Bar Ilan University warns Jewish students they will have to share dorms with Palestinian students

Bar-Ilan University's Main library (Photo: Bar-Ilan University/Wikimedia) BAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY’S MAIN LIBRARY (PHOTO: BAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY/WIKIMEDIA)

An Israeli university warned Jewish female students that they may have to live with Palestinian students, suggesting they move

Bar Ilan University, situated near Tel Aviv, warned female Jewish students they will have to share an apartment floor with Palestinian female students, offering them to move, reported (Hebrew) De Marker on Wednesday.

The university recently finished the building of a new dormitories building, and assigned one floor to Palestinian female students. The university sent an email to Jewish students, saying, “Due to the decision of the university, the floor to which you’ve been assigned in Ha’Meah Park Dormitories has been dedicated to housing for women of the Arab sector. We offer you two options: To remain in the flat assigned to you, or move to the upper floors.”

Other universities in Israel, noted De Marker, do not discriminate at all between Jewish and Israeli Palestinians in their dormitories. In Haifa University, for instance, Jewish and Palestinian students sometimes share the same flat.

It should be noted that, aside from residents of East Jerusalem, which has been annexed to Israel, as a rule non-Israeli Palestinians are rarely allowed to study in Israeli universities.

Bar Ilan University is unique among Israeli universities in being an official Jewish Orthodox university, originally dedicated only to former yeshiva students. In the past few decades, the university began accepting secular Jews and non-Jews as students – after which the demand that all students wear a yarmulke was rescinded. Staff, including secular staff, were still required to wear it until 2019. All Jewish students are obliged to take courses in Jewish law and Jewish tradition. The university once required all students to participate in prayer, but as the number of non-Orthodox students increased, this requirement was also cancelled.

The university is considered to be right-wing. Its most notorious alumnus is Yigal Amir, the assassin of Prime Minister Rabin. The university at the time was such a hotbed of right-wing sentiment, Amir used to start his dating practices by asking would-be girlfriends what they thought of Baruch Goldstein, who committed a massacre in the Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994. Following Rabin’s assassination and the massive public outcry following it, the university initiated talk shops between religious and secular students, participation in which grants study points. The university also expelled lecturer Uri Milstein, notorious at the time for vicious attacks on Rabin (after the assassination, Milstein took pride in Amir being his student.)

In response to De Marker’s report, the university replied that, “The new dormitories of the university are open to all: Jews, Arabs, and international students from Europe and Asia. […] Everyone on campus studies together, and we are sorry if anyone was offended by the language [of the email]. Reality is complex, and the dormitories residents have different preferences and wish to live nearby people with a lifestyle similar to theirs.”

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