Jewish voices struggle to find reconciliation in face of campus violence

Standing at a cloth-draped desk the place the Torah is learn, Rabbi Sharon Brous delivered her Saturday sermon, recounting her expertise at a current UCLA protest.

Demonstrators draped in Israeli flags screamed at college students in keffiyehs. The rhetoric was hateful, laced with threats of violence, she stated.

“It felt like everybody was drowning in reverse ends of a raging sea, a sea of grief and fury,” she advised almost 250 members of her congregation, IKAR, gathered of their place of worship, a highschool gymnasium on Fairfax Avenue earlier this month.

She described feeling heartbroken by what she witnessed on April 28, “by the language and the vitriol that got here from our personal Jewish neighborhood … language that I’ve to say matched a number of the worst language that we’ve heard towards Jews within the final a number of months.”

Two days later, pro-Israel counterprotestors attacked pro-Palestinian college students at UCLA, descending upon their tent encampment, hurling objects, swinging sticks and sending greater than two dozen to the hospital.

Since that assault on April 30, unrest on college campuses across the nation has escalated even additional, with extra arrests, protests and canceled commencements.

The Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel, and Israel’s invasion of Gaza, have torn open long-standing divisions inside the American Jewish neighborhood over questions of Zionism, nationalism and Palestine. Brous and different progressive Jewish leaders are looking for a center floor that respects the humanity on either side of the battle — as elusive as that aim could seem.

They decry a zero-sum mentality that pits one group towards one other and deepens the ideological divide in order that — within the rhetoric of the second — to be pro-Israel is to be anti-Palestinian, to be pro-peace is to be anti-Israel. These are false dichotomies, they are saying.

Understanding the experiences of each Israelis and Palestinians is exactly what is required proper now, they argue — to know multiple fact at a time.

However the lack of life — about 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7 and greater than 34,000 Palestinians within the Gaza Strip — has triggered many to double down on one facet.

At universities comparable to UCLA, the place college students from various backgrounds dwell, research and debate collectively, the clashes have been significantly excessive, leaving each Jewish and Muslim college students feeling unsafe.

Johanna Israel, daughter of a longtime UCLA professor, attends an illustration in assist of Israel whereas surrounded by pro-Palestinian counterprotesters at UCLA on April 28.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Occasions)

A current survey of college students and American adults launched in March by the College of Chicago paperwork an escalation of concern, antisemitism, Islamophobia and assist for political violence since Oct. 7.

A majority of Jewish college students, as an example, understood the mantra “from the river to the ocean, Palestine shall be free” to imply the expulsion and genocide of Israeli Jews. (Most professional-Palestinian college students interpret its that means in a different way: that Palestinians and Israelis ought to dwell facet by facet in two separate international locations.)

Muslim college students and those that sympathize with the Palestinian trigger reported being known as terrorists, having their kaffiyehs ripped off and even being threatened with rape, in keeping with the survey.

Tempers flare after violence breaks out Might 1 on the pro-Palestinian encampment, hours after the college declared that the camp “is illegal and violates college coverage” at UCLA.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Occasions)

As pro-Palestinian tent encampments have sprung up on campuses throughout the nation, exterior activists have both joined the demonstrations or attacked the protesters, as occurred at UCLA.

“I perceive totally and connect with the immense trauma of Oct. 7 — and I perceive totally the sense of devastation and concern and struggling of Palestinians in Gaza,” stated David Myers, a professor of history at UCLA, who discovered himself “feeling very a lot alone” final fall as strains had been shortly being drawn. “However it appeared that not many individuals might present empathy for either side.”

Over the past seven months, Myers has met commonly with college students — some Jewish, some not — in an try to deliver understanding to the violence in Israel and in Gaza. He has helped arrange a peace vigil and a teach-in, and within the winter, he taught a category within the historical past of antisemitism.

Graffiti on the Powell Library at UCLA the place pro-Palestinian demonstrators erected an encampment in Dickson Plaza final month.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Occasions)

Regardless of these efforts, Myers stated that he had by no means seen something “so terrifying” in his 33 years on campus because the April 30 assault on the pro-Palestinian encampment.

