Brown University: Same Antisemitism 3 Years Later…
In 2018 I visited Brown University. In 2021, nothing has changed.
Three years ago, as we got to campus and set our table, we could never imagine that at Brown University we would meet some of the most radical “progressive” students. The students at Brown University would openly say Israel doesn’t have the right to exist. These students identify more with the terrorist organization of Hamas than our democratic ally, the State of Israel. It was at Brown University where a group of 18–21 years old students ended up calling the local police department in order to remove us from campus because our message was “hateful” and we hurt their feelings. It was truly a traumatic experience for them when they realized that the police would not remove us from a public street by the University because freedom of speech is still a value in this country and, far more because the local officers loved and supported our work and the State of Israel. You might ask yourself, what hurt the students’ feelings so much? It was our SSI banner that discussed the salaries that Palestinian terrorists get paid per their jail time, based on the amount of Israelis and Jews they have killed. Murdering Israeli Jews surely pays better than holding a normal 9–5 job in the Palestinian Authority. Our message was deemed provocative.
Brown University was the most hostile University I have visited on the East Coast, sharing the top podium with campuses like UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, and other progressive strongholds where in the name of “progressive,” or “leftist” values, students will identify with Hamas and Iran over Israel and the United States. In 2021, the coalition of radical Islamists and tokenized progressive American students is stronger than ever before.
So what has changed since then?
The correct answer is nothing.
Two days ago, on August 3rd, 2021 the Palestine Solidarity Caucus published an op-ed titled “Brown can no longer be ‘progressive except for Palestine.”
A more accurate title for the article would read: “Brown Is Not Supporting Hamas or the Boycott of Jews, Therefore It Is Not Progressive”.
In the 1,218 words that were written in the article that described Israel as the most evil country in the world, (in fact way worse than North Korea, Syria, Iran or other republics), the Palestinian group on campus used every word they could come up with from the “woke” dictionary in order to describe the wrongdoings of Israel. One can almost read this article in a serious manner, until they realize that in 1,218 words not once did the group find it appropriate to condemn over 4,000 rockets fired by the recognized terrorist organization Hamas into Israeli civilian cities in order to murder as many Israelis as possible. 4,000 war crimes, 1,218 words, and not a single reference. Can we really read this article as a legitimate matter?
Over the past years, I had the chance to read hundreds of articles published against Israel in University papers. Luckily I also had the chance to write a few dozen articles myself trying to counter the hate and the lies, as I am trying to control the narrative in the local student papers when it comes down to Israel. For that same reason, I am writing the following lines here today as we can no longer ignore radical calls on some of the most prestigious campuses in the west, that are becoming the norm within the academic world and slowly are becoming the norm in our workplaces, in government, and elsewhere:
We can ignore the lies, and one day Israel will be considered as a “Pariah state” while antisemitism is normalized and globalized in our country, or we can stand up to the lies, and the students who won’t find the need to speak out against terrorism and will call for the destruction of my home country, referring to all of Israel as a “historical occupied Palestine,” while denying the Jewish people the right of self determination.
The radicals can never become mainstream voices, not now, not 100 years from now, and not ever on our watch.
The connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, the place where our culture, our language, our traditions and our religion was born, dates back thousands of years prior to the first reference of “Palestinians” as we know them today. Our historical, legal, and rightful connection to the land of Israel will keep us in the land and will keep the Jewish nation strong no matter what radical voices, who give a free pass to terrorists, will ever say in the west. While Israel normalizes the relations with Arab countries all over the Middle East, it is the progressive student in the west that stands as the biggest obstacle to peace in the Middle East due to their beliefs that the Middle East will be a better place if it is a “Jew free” region. We won’t let that happen.
With this opportunity, if you are a student on campus, that wants to join the just fight for Israel and the Jewish people, regardless of whether you are a liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, I want to encourage you to join the Students Supporting Israel Movement and fight against the people who hate Jews, and the people who hate the Jewish collective (the State of Israel) alike prior to the beginning of the upcoming academic year.
As for my question to the girl in the video below, her answer was “I don’t”, and my answer to her was “I do, so deal with it.”
-Ilan Sinelnikov
Founder & President of SSI Movement
