It all depends on the politics.
Here’s the opening line of the first Brock University statement three days after the October 7 massacre, and weeks before the IDF Operation Swords of Iron began on October 27:
The thoughts of the Brock University community are with all those affected by the ongoing violence taking place in Israel and Gaza.
Statement: Violence in Middle East
Tuesday, October 10, 2023 | by The Brock News
Here’s the follow-up (and the last public statement to date), just as the Fall reading week was ending:
Brock University is shocked by the terrorist acts committed by Hamas against the state of Israel this past weekend and is alarmed by the horrific and volatile situation unfolding in the Middle East. We share the concern felt by many in our community about harm to civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian.
As we return to campus from Reading Week, please remember that Brock University remains steadfast in its commitment to providing a safe and supportive learning and working environment for all. There is absolutely no place on our campus for hate speech, antisemitism or Islamophobia.
Message to the community on violence in Middle East
Friday, October 13, 2023 | by The Brock News
If the red colour wasn’t there, would your eyes have stumbled on those words? We have become accustomed to this generalization to “all forms of racism”, whether in academia, media, or from our Prime Minister’s office.
The sentiment might sound virtuous and true, but really it’s just an attempt to widen the focus of the debate so as to lose the specificity of Jewish concerns.
David Baddiel, Jews Don’t Count, TLS Books, 2021.
Actually, the above is a cheat. I replaced the word “Black” with the word “Jewish” in the above phrase used by David Baddiel to describe what
[…] the right employ when they try to counter the #BlackLivesMatter movement by saying #AllLivesMatter. […] As has become clearer recently, there are particular and pressing dangers involved with being Black that all people do not have to deal with, and the statement #AllLivesMatter is simply a bad faith way of blanketing over that.
Ibid., the two phrases immediately before and after the first quote.
So why can’t one be “against antisemitism”, period? Because Jews are not oppressed enough, not ethnic enough. One last quote from Baddiel:
A sacred circle is drawn around those whom the progressive modern left are prepared to go into battle for, and it seems as if the Jews aren’t in it. […] Jews are the only objects of racism who are imagined – by the racists – as both low and high status. Jews are stereotyped, by the racists, in all the same ways that the other minorities are – as lying, thieving, dirty, vile, stinking – but also as moneyed, privileged, powerful, and secretly in control of the world. Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters. And it’s this racist mythology that’s in the air when the left pause before putting Jews into their sacred circle […] of the oppressed.
Ibid., you really should read the entire little book.
Jews are Schrödinger’s whites, white or non-white depending on the politics of the observer.
Brock Coalition Against Antisemitism 