Antisemitism is just like Islamophobia, no?

It’s so hard to be a Muslim these days, amiright? Just last month, 70 Palestinian film directors wrote an open letter to the movie industry decrying “The relentless, decades-old dehumanization of Palestinians on small and big screens in the US, in Hollywood…” Wait, an industry allegedly “controlled by Jews” is going all out to shatter Palestinian cinematic ambitions by finding work for 70 directors?

And, what dehumanizing exactly are they so upset about? Could it be the accurate, fact-based dramatizations of Palestinians proudly butchering defenseless Israeli athletes, Palestinians proudly tossing handicapped Jewish senior citizens off of cruise ships, or Palestinians proudly hijacking airliners and threatening to kill everyone on board? Those films? I’d say the Palestinians don’t need any help from Hollywood dehumanizing themselves.

What dehumanizing exactly are they so upset about? Could it be the accurate, fact-based dramatizations of Palestinians proudly butchering defenseless Israeli athletes?

This controversy has also surfaced at my alma mater, the Harvard Business School, which saw Jewish students violently assaulted by Palestinian classmates last year. In response, the school formed “working groups” to deal with antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Arabism, because of course they did.

The administration of Harvard Business School was in no way trying to create a false equivalence between these forms of discrimination (wink). They were in no way seeking to minimize Jewish trauma suffering on campus. And, they were in no way trying to flip the script and make it that the Muslims are the real victims here. As Old Blue Eyes might have sung, antisemitism and Islamophobia are like love and marriage. They go together like a horse and carriage.

Surely we all remember when Muslim students were spat on and screamed at by jeering mobs that demanded they leave campus?

Islamophobia is a real problem. Muslims face discrimination in the United States. On campus, too. Surely we all remember when:

• Muslim students were spat on and screamed at by jeering mobs that demanded they leave campus?
• Muslim students were singled out by professors in class for their religion and told they were not welcome because they were making other students “uncomfortable”?
• Faculty members formed anti-Muslim organizations that got outside funding to create anti-Muslim curricula?
• Anti-Muslim student organizations formed across the US and the world, with external funding and extensive help from paid outside organizers to agitate against Muslim presence on campus?
• Muslim professors were denied access to academic programs on the grounds that the Muslim religion thrives on racism and hatred?
• Muslim students felt so terrified that they fled?
• Anti-Muslim students set up encampments in public spaces for months on end to protest their schools’ links to Muslim regimes?
• Campus Imans told families of Muslim students that they should come and take their children home because campuses were no longer safe for Muslims?
• Schools told Muslim students to avoid certain parts of campus and various protests because they not could guarantee their safety?
• Anti-Muslim students occupied university buildings, doing thousands of dollars in damages and refusing to leave (but demanding food because, as one charming protester said, “We have to eat.”)?
• Professors from around the world created rules for their academic organizations that resulted in boycotts of Muslim universities and professors?
• Students, egged on by professors, demanded that Muslim majority countries cease to exist?
• Students, egged on by professors, rationalized mass murder and infanticide committed against Muslims?
• Professors said they were “exhilarated” that Islamphobes had burned Muslim babies to death in front of their parents?
• Anti-Muslim professors justified the mass murder of Muslim children because they were “military assets” and therefore not to be viewed as true human beings?
• Committed American feminists issued statements describing gang-raping Muslim women to death as a “legitimate form of resistance” against Muslim tyranny?

You don’t? Yeah, me neither.

One wonders, therefore, why there is such an urgent push to “both sides” this issue. Both sides are not alike. Antisemitism is nothing like Islamophobia, at least not on campus these days. You can’t begin to compare the experiences of Jewish and Muslim students. The former is confronted with mouth-frothing displays of rank hatred and intimidation from students and teachers alike on a daily basis. The latter may deal with some subtle discrimination, but even that’s questionable in our politically correct age.

Any institution that wants to address this crisis must begin by focusing on the true nature of the problem, which is the license to engage in open Jew hating without consequences. Trying for false equivalence by claiming that Muslims face equal or worse discrimination than Jews is, at best, naïve. At worst, it’s pandering to the demands of a student mob. The alleged grownups who run our universities should know better than to surrender to this pressure.