Seif Asis Arrest Receives National Coverage, But Press Reports Fail to Identify Root Causes
The UCF Jewish Monitor has been documenting pervasive, rampant, and institutionalized antisemitism at UCF since October 2023. Our coverage makes it clear why Seif Asi and the unidentified other student felt comfortable enough to threaten Jewish lives: because UCF creates - through inaction on some matters, and discriminatory action on others - a campus climate rife with normalized Jew hatred.
You wouldn’t know that if you relied on local and national media for your news.
The Monitor received multiple reports of local and national outlets covering the arrest of Seif Asi without mentioning the university administration’s role in the proliferation of campus hatred.
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Some examples of press coverage omitting these details include:
Yet while this coverage omitted important details, it at least did not express sympathy for Seif Asi. The same cannot be said for Patch News, which excused Seif’s behavior by explaining in the tagline that his “emotions overcame him after alleging the trio supported the death of his family members.” This claim - which comes from the police report - is entirely unsubstantiated, and the three victims denied ever supporting the killing of Seif’s family members, yet Patch News repeats them uncritically.
UCF Jewish Monitor is aware of one publication which did correctly report the administration’s complicity in the hate crime: Orlando Sentinel's online edition. A noteworthy quote from the article reads:
Though both students said they are satisfied with the university’s response to the threat, they said the university’s failure to respond to these earlier incidents left room for anti-Semitism to escalate.
The Monitor thanks the author of this report for their honest coverage of the incident.
However, the print edition of the Orlando Sentinel has a very different approach to reporting. When covering Monday's hate march, the paper captioned an image of marchers with the following statement:
Members of the University of Central Florida Palestinian Student Assoclation march in support of Palestine citizens and families impacted by the Israel-Hamas war, during a rally on campus Monday. The war is approaching five months since the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Palestine-based Hamas and Israeli military forces.
Conspicuously absent from this coverage is any mention of the multiple death threats levied at the UCF Jewish community by the hate marchers.
UCF Jewish Monitor will continue to document death threats, double standards, discrimination, and other forms of antisemitism at UCF.
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