David French
NY Times, Mar. 12, 2024
“Blood libel also makes its dreadful appearance. The complaint quotes an M.I.T. postdoctoral student … “Zionists not only steal our lands, food, and culture, but our dead bodies as well for organ harvesting.”
This Monday, March 11, roughly 200 Jewish students and supporters marched through the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, and it was newsworthy that they were not attacked. Local news hailed that they were able to, as one headline noted, “successfully march without confrontation.”
The march came two weeks after violent protests forced the cancellation of an event that was to feature an Israeli speaker and was organized by Jewish students. The event — which had already been moved from another location because of safety concerns — was cancelled, and the building was evacuated by police after protesters broke through doors and reportedly assaulted Jewish students. There was no way to ensure safety, university administrators explained, “given the size of the crowd and the threat of violence.”
At the time that I read accounts of the violence at Berkeley, I was also reading two legal complaints about antisemitism on elite college campuses, one filed against Harvard and the other against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Both complaints make for horrifying reading, detailing a cascading series of antisemitic incidents, including acts of violence and physical intimidation.
