Key takeaways:
- The New York Times turns perpetrators into victims: By casting student agitators as casualties of a “climate of fear,” the paper recasts harassment and violence against Jews as mere “civil disobedience.”
- Selective storytelling replaces accountability: The paper downplays antisemitism and vandalism, portraying masked protesters as idealists while blaming consequences on imagined “lists.”
- Omission reveals bias: Quoting a Qatar-based academic without noting Doha’s funding of Hamas and U.S. universities, the NYT hides the forces driving the very protests it romanticizes.
In the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, as the country fought to dismantle the terrorist organization and rescue the hostages dragged into Gaza, anti-Israel demonstrations erupted across Europe and the United States.
Nowhere were they more intense than on American college campuses. Within days, student activists transformed university quads into sprawling encampments, vowing not to leave until their institutions cut – in many cases, entirely imaginary – financial and academic ties with Israel under the banner of “divestment.”
What began as “protesting” quickly devolved into intimidation. Jewish students were harassed, campus events were hijacked, and in several cases, violence and vandalism followed.
HonestReporting has extensively investigated these anti-Israel campus movements – from uncovering Arab funding to universities mired in antisemitism scandals, to exposing media outlets that whitewashed the hate and violence on display. We also documented how some universities quietly reversed disciplinary measures against protest ringleaders, bowing to activist pressure instead of upholding academic integrity.
As the 2024 academic year began, the encampments began to thin out. Universities, after months of chaos and countless reports from Jewish students describing fear and harassment, finally started dismantling the protests. The long-overdue clean-up marked an uneasy pause – but not an end – to the wave of antisemitic activism that swept American campuses in the wake of October 7.
From “Revolutionaries” to Job Seekers
This summer, many of the students who led those demonstrations – some arrested for occupying buildings or assaulting police – have graduated and are now entering the workforce.
And, as The New York Times suggests, some are finding that their résumés are less appealing than they expected.
In a recent feature, ‘With Cease-Fire, Some Pro-Palestinian Protesters Look Back, Ruefully,’ the NYT paints these individuals not as instigators of antisemitic chaos but as victims of a “climate of fear.” The piece sympathetically quotes “older leaders of the pro-Palestinian movement” complaining that “it’s much harder to speak out today,” citing federal judges who refused to hire Columbia University clerks and business leaders like Bill Ackman who discouraged employers from hiring certain activists.
The implication is clear: that this is collective punishment for “speaking out.” What the Times refuses to say is that many of these students weren’t punished for speech – but for behavior.
What the Times Wants You to Forget
Readers will recall what actually happened on these campuses. At Columbia University, masked protesters stormed a Modern Israeli History class, distributing flyers that read “Burn Zionism to the ground” and “Crush Zionism.” Others glorified the “Intifada” – an uprising marked by terror attacks on Jews – and rallied in support of convicted terrorists.
At the same elite institution, students barricaded themselves inside a campus building, refusing to let others enter or exit, before demanding “humanitarian aid” when police intervened.
And on campuses across the country, Jewish students reported being spat at, surrounded, and threatened, with one video showing them barricading themselves inside a library as protesters screamed “Free Palestine” outside. Police bodycam footage and social media posts documented New York University students hurling chairs, bottles, and even metal barricades at officers.
This is the conduct the Times now describes as “civil disobedience.”
Masks, Myths, and Media Spin
The Times also helpfully explains that protesters wore masks not to conceal their identities while threatening Jewish classmates, but to “avoid harming their future job prospects.” The antisemitic violence and property destruction – acts that might actually explain why employers would hesitate to hire them – are largely ignored. The paper’s only real nod to the ugliness of it all is a passing suggestion that such incidents were the work of a few bad apples whom organizers were “unable to rein in.” The Times barely concedes that some organizers “seemed indifferent to complaints from Jewish students that some chants and other acts felt antisemitic.”
Felt antisemitic – as if the hatred was subjective.
Even more telling is whom the Times chose to quote: William Youmans, a professor at Northwestern University’s Qatar campus and a former member of Students for Justice in Palestine. “It’s hard enough to find a job without being on someone’s list,” he laments – a line that flirts with the old insinuation of shadowy, powerful forces punishing anyone who challenges them.
That the Times platformed a Qatar-based academic to defend these activists is no coincidence. Qatar, after all, is not only Hamas’s chief sponsor but also one of the largest foreign funders of American universities – including several that saw the worst of the antisemitic protests. This is the part the Times studiously ignores.
What the Times Won’t Admit
The goal of the Times’ piece is transparent: to launder the reputations of those who terrorized Jewish classmates and desecrated university spaces, reframing them as noble dissidents suffering for their conscience.
But actions have consequences – and the consequence of joining a mob that glorified terrorism, shouted for an intifada, and turned campus greens into zones of fear is not a “climate of fear.” It’s accountability.
The Times can spin, soften, and sanitize all it wants. What it cannot do is rewrite what the cameras captured and what Jewish students lived through.
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