Within hours of the savage Hamas murders, rapes, beheadings, and kidnappings of Israeli citizens on Oct. 7, students on campuses in the U.S. were busy signing letters, conducting aggressive protests, and circulating petitions to rationalize and justify the terrorist actions.
Although there’s been some civil rights lawsuits filed, a few Ivy League presidents have lost their jobs, and scrutiny on Students for Justice in Palestine has been ramped up — there have been no criminal arrests for violent protests, including blocking Jewish students in buildings, death threats, and other extreme protest measures.
Whatever else happened, universities came quickly to accept a certain amount of very hard core activism by pro-Palestinian activists and their allies, including those entirely willing to defend Hamas itself. Ivy league and other prestigious universities seemed to be the early locus of aggressive protests.
While the protest leaders were mostly Arab and Muslim, whether American born or foreign students, most of the protesters are regular old American college kids. And they were ready to march for Israel’s destruction and against anything that could be labeled “Zionism.”
In a country where traditional antisemitism has not been much of a problem for many decades, this is new and worrisome. What quickly became clear was that anti-Zionism is the new antisemitism. Especially on college campuses.
How did a generation come to hold these views? Two ways.
DEI is the base for the current surging hatred. The fact that a generation has been taught that white people, Jews, and conservatives are racist and evil, and anyone of color has been a victim of “settler colonialism” or “patriarchy” or worse, creates a fertile field for any particular story of oppression, real or constructed.
Jews have been in the land of Israel on and off for 3,000 years — but that fact has been erased by protesters to create a false narrative.
The second way higher education has manipulated young people into hating Israel is by playing the long game. Palestinians built alliances with all the new progressive communities and “victims” created by DEI. This was done with international coordination over a quarter century. It has worked amazingly well.
Palestinians deserve credit for what has been a 25-plus year march to political success.
Writing in the Jewish Journal, former ad man for pro-Israeli groups Gary Wexler explained the origins of this movement. Wexler was in Israel, interviewing Jewish and Arab groups about reactions to the peace process at that time. All of the Arab groups he spoke with pointed him to a mysterious figure in Haifa, named Ameer Makhoul, of the group Itijaa. In person, Makhoul put Wexler on the spot:
“And now, Gary Wexler,” he sat down, “let me give you more direct answers.” He looked me straight in the eye. “Just like you were a Zionist campus activist, we will create, over the next years, Palestinian campus activists in America and all over the world. Bigger and better than any Zionist activists. Just like you spent your summers on the kibbutz, we will bring college students to spend their summers in refugee camps and work with our people. Just like you have been part of creating global pro-Israel organizations, we will create global pro-Palestinian organizations. Just like you today help create PR campaigns and events for Israel, so will we, but we will get more coverage than you ever have.”
He stood again this time, right over me. “You wonder how we will make this happen, how we will pay for this? Not with the money from your liberal Jewish organizations who are now funding us. But from the European Union, Arab and Muslim governments, wealthy Arab people and their organizations. Eventually, we will not take another dollar from the Jews.”
In fact, it all came to pass. Other organizations, including CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, played a large role in the building of political alliances. Students and Academics for Justice in Palestine is a CAIR offshoot.
Here’s what that looks like today.
On Feb. 26 there was a pro-Palestinian protest at the generally quiet University of California at Santa Barbara campus, which The College Fix covered. Palestinian and other students in the Multicultural Center posted placards saying that Zionists were not welcome. The center was shut down by the administration. In response to that, half the campus sprang into action.
By March 1, the Black Studies Department announced a “Day of Interruption” in solidarity, plus work slowdowns. Not to be outdone, the Department of Feminist Studies posted a passionate letter proclaiming their undying love for the Palestinian cause.
In reality, feminism is as welcome in the Islamist world as queer liberation is. In campus politics, it’s different.
To quote the feminists’ letter: “Because we recognize that attacks on the academic freedom and safety of one of us is an attack on all of us, the faculty in the Department of Feminist Studies stand in unwavering solidarity and love with our Palestinian colleagues, staff, and students, our colleagues in Sociology who have been repeatedly targeted by Zionists, our colleagues in AJP who have long been featured on Zionist watch lists, our colleagues in Black Studies at UCSB who have received right-wing backlash for standing against the UC silence on the genocide, our colleagues around the world who have been surveilled and punished for speaking up for Palestine, and our colleagues in Gaza who have lost their universities and their lives in what is not only a genocide, but an epistemicide intended to annihilate Palestinian history and thought.”
The alliance won’t soon be broken.
This was a deliberate movement that spent a long time and a lot of money getting built. It will not be defeated quickly, or without innovation on the part of Jews, Israel, and Americans who side with them.
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