Guardian frames campus antisemitism as a figment of our imagination

The Guardian is wedded to two nearly religious beliefs: one, that Palestinians are immutable victims of Israeli oppression and, therefore, even after the Oct. 7th massacre, are never to be held responsible for their destructive behavior. Two: that supporters of Palestinians are intrinsically progressive and “anti-racist” – thus, allegations of antisemitism against them are, in general, dishonestly manufactured to stifle criticism of Israel.

Regarding the latter belief: it manifests itself continuously at the outlet, often in just the turn of a phrase, when reporting on – or more accurately, egregiously downplaying – the tsunami of antisemitism at college campuses (both in the UK and US) in the aftermath of the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust.

This was illustrated most recently in an article at the outlet by Alice Speri – a freelance journalists who contributes to Al Jazeera English and the Intercept – (“Over 100 US university presidents sign letter decrying Trump administration“, April 22).

Speri, after noting that Harvard University filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, writes that the “lawsuit comes after the administration announced it would freeze $2.3bn in federal funds, and [the administration] threatened to revoke its tax-exempt status, over claims the university failed to protect Jewish students from pro-Palestinian protests”.  Later in the article, Speri adds that the “administration has issued a barrage of measures aimed at universities… some under the guise of fighting alleged antisemitism on campuses”.

The article links to a separate Guardian piece, written by Johana Bhuiyan, which was published earlier in the day (“Harvard sues Trump administration over efforts to ‘gain control of academic decision-making’”, April 22). The article notes that “Harvard is the first university to file a lawsuit in response to Trump’s crackdown on top US universities that is says mishandled last year’s pro-Palestinian protests and allowed antisemitism to fester on campuses. But protesters, including some Jewish groups, say their criticism of Israel’s military actions in Gaza is wrongly conflated with antisemitism.”

So, first we’re told that the US is trying to protect Jewish students from – putatively peaceful – “pro-Palestinian protests”, then that the row involves “alleged” antisemitism on campuses, and, finally that “protesters”, including “some jewish groups”, say that criticism of Israel is “wrongly conflated with antisemitism”.

Of course, if either Guardian contributor wanted to do so, they could have easily found empirical evidence showing that antisemitism on US college campuses are at record levels, and thus that complaints by Jewish students of racism are very much real. A new ADL report showed that, in 2024, antisemitic incidents on campuses reached an all time high, shattering the number of incidents in 2023, which itself was a record at the time.

The ADL report noted that “antisemitic incidents on college campuses reached their highest point for the year in the spring of 2024, from mid-April through mid-May, which coincided with activity related to the anti-Israel encampment movement on dozens of campuses nationwide” and that “incidents at or near encampments often contained antisemitic messages, and participants recited antisemitic slogans”.

Further, a poll earlier in the year showed a shocking 83% of all Jewish students as US universities experienced or witnessed antisemitism first hand since the Oct. 7th attacks.

One widely covered incident of antisemitic harassment involved a group of Jewish students, including two men wearing kippahs, locked in a library by an angry mob of anti-Israel protesters at a New York City university.

Turning now to Harvard, neither Guardian article mentions a lawsuit filed by a six Harvard Jewish students detailing myriad examples of how the university failed to address “pervasive and severe” antisemitism on campus. The suit detailed the “harassment that Jewish students at Harvard have faced, including the exclusion of Zionists from university programming, calls for their deaths, and demands that Jewish students provide their position on Israel”.

This video, from Nov. 2024, shared by one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, shows anti-Israel activists yelling “Zionists are not welcomed here” outside the Harvard Hillel as Jewish students were entering.

Harvard settled the lawsuit, which includes undisclosed monetary terms, and requires Harvard to produce an annual report for the next five years detailing their response to discrimination complaints.  Tellingly, before the settlement, Harvard’s lawyers’ early motion to dismiss the suit was denied by the judge, who ruled that the Ivy League school repeatedly failed to address “an eruption of antisemitism” and said anti-Israel protesters engaged in “repetitive harassment of Jewish students”.

The following incident at Harvard, involving the harassment and assault of a Jewish student by extremist anti-Israel protesters, took place in Oct, 2023:

Let’s also recall that, on Oct. 8th, 2023, dozens of Harvard student organisations signed a letter effectively justifying Hamas’s mass murder of Jews the day before.

The Guardian continues in its pattern of gaslighting Jews: in portraying even the most extreme perpetrators of anti-Jewish agitation sympathetically, while effectively telling Jewish students that discrimination, harassment and hatred they’ve experienced is nothing but a figment of their imagination.