The Value of FAU’s “Hoax”

It began when an unquestionable source sent The Media Line a copy of a vicious hate flyer that was making its rounds on the South Florida campus of Florida Atlantic University (FAU). Beneath the university’s imprimatur and the name of an organization calling itself the “Islamic-Arab Students Defense Committee”, the one-page communiqué bemoaned being forced to “mingle with Jewish students and take instruction from Jewish teachers.” It demanded that the college administration “separate Jew students from Moslim students; Require Jew students to wear identification so that Muslim students can identify them; Remove Jew names from buildings; and Cease Jew-Zionist and Christian activities in the Breezeway (student center).”
To its credit, the FAU administration acted in a swift and responsible manner, condemning the flyer and initiating a thorough investigation. Seemingly having discredited the document and distanced FAU from both its content and any connection to its noxious source, the issue turned to whether the desire of the victimized school and surrounding community to remove it from public awareness (read: embarrassment) outweighed the episode’s instructive value.
The decision was not long in coming, spurred on by the ADL’s remarkably hasty “acquittal by reason of hoax.” The idea of making it go away was certainly the comfortable course of action and was embraced with relief by the paid professionals representing Jewish organizations. In fact, one smugly told us that, “We the organized Jewish community are united in this opinion.” Unfortunately, rationalizing away the obvious lesson of the incident was also a shortsighted forfeiture of both the opportunity to learn from this vivid tutorial and the self-assigned responsibility of those who profess leadership.
While the element of “hoax” was, indeed, an element of this sordid affair, it applied only to the fraudulent attempt to pass off a bogus organization as a member of the FAU community. The flyer itself was no hoax. It was very real, very much present and a very cogent example of the systematic dissemination of anti-Semitism and hatred that exists on college campuses across the nation. The rush to find an excuse that neuters the sin and absolves communal leadership of the responsibility to act is both rash and self-defeating.
It is illogical for those who feign concern for the tribulations of young people on college campuses to deny them a tool so vivid and expressive in preparing for what they will face. It is irresponsible to deny families of present and future students a valuable real-life tutorial against which the adequacy of a student’s preparation to meet inevitable challenges can be measured.
The “FAU Flyer Affair” brings a number of issues to the fore beyond the obvious. It stands as a stark reminder of the profusion of hate material along with a look into the twisted minds that produce it and the adroit methods used to disseminate it.
It should also serve as a wake-up call to individuals, families and organizations. Evil does not cease to exist because the self-professed “unanimity of thought in the organized Jewish community” denies it legitimacy by substituting the label of “hoax” for what it really is.
An unfortunate ancillary result is watching so-called “defense organizations” that purport to be community watchdogs either misread the issue or take inappropriate liberties with priorities.
Finally, the incident again demonstrates that those who hate don’t follow the rules. The offensive material and behavior will remain despite word games and shots taken at the messenger. Time spent by paid communal professionals trying to pretend that the flyer never existed would have been better spent on education, preparation and a realistic understanding of the forces being faced. Hiding symptoms never halts the disease.