“Leaders of the Jewish neighborhood should not solely condemn the unprovoked assaults of final evening,” he wrote in an opinion piece in the Forward, “they have to additionally name out the malign actors from inside who purport to defend Jewish college students however have interaction within the very heinous acts of which they accuse the opposite facet,” referencing the aggression of the pro-Israel faction.

Whereas distancing themselves from the demonstrators, the scholars of Hillel at UCLA issued an announcement on Might 1, calling for solidarity amongst Jewish college students over “shared emotions of anger.” As for individuals who sought to use the second:

We can not have a clearer ask for the off-campus Jewish neighborhood: keep off our campus. Don’t fund any actions on campus. Don’t protest on campus. Your actions are harming Jewish college students.

Professional-Israeli supporters collect on the “United for Israel” rally at USC on Might 8.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Occasions)

Hillel, which has lengthy offered many Jewish college students with a way of neighborhood by Shabbat dinners and different gatherings at campuses across the nation, has itself turn out to be a goal, with pro-Palestinian students calling for it to be banned at UC Santa Cruz.

“Every thing that everybody has been fearful about and petrified of is occurring,” stated Andrea Hodos, affiliate director of NewGround, a nonprofit fellowship program that seeks to facilitate conversations between Muslims and Jews based mostly on shared values. “It’s all occurring, and the concern and anger are narrowing our imaginative and prescient.”

That goes simply as a lot for anti-Muslim hate as for antisemitism, that are each on the rise within the U.S.

“We strongly consider that for those who solely have a look at antisemitism with out understanding how Islamophobia — and anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias and hate — are embedded in our society, you make it much less secure for each Muslims and for Jews,” Hodos stated.

Hodos argues that the expression as soon as coined by Fb — “transfer quick and break issues” — is exactly the other of what’s wanted at this second.

“One of many questions we now have been asking ourselves is how do you — in a second with a lot urgency — transfer slowly,” she stated. “With hunger on the horizon, with hostages who’re nonetheless being held — what does it imply to heal slowly and heal whereas the trauma is compounding?”

A protestor in assist of Israel waves an Israeli flag whereas surrounded by pro-Palestinian counterprotesters at UCLA on April 28.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Occasions)

Estee Chandler, a Jewish supporter of Palestinian equality, was at UCLA on April 28, the place she witnessed threats and taunting from pro-Israel protestors sporting stars of David and necklaces with the chai image.

The violence on campus two nights later was “soul crushing,” she stated.

Chandler, who based the Los Angeles chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, is a critic of Zionism and calls Israel’s invasion of Gaza “genocide.”

In her work, Chandler has seen “a targeted and concerted effort to border the search for Palestinian rights and freedoms and the assist for it as antisemitic, to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism,” regardless that Jewish anti-Zionism has been round so long as there was Jewish Zionism.

Calling for an “rapid, full and everlasting cease-fire,” Chandler argues that “Jews won’t ever be secure in a world as long as we now have a state that oppresses folks on the planet. Destruction of Palestinian land and houses doesn’t make Jews safer. It’s making us much less secure.”

Because the tenor of the protests turn out to be louder — and because the battle continues — the seek for a word of reconciliation and peace has turn out to be extra pressing.

Rabbi Sharon Brous stands in entrance of {a photograph} by Kim Silverstein that illustrates what she says her congregation IKAR in Los Angeles is striving for — neighborhood. Brous has decried the hateful rhetoric surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian battle.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)

Close to the top of her Saturday sermon, Brous described a second at UCLA, when a pacesetter of Standing Together — an alliance of Jewish and Palestinian residents of Israel — started to chant.

In Gaza, in Tel Aviv, all youngsters need to dwell. In Gaza, in Tel Aviv, all youngsters need to dwell.

As exceptional because the message was, much more exceptional, Brous stated, was listening to the voices of the demonstrators who joined in — those that had simply been shouting at one another.

“It appeared that these protesters, every of whom is pushed by personal grief and their righteous want for justice, didn’t know that such a collective name was even possible.”