Speaking from the podium at the Jerusalem Post Annual Conference New York 2024, Columbia student Katie Aryeh is noticeably appalled recounting her experiences at the now infamous Ivy League university.
“I worked my whole life to get into Columbia and was a very proud student there. And now, I am embarrassed to say that I attended the university. When I went to graduation, 80% of the students were wearing some form of terrorist garb. My fellow students are lining the halls chanting that they are the student intifada.”
Joined by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) Executive Director Dr. Charles Asher Small and Vice Chair David Harris, the panel explored the disturbing prevalence of support for Hamas from both campus students and faculty.
“We need a new playbook for the entire community. When it comes to the universities, it needs to be very clear,” David Harris bluntly states, “What they do understand is reputational damage, financial implications, lawfare and congressional legislation.”
Founded in 2004, ISGAP approaches the subject of antisemitism from a scholarly viewpoint, identifying its origins and manifestations, while promoting excellence in research and developing an accessible socio-scientific understanding of how the contemporary manifestation of this millennia-old phenomenon threatens the Jewish community today.
The influence of foreign funding
Addressing the influence of foreign funding, particularly from Qatar, ISGAP founder Charles Asher Small explains, “Forty years ago, the Muslim Brotherhood created a strategic plan to distance Israel from the United States and the West and to use antisemitism to fragment and to weaken the United States of America.” This statement is not simply hyperbole but is being played out in real time as we have seen across campuses for months. In order to combat this nefarious strategy employed by foreign agents, Small expounds on the need for the best minds, strategy experts, philanthropists and business leaders to work together and learn from each other.
The Jewish nation has never been stronger, more successful, or better educated throughout its history, and Small surmises that ISGAP’s plan of action is to bring the best and brightest together at the table and move forward as a united people.
But this daunting task is facing one of the largest and most sophisticated enemies of the Jewish people, as Small shares how campus organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) are direct offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood.
“The Muslim Brotherhood takes a perversion of Islam, and they fuse it with European Antisemitism. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the words and ideas that led to the extermination of the Jewish people in the Holocaust, are the same words and ideas that the Muslim Brotherhood uses as their raison d’etre,” Small poignantly explains before adding that, “Qatar is funding at least tens of billions of dollars into our higher education, funding the shock troops, the thugs on campus, and they fund our intellectuals.”
He ironically points out how two generations ago, the Jewish people were facing extermination for being defined as not being white, and yet now Jews are defined by the campus intellectuals, who are disseminating misinformation and falsehoods to the masses of students, as the epitome of white supremacy and settler colonialism.
In its efforts to uncover the truth through empirical data and first-hand accounts, Small announced that ISGAP was releasing a new report detailing the rampant antisemitism on Columbia, as reflected by Aryeh, and will continue its work to root out the sources of antisemitism throughout leading elite institutions of higher education.
ISGAP sponsored a portion of the Jerusalem Post Annual Conference 2024.www.jpost.com/AC24