Thread by @JewishSpaceLazr

9/11 was my 2nd week as exec dir of @RutgersHillel, at @RutgersU, the State U of NJ. The next day flyers went up all over campus inviting people to a special meeting of the Muslim Students Assoc on 9/13. Of course I went. Here is what I saw and heard. It haunts me to this day. 🧵

I thought half the campus would be there. Who wouldn't want to hear what the MSA had to say 2 days after Al-Qaeda killed 3,000 Americans? We could smell the smoke from Ground Zero on campus. But I was the only visibly non-Muslim person in a crowd of 200+. Wearing my kipah. ✡️

The first 45 minutes a prof spoke on the atrocities of the recent Algerian civil war. At first I didn't understand why. But he was making a point to the doubting Muslim students. SEE? It is possible for Muslims to do violent terrible things. It's possible Muslims had done this.

The fact that he had to drive that point home over and over was a wake up call for me that his audience had a very different understanding of themselves and the world than I did. To say the least.

The next speaker was the imam from a nearby mosque. He spoke ad nauseum, quoting the Quran in Arabic, citing Hadiths, employing the kind of excessively poetic language that is foreign to the Western ear. Between all that and his accent, I confess I couldn't understand a thing.

Then came Q&A, where the rubber hit the road. The very first question was from a foreign student who said simply "How do we explain to people that the Israelis did this?"

It felt like all eyes turned to me, standing in the middle of the crowd with my Jewishness on my head.

I just stared straight ahead at the imam, waiting for his answer. How would he respond? Would he explain, as the prof did, that yes, Muslims could have done this? Would he condemn or support Al-Qaeda? His answer shocked me then, but in retrospect explains the next 2 decades.

After a very long, thoughtful pause he replied "It is too soon to explain the political dimension."
And with that, 200+ heads nodded up and down in approval and understanding. Yes, Israel had done this! This had nothing to do with Muslims. It was the Jews!! My head was spinning.

I stayed until the end, listened to other questions, but tbh I heard none of them, remember nothing else. I am now used to the world's infinite capacity to deny reality by blaming Israel, but it was new then. For the next 20+ years on campus anti-Israel antisemitism was the #1

issue I dealt with on campus, as Palestinian Solidarity and then SJP rose to prominence, while faculty and administrators denied Jewish concerns and the world became...what it is today.
But NONE of this is new. All of it was present in that one meeting after 9/11.