Give credit where credit is due – the encampment project on campuses across the globe is nothing short of impressive. Pro-Hamas activists managed to mobilize masses of young people in dozens of campuses, including in countries such as Mexico, Japan, Spain, the Netherlands, the UK – and most notably the US – all the while instructing their supporters to follow a stringent set of rules, including a strict dress code and behavioral protocol.
Soon enough the bubble deflated, however, as reports started to show that rather than a grassroots movement, this was more of an orchestrated endeavor led by well-known actors in the anti-Israel sphere – including organizations such as terror-supporting and terror-related Students for Justice in Palestine, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and Samidoun – all of which have long dedicated themselves to prepare and plant the seeds for this moment, when antisemitism and undermining of the Jewish state would be allowed to go unchecked.
Additionally, the project was soon enough unmasked and found to be blatantly anti-Jewish and anti-patriotic, violently attacking local security forces, and acting to topple the very foundations of the West.
Antisemitism is a peculiar phenomenon in that it always finds a way to remain relevant. Like liquid in an ever-changing vessel, the “conspiracies of the Jews” will always remain a simple explanation which serves to answer any and all questions.
Take for example the recent reports which exposed the involvement of George Soros’s foundations in funding some of the leading organizations in the campus encampment project. Any crowd with a conventional perception of reality would look at this and understand that the funds contributed by the Hungarian-American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist funds are leading a classic, progressive line that is also anti-Israel.
But for the classic antisemite, this simply doesn’t add up. After all, for them, all Jews work together and all are complicit in the same conspiracy to dominate the West and the entire world, and Israel is just a part of this endeavor.
That’s why, when classic antisemites look at the events taking place at universities, they see a Jew working on behalf of Israel to deliberately sow chaos and disrupt American life. If they are antisemitic “from the Left,” they will add that Israel is doing this on purpose so that the media will stop talking about the situation in Gaza, and focus primarily and solely on the issue of antisemitism on campuses.
If they’re antisemitic “from the Right,” however, they will say that Israel is seeking to drive a wedge into American society and thus create a civil war that will allow “the Jews” as a collective (always as a collective) to control and dominate even more money which they lust for so much.
In either case, the antisemite would deem “the Jews” to be so sophisticated as to finance a large-scale mobilization against themselves, all in order to gain control and dominance.
This is true for every conspiracy theory, from Flat Earth to QAnon. For anyone so filled with hate and obsessed with the idea that someone is always tricking them, everything always “fits together,” all the pieces of the puzzle fall right into place, and everything is always explained in the same way using the same lens – no matter what the facts say, how diverse humans are or how complex reality is.
The Red
This conspiratorial view against Jews is very much connected to how the world is seen through neo-Marxist eyes, one prevailing viewpoint of the youth in the so-called “University Intifada,” marked in red due to its communist connotation.
Here, too, there is a perception of a conspiracy of elites who have joined hands against “common workers” in an attempt to control their resources, and even their time and their perception of reality. This viewpoint is further expanded into a wider worldview that divides the world into oppressors and oppressed, where all oppressed must join hands regardless of their differences to finally topple the oppressing elite, which can include religious institutions, state authorities and national security forces.
Therefore, in their view, there is no other path but a forceful “revolution” that would reverse the order of things, turn the pyramid on its head and lead the way to justice and freedom for all. And the current enemy that must be toppled, in their view, is the West, the sole perpetrator of the “original sin” of imperialism and colonialism – while the oppressed are the “Global South” – a name for any country and regime, regardless of its cruelty and totalitarianism and oppressing approach, outside of the West.
In order to justify the battle against Israel in a Marxist’s eyes, the world’s only Jewish state is repeatedly singled out as a “last bastion of colonialism” or including the “last colony” in the world, in which so-called European settlers are oppressing the so-called non-white indigenous population. Israel is therefore “the face of colonialism” scapegoated by these “revolutionary youth,” and thus, just like 100 years ago in Europe, a Jewish collective is once again brought under the spotlight as representative of all that is evil in this world.
In a more psychologistic context, one can argue that the struggle against Israel is either deemed a fight, in the case of European-originating youth, to cleanse one’s conscience from their predecessors’ sins, or, in the case of non-European descendants, a fight against perpetrators of those sins.
