Phyllis Chesler was born in Brooklyn. She’s Jewish and teaches psychology and women’s studies at the College of Staten Island. However, at the age of 20, she travelled to Afghanistan in order to marry her “childhood sweetheart.” Upon arriving she was forced to surrender her passport and was denied basic human rights. When she fled the country, she returned to the United States and began speaking out on the treatment of women under Islamic law.

This past Monday, she spoke to an audience at UCLA about female oppression in the Muslim world as well as anti-Semitic incidents and sentiments around the world.

“I went to Afghanistan hoping I would have a grand adventure,” she said.

She recalled that things took a wrong turn as soon as she arrived, when a government official confiscated her U.S. passport. She said she was unable to leave the country, denied human rights, and was treated “like a slave,” until she eventually escaped and fled to the U.S.

“I literally kissed the ground at Idlewild Airport (in New York) when my plane landed,” she said.

On the subject of anti-Semitism:

Chesler said she believes there is growing anti-Semitism in the Middle East because of new communications technologies such as the internet.

“Today, in my opinion, the danger to the Jews is far graver and more complex than the pagan or medieval world, and graver than it was during World War II. The new anti-Semitism you see in almost every form, in every language, beamed around the world on Youtube,” she said.