November 17, 2009
Jew-hatred on campus
by Denis Macshane
National Post
All forms of anti-Semitism are bad but some are more worrying than others. Universities should, in theory, be the last place where Jews in liberal democracies should feel ill at ease. Anti-Semitism on campus is now a serious problem. University teachers like Roger Faurison in France have used their academic posts to generate the hateful denial of the Holocuast, an insult to the millions of Jews around the world who live daily with the memory of family gassed and cremated to satisfy Hitler's anti-Semitic desires. American universities have long given tenure and shelter to academics who are careful never to criticize Jews outright but instead revert to old metaphors about networks of Jewish influence and, of course, relentless criticism of Israel.
It is vital for the global anti-Semitism movement to win the hearts and minds of the young. Give me a child at seven and he is mine for life, said the Jesuits, as they realized that controlling the schools of Catholic Europe from the 18th century onwards would be the greatest service they could render the Church. So too the call of the Jew-haters is to win over as many young minds as possible to hatred of Israel and to a belief that Jews constitute a malign conspiracy of control. It is on university campuses that serious money is spent to export the Jewhating theo-ideology of Wahabism.
Anti-Jewish political groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir seek to have a formal presence on campuses. This is how Ed Hussain, recalling his time as a college student in London, describes what he calls the "Islamist control of Muslim student population... At many universities the tactics of confrontation and consolidation of Muslim feeling under the leadership of Hizb activists were being adopted. The Hizb confronted the Jewish...lecturers.... What dumbfounded us was the fact that the authorities on campuses never stopped us." Hussain had been attracted to Islamism as a school-boy. A poster in his bed room quoted the famous appeal of Hassan al-Banna, the grandfather of Tariq Ramadan and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood:
Allah is our Lord.
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