Jewish Billionaires and DIY Antisemitism on American College Campuses - Opinion - Haaretz.com
The Washington Post recently reported that after the bloody, criminal attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 100 Jewish billionaires and businesspeople created a secret WhatsApp group aiming to shape U.S. public opinion in support of Israel in its war in Gaza.
At the end of April, several members of the group met on Zoom with New York City Mayor Eric Adams to discuss police intervention in the student protest at the universities, and the question of how the groups' members could pressure the president of Columbia University to let Adams send the police to the campus. Some suggested hiring private investigators to work with police to suppress the demonstrations. Some discussed making political contributions to Adams' election campaign.
It is the kind of story that every antisemite looks for in order to attack the Jews. From the article, it can be concluded that what the members of this secret group have in common is money – not ideology or anything else. The dangerous fusion of "money and Jews," if you spice it with the secrecy involved, stirs up all the antisemitic demons.
I ask: For all their enormous contribution to humanity in all the humanities, do the Jews lack 100 professors, for example, who can express a united position, even if it is extreme? Are there not 100 Jewish writers, journalists, thinkers, lecturers, lawyers, doctors, painters, and artists – even 100 shopkeepers – who can publicly state their opinion? Is it only money that talks? What a disappointment.
It turns out that money enabled access to power. They organize a meeting away from the public eye, and pressure the mayor to act against protesters, even at the price that every democratic society tries to avoid paying: bringing the police into college campuses. It also seems that the gentlemen are willing to go far – to finance the repression illegally, paid for with private money.
Finally, we come to a matter that can be categorized under the heading "business is business": the suppression of the demonstrations in exchange for financial support for an elected official. Apparently, corruption is also the lot of First World countries, not just the Third. I read the article and thought and hoped that it would cause an uproar in the Jewish world. It must say "not in our name," whatever one's political or ideological position is.
A pro-Palestinian demonstration at Columbia University.Credit: David Dee Delgado/Reuters
Well, here's the picture from afar. On the one hand, a group of gentlemen with mountains of money, in whose pocket the government and the police supposedly lie, and on the other, young students (including many Jews) who not long ago left the warm nest of their parents' home – young people who listen to the dictates of their conscience and protest, despite the high price they may pay, against the mass killing in the Gaza Strip. They are exposed to harassment by the police, the university authorities and also by both candidates for the presidency of the United States. In addition to all this, they also endanger their professional future, because the establishment threatens to deny them jobs after graduation.
Why do they do it? Because, it seems, they don't want the mark of Cain stamped on them due to their silence while their country supplies ammunition to a country that has caused tens of thousands of deaths in the Gaza Strip.
In 1968, the protests against the Vietnam War were about something that directly affected young Americans. Today the context is different. It turns out, it's more than solidarity. I assume that for young Americans, the Gaza Strip is at the heart of the struggle for the nature of the world in which they want to live. For them, the fight for Gaza is a fight for the spirit of America.