On the 7th of November 202, The Jewish Link published a piece entitled "Montclair State Students Grapple With Weekly Anti-Israel Protests,” written by one of its regular authors, Debra Rubin. It is poorly written, but full of lies and innuendo against a small group of faculty and students at MSU who have been repeatedly harassed and intimidated by MSU authorities for daring to mount silent protests since the AY resumed in September.
In our weekly gatherings, all we do ("we" being no more than 3-5 faculty with usually no more than 5-10 students)--is hold aloft placards featuring photos of children brutally killed by Israel for the crime of being born in Gaza. For this simple act of witness to innocent lives snuffed out in an ongoing genocide, we have been threatened with disciplinary action by administrators (though so far it is just bluster intended to frighten us into silence), yelled at for "insubordinate behaviour" and our students have been intimidated by campus police, who, vastly outnumbering the students in a ratio of 4-1, have several times asked for student ids, told them they would be "reported" and continually harassed them by attempting to move them/us from wherever we are standing silently on a public campus as per our constitutional right. While this level of harassment and intimidation continues to be unleashed on us week after week, including through the imposition of the university's new and constitutionally illegitimate and draconian new expressive policy that seeks to further curb our 1st Amendment rights, we are now confronted with the dangerous and Islamophobic rant full of lies and innuendo unleashed against us by Debra Rubin of the Jewish Link.
This badly-written piece further insinuates that we are funded by outside organizations, by stating that we are: "clearly being helped to organize events by outside organizations." This is a dangerous unfounded assertion
One such lie is that I am the founder of the group and am named in the piece. First of all-- I am not "the founder" of this group--it is a collective enterprise, and in fact, the faculty member who came up with the idea of creating this group of faculty and students was a white male. So then the question is: why was I singled out by this writer? The only answer that holds any merit is it fits the writer's racist and Islamophobic bill to name me because I am a Muslim brown woman, a longtime vocal critic of Zionism and supporter of Palestinian rights with many published articles on this topic, and one of the few (if not only) faculty who teaches Palestinian literature regularly. Zionist outlets have been defaming me regularly and my name is mentioned on several pro-Israeli sites that track professors deemed antisemitic/dangerous for Israel.
This badly-written piece further insinuates that we are funded by outside organizations, by stating that we are: "clearly being helped to organize events by outside organizations." This is a dangerous unfounded assertion that we challenge and will pursue in court unless the lie is recanted. The article further cements its Islamophobic intent by stating that Muslim students have overtaken the Campus Center for Faith and Spirituality, thus making Jewish students "uncomfortable." According to Rubin, citing the Director of MetroWest Hillel, Rebekah Adelson, Jewish students can’t enter the Center for Faith and Spirituality because they feel "afraid" since it has been "taken over" by Muslim students." What kind of racist nonsense is this?
Here is the full passage: "They [students] are being so inundated with what is going on on campus that they don’t really even have a word for it,” explained Adelson. “They say they are afraid to say they are Jewish, but what I think they mean is that they are uncomfortable. They can’t enter the Center for Faith and Spirituality because they feel uncomfortable because it’s been taken over by Muslim students.”
Wow. The truth is that we have many Jewish students in our group who are clearly anti-Israel and anti-Zionist because they understand that Israel-worship has nothing to do with Judaism. These courageous and truthful students aren’t made "afraid" or "uncomfortable" by their Muslim peers! They are in solidarity with them and those of all other faiths and backgrounds united in a global fight against Israeli propaganda and oppression against Palestinians. So it is Adelson and her uncritically allied reporter at the Link who are antisemitic, for conflating all our Jewish students with Israel worship. They are Islamophobic to boot for making racist allegations that the MSU Center for Faith and Spirituality has been "taken over by Muslims," and for singling me out, by name, erroneously--as the founder of a campus group they are claiming is helped by unspecified "outside organisations."
Rebekah Adelson, MetroWest Hillel, Debra Rubin and The Jewish Link are all dangerous, hate-mongering lying entities much like the hasbara-fuelled Zionist entity that they serve.