It goes without saying that this simplistic worldview completely ignores the complex and nuanced realities of the conflict, including Jewish peoplehood and history, Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, atrocities committed by “ally” regimes, colonial imprints in other countries, Palestinian terror, and more.
Interestingly, a similar view is shared by Shi’ite Islam. An eternal underdog in the Islamic sphere, the Shi’ites viewed themselves as a rightful group dispossessed of their rights by a ruling elite, awaiting the time of their rightful return, with the Islamic Revolution serving as a political and theological transformation for this oppressed-feeling group.
The Green
However, if Marxist ideologies, distorted perceptions of the conflict and a small Muslim minority were Israel’s only adversaries, the mobilization of the masses would have never succeeded. But these were met by an unexpected ally: the Islamist tendencies of what is known as political Islam, or Islamism, led by the Muslim Brotherhood axis, marked in green for its affiliation with Islam.
Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood was an attempt to answer the question posed by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire several years prior, which also meant that for the first time, the world was devoid of an Islamic state with a caliph as its ruler. The movement is traditionally led by professionals, not clergymen, who hold that Islam in its “purest,” “untouched” form – as they deem it – should be at the epicenter of any Muslim’s identity and the centerpiece of politics in any Muslim state. This is known as “Islamism” (not to be confused with Islamic or Muslim).
The Islamist agenda promotes a “call to Islam” or Da’wah, aiming at bringing both Muslims and non-Muslims closer to their interpretation of Islam. Some instances of Islamism also call to abandon secular state laws made by non-religious institutions and integrate Muslim religious law, known as Shari’a, as part of the legal system. Another important aspect of Islamism is a loathing of the West for what they deem to be modern “Crusades” or incursions into the Arab world, supposedly in the name of religion.
Nowadays, the Islamist agenda is pushed by a wide array of actors, from political parties to lobby groups, religious institutions and even NGOs, harbored and supported by states like Qatar, Turkey and to some extent Algeria and Malaysia. The Muslim Brotherhood is also the spiritual and intellectual parent of Hamas, described by leaders of the radical terrorist group on many occasions as “the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
A prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood axis, Sheikh Yussuf Al-Qaradawi, was also the clerical authority who religiously allowed, endorsed and commended suicide bombings of Palestinians against Israelis almost three decades ago.
It should be noted that, in academic circles, it is widely accepted that Islam in and of itself is not to be considered antisemitic – and that much of the antisemitism manifesting today in the Arab and Islamic world was prompted by Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood axis, who translated many classical European views of Jews and imported them into the Islamic discourse, often interweaving these perceptions as part of the struggle against Zionism and Israel.
One of the prominent thinkers of the Muslim Brotherhood, Syed Qutb, even wrote a pamphlet titled “Our Battle with the Jews,” dedicated to a cosmic war destined to take place between Jews and Muslims.
For activists promoting the pro-Hamas Islamist agenda, anti-Zionist activity is all about “liberating Al-Aqsa” and the Holy Land from non-Muslim rule as a pathway to establishing an Islamist state, with an underlying antisemitic sentiment.
Two colors – one goal
Clearly, the Islamist, religiously-oriented, often conservative movement aiming to institute a political entity based on heavenly laws, which looks back admiringly at the 7th century, is not a natural ally for a progressive, post-religious, post-identity and often atheist Marxist tendency gazing forward to a future of “freedom” and “equality,” free of dogmas and institutionalized beliefs.
However, the two meet, and have so far managed to collaborate in an admirable fashion, at the convergence of what is their enemy the West – and unfortunately to a larger extent, the Jews.
This convergence of interests, or more precisely, convergence of detests, lies at the basis of the ideologies held by leaders of the encampment project and many other anti-Israel activities, popularly known as the “red-green alliance.”
However, it should be noted that not all participants in encampments are necessarily hardcore followers of the “red” or “green” agendas. Many of them undoubtedly take part in anti-Israel activity based on social and other moral convictions, unaware of the extremist, radical, anarchistic, and antisemitic beliefs held by organizers, nor the terror ties of organizing actors.
The campus protests should be a wake-up call to the West, which must be brave enough to identify, call out and combat these trends that are aiming to bring it down from within. The West must uphold its values, take responsibility for its own future, and combat all forms of bigotry, anarchism and antisemitism.