and prosperity of the Jewish people, we are writing in our personal capacities to declare that we cannot remain silent in the face of rising anti-Zionism and its political normalization throughout our nation,â wrote the rabbis, representing the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements.Â
In the letter, âA Rabbinic Call to Action: Defending the Jewish Future,â spearheaded by The Jewish Majority, signatories called out Mamdaniâs refusal to condemn the slogan âglobalize the intifada,â noted his denial of Israelâs legitimacy as a Jewish state and condemned his repeated accusations that Israel committed genocide in its war against Hamas in Gaza.Â
âWe will not accept a culture that treats Jewish self-determination as a negotiable ideal or Jewish inclusion as something to be âgranted,ââ the letter continued. âThe safety and dignity of Jews in every city depend on rejecting that false choice.â
650 is a fairly big number of religious leaders to sign onto something, period, but taking into account there are only like 4-5K rabbis in the US makes it even more substantial
I'm reading that there are only around 3,000 rabbis in the united states, total, including Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox. So this letter got around 20% of all rabbis in the U.S. to sign. That's bananas.
We cannot normalize his racism and calls for violence against Jewish people. Even if he's going to win it's important that he does so by as slim a margin as possible so it's still important to turn out to vote against him so that he has a narrow victory and he can't claim a mandate.
no but for real, we left Egypt for /this/?? @we-left-egypt-for-this - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
