JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

Our editor-in-chief, Jodi Rudoren, spoke at the City Club of Cleveland this afternoon, so could not write her weekly “Looking Forward” column. Instead, we’re bringing you our new weekly newsletter, Antisemitism Notebook, where the Forward’s Arno Rosenfeld helps you cut through the news and noise. Sign-up here to receive it every week.

A high school friend of mine recently had a date who threw a drink at him and stormed out when he wouldn’t condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide.” When I shared that on Twitter this week, it provoked some strong emotions. See the conversation here and give me a follow if you don’t already so you can be part of the next one.

UP FIRST

Students participating in a Gaza solidarity encampment at Brown University last month. (Getty Images)

One of the most pervasive fears around the campus priests against Israel's war in Gaza is that they ostracize any Jewish students with a positive attachment to the country.

And there’s a good deal of data to suggest this is true. One survey this fall found that 66% of Jewish college students said they would pay a “social penalty” for supporting “the existence of Israel as a Jewish state,” and 30% said they hid their Jewish identity in order to fit in.

You may have also seen a recent poll Hillel put out showing that 63% of Jewish students felt less safe on campus because of the protests (that survey had a smaller, more conservative sample).

Another recent poll that got much less attention showed that even among students sympathetic to the protesters’ agenda, very few support ostracizing Israel supporters, as some encampment leaders did with rules barring “Zionists” from their space. And the vast majority support a core tenet of Zionism, Israel’s right to exist.

The poll was conducted by Generation Lab, a firm that researches young adults, which polled 1,250 college students, Jewish and not. In addition to the above data points, it found that only 1% of the students think that “Jewish people around the globe” are to blame for the situation in Gaza, while a plurality of 34% blamed Hamas.

The responses do not represent a coherent worldview — 83% support Israel’s right to exist but half of them agree with the slogan “from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” which many Jews see as a call to eliminate Israel.

How you interpret these figures may depend on how severe you believe the situation on campus is. I was struck to see that nearly half of students wanted their school to boycott Israel, a movement that has gained a small amount of traction recently, yet only 1 in 10 said it is “acceptable” to “block students who support Israel” from parts of campus.

(One important caveat is that this was a national poll. The numbers might look different at schools that have experienced the most intense protests.)

I was also intrigued by a question that came toward the end of the poll, and was only answered by those who said they had participated in pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel protests this year, or supported protesters on either side. It showed that most of those who supported the Jewish state, and a solid chunk who had marched in solidarity with the Palestinians, are open to friendships across the divide.

Losing even a single friend over this conflict can be devastating. But if there is that much equanimity among students at the very center of the conflict — those who have waved Israeli flags on campus and those who have blared accusations of genocide through megaphones — perhaps the rancor of the past year may be easier to recover from than many people who are not on campus fear.

Fighting antisemitism by fending off a challenge to Raytheon

Activist shareholders submitted a proposal to force Raytheon to review its human rights record, especially in Saudi Arabia and Israel, which the group accused of apartheid. (Getty Images)

The Anti-Defamation League celebrated a win earlier this month when shareholders at RTX, formerly Raytheon, rejected a proposal from other shareholders asking the company to conduct a “human rights impact assessment.”

The proposal was focused on RTX’s involvement in Saudi Arabia, which is fighting an ongoing war in Yemen; and Israel, which the activist shareholders accused of maintaining “a system of apartheid.” The ADL fought this measure through JLens, a nonprofit devoted to what it calls “Jewish-values based investing,” which  it acquired two years ago.

In a formal objection to the proposal, JLens wrote that “falsely singling out Israel with a term linked to severe injustice and discrimination could embolden hostility directed against Jews in the United States and beyond.”

RTX helps manufacture Israel’s Iron Dome system, and the company’s chief executive, Greg Hayes, said in October that the Gaza war could boost its bottom line. “Across the entire Raytheon portfolio, you’re going to see a benefit,” he told shareholders.

NEWS & VIEWS

Gov. Josh Shapiro, the Jewish leader of Pennsylvania, has been outspoken about antisemitism even as the topic has divided some segments of his party. (Getty Images)

🔔 Jewish governor on antisemitism: Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, a rising star in the Democratic Party, compared some of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators on college campuses to white supremacists. “If you had a group of white supremacists camped out and yelling racial slurs every day, that would be met with a different response than antisemites camped out, yelling antisemitic tropes,” he said. (New York Times)

🏛️ Behind Columbia’s ‘bunker mentality’: Minouche Shafik, Columbia University’s president, has been under fire from students, staff and faculty over her handling of the protests. A new investigation reveals how she “set in motion a series of events that would fuel protests throughout the country and turn her campus into the center of a national debate over speech, hate, complicity and university governance.” (Washington Post)

🎓 Antisemitism at elite schools: Half of students at the nation’s top 25 universities said that antisemitism was “a small problem” on their campus, while 14% said it was “a huge problem” in a new poll. Students were split on whether campus speech rights were being infringed upon and  38% said the protests had made them feel at least “a little” unsafe. (U.S. News & World Report)

💰 ADL ramps up lobbying: The group is on pace to spend $1.6 million on what it describes as its "cast legislative agenda" this year, according to federal records, up from $100,000 in 2020. One thing on that agenda is expanding the definition of antisemitism to include certain criticism of Israel. (Guardian)

🚔 Shooter to plead guilty: The mentally ill man accused of shooting two Jewish men as they left synagogue in Los Angeles 15 months ago will plead guilty to federal hate crimes, averting a trial where he could have been sentenced to life in prison. (Forward)

👨‍⚖️ Jury discrimination: An appeal in a death penalty case revealed that prosecutors in a northern California county excluded Black female and Jewish jurors from at least 35 death-row cases over the course of several decades. “I liked him better than any other Jew, but no way,” one note written by an attorney read. “Must kick.” (JTA)

WATCH: JODI RUDORENON “INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM IN AN ERA OF POLARIZATION” AT THE CITY CLUB OF CLEVELAND