Campus Antisemitism Back on the Rise

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — The raging siege of a facility at Barnard College, ferocious brawls that erupted in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, a vandalism spree at a Jewish frat house in San Diego, and we have yet to learn how to consistently confront such events.

After President Trump told the world he will introduce lavish living to Gaza, more than a half-dozen disturbing incidents, some violent, broke out on college campuses, the streets of Boro Park and the New York subway. They touched off the usual denunciations from political figures and Jewish leaders without putting teeth into it.

Bret Stephens has the right idea as expressed in his New York Times column. “Enough,” he writes. “The students involved in this sit-in need to be identified and expelled, immediately and without exception. Any non-students at the sit-in should be charged with trespassing.”

Only trespassing? Stephens recounts how “dozens of masked demonstrators…forced their way into Barnard College’s Milbank Hall, pushing past an employee so forcefully that he wound up in the hospital. What followed was a six-hour sit-in to demand the reversal of punishments for students who had been disciplined for violating campus rules.”

Add to the trespassing charge such offenses as assault, disorderly conduct, reckless endangerment and complicity to commit assault. That would cover all demonstrators, students or not. Someone could have been killed.

John Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union, demanded that “those responsible for this assault should be identified and prosecuted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.” To expand on Samuelsen’s claim, every participant should be charged with complicity since the assault at the upper Manhattan college would have been avoided had they not surged forth to occupy the facility.

Pro-Arab activists repeat these stunts over and over because they expect to get away with it. Authorities in the schools, the police and city government repeatedly sit back as illegal demonstrations persist, set generous deadlines for them to end and even negotiate with protesters.

They are negotiating with criminals.

“Barnard must act decisively,” states letter-writer Ronald Beaty of Cape Cod in The New York Daily News. “Permanently expel and arrest every occupier. Anything less emboldens this mob, imperiling education and emboldening Jew-Hatred.”

Colleges must take all disciplinary measures possible where warranted. Police must be called in immediately and arrest every intruder they can get their hands on. If these thugs know they could spend a few years in prison, or even a few weeks, does anyone think they would try this again?

Where are these dozens of Jewish advocacy organizations? They should be pressuring the authorities to take effective action. They must lobby police to file the harshest legitimate charges and press judges to impose the most severe penalties allowed by the law. Failing that, they must complain to their local mayor and city council. This is how we can change their behavior.

In my hometown, the Philadelphia chapter of the Zionist Organization of America asked Mayor Cherelle Parker to condemn anti-Israel messages displayed at a demonstration at City Hall and to discuss other measures to deal with antisemitism. Wise move, and ZOA’s demands need to go much further.

It is crucial to deter future offenses in Philly and anywhere else when anyone engages in illegal activity. Slapping them on the wrist or ignoring their crimes will embolden them to commit more criminal offenses because they believe they can get away with it. I support peaceful protests, but the pro-Palestinian campaign in Philly has been marked by blocking roads and bridges, holding protests where they threaten Jews and Israel, and conducting demonstrations in spots where they might lack permits. ZOA said it has not received a response from Parker, The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia reports.

Activists in some incidents assailed Trump’s Feb. 4 announcement to displace two million Gazans and transform Gaza into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” which suggests that Trump incited a new wave of disturbances. Demonstrators have spent much of the last 17 months slamming Israel’s killing of Palestinians, yet they avoid mentioning the continued detention of Israeli hostages and the massacre of 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.

Back at Barnard, the injured employee, a 41-year-old security guard, was treated at a hospital after he complained about neck and body soreness, chest tightening and shortness of breath, according to the Daily News. The TWU said that protesters allegedly pinned the worker against the beam separating two entrance doors. The union accuses one individual of lowering his shoulder to slam into the officer.

A week earlier, pro-Palestinian activists swarmed into Boro Park, a heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, to protest a real estate event for selling property in Israel. The New York Post and other media reported that one person was arrested for slugging another individual, though it was unknown the sides represented by either person. Police who had set up barriers at the site separated activists throwing punches at the anti-Israel protest, according to media reports.

Dozens of agitators chanted “Zionists go to hell” and waved Palestinian flags. “How many kids did you kill today?” they chanted to the beat of a snare drum, as some flashed Jewish residents the middle finger, according to the New York Post.

Punching out someone is serious, but that is what comes of offenses such as disorderly conduct and threatening remarks. If police arrested protesters for the lesser offenses, then worse problems might be avoided. This goes for anyone who breaks the law, whether for or against Israel.

 Campus police at San Diego State University are investigating how members of an unnamed fraternity “reportedly vandalized the AEPi house with paint and fireworks and broke windows while shouting hateful and antisemitic slurs,” said Fabienne Perlov, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, in a statement, according to San Diego Jewish World. This is another case in which police need to prosecute to the fullest degree possible.

Besides Barnard, students occupied buildings at Swarthmore College outside Philadelphia and at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. The Swarthmore protest ran for nearly 11 hours on Feb. 19, according to The Swarthmore Phoenix,  while the Bowdoin occupation lasted five days, ending on Feb. 10, The Press Herald of Portland reported.

Two Jewish men in New York City were harangued or assaulted in separate incidents within a few days after Trump revealed his plan to displace two million Gazans and build “the Riviera of the Middle East,” the New York Post reported. One victim was beaten on the subway in Queens after being told that “You kill Palestine,” and a woman shrieked about “genocide” to a Hasidic man in a building lobby in midtown Manhattan.

Trump’s tendency to open his big mouth hardly justifies any violence or criminal conduct against American Jews and others who support Israel. And Jewish leaders along with public officials can play a durable role to avert such intense scenes.

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Bruce S. Ticker is a Philadelphia-based columnist.