Jewish intellectuals chasing book contracts have a new angle. They triumphantly “prove” that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism by quoting some ancient Jewish text or long-forgotten Jews who once criticized Zionism. They then claim that Jews who notice the obvious overlap between Jew-hatred and obsessive anti-Zionism “weaponize” Jew-hatred “to prevent us from criticizing Israel.”
Of course, Jews Jew-bashing to woo wokesters is as “fresh” and “courageous” as Jews romanticizing Palestinian Jew-haters who harassed fellow students and are now being deported. It’s possible to cherish due process without turning people who probably lied to get Green Cards or violated student