This morning, Bikur Cholim Machzikay Hadath synagogue hosted an event titled “Combatting Anti-Semitism on Campus”, with UW President Robert Jones speaking:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DWEo9g8gV6o/
The Seattle and UW Chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace, the local publication ThroughTheStatic, and Chaplain Abby Jones had all voiced opposition to President Jones speaking at the event, saying that Hoffman had made a lot of bigoted statements about Muslims and Palestinians.
The Instagram posts above didn’t go into specifics, but I listed some in the comments on those posts:
- He posted on X that we should drop a nuclear bomb on Gaza
- He has “joked” (about a million times) about Ilhan Omar marrying her brother
- He said that the people at the pro-Palestinian rallies who claim to be Jewish are not actually Jewish (?), and that the ones who are Jewish, are “kapos” (the Jews who would have turned the other Jews in to the Nazis)
- Virtually every time he refers to Rep. Pramila Jayapal he calls her “Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-HAMAS)”
(These are all things he said on X, and this sub auto-deletes any post that links to X, but you can go to the Instagram posts above and read the comments I posted which link to the X posts.)
And I didn’t even have space to list some of the things Ari has said on his show, like claiming that “George Soros said that rounding up Jews was one of the greatest thrills of his young life.” No, Soros never said that.
I knew these examples since I call into Ari’s show a lot to bust his chops about things he gets wrong. (He recently went on a rant about how the Seattle Times posted a headline saying an upcoming initiative “would require a sex verification for girls’ school sports”, where he repeatedly said, “The initiative does not require sex verification!” I called into the show and read the text of the initiative, which requires “a health examination and consent form or other statement signed by the student’s personal health care provider that verifies the student’s biological sex”. It seems odd that he’s insisting that it doesn’t say that, since I assume the reason 90% of his audience supports the initiative is because requiring sex verification is the whole point.)
But the issue here is that if you’re going to have an event about combatting anti-semitism, it shouldn’t be associated with someone who has made far more bigoted statements about other groups. There is an anti-semitism problem in the protest movement, which extends to UW — Super UW hosted an event called “Long Live October 7th” after all (although that was off-campus) — but the solution is not to give legitimacy to people who support dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza and saying that Ilhan Omar married her brother.
(Abby Brockman posted a response she got from the President’s office:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DWMjJv-CP2u/
in which they merely said that “agreeing to participate in a discussion does not imply discussion of the group’s beliefs”.)
On Friday I actually filled out the RSVP form for the synagogue’s event, and on the RSVP form it offered a space for you to submit a question that you wanted the moderator to read. I filled out the form and submitted a “question” basically listing the things that Ari Hoffman said above, and asking if that was appropriate for someone moderating an event about combatting bigotry. Last night I got a curt message from Hoffman saying “You are not welcome at the event. I am removing your name from RSVP list.”
I think at this point President Jones should agree to attend an event about combatting anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry. This would be a natural thing to do in the name of “balance”, and he could use the opportunity to call out the anti-Arab statements made by Hoffman and say that he repudiates those statements even thought he attended their event. (He could even say that when he attended the event, he wasn’t aware of the worst examples, which was probably true.)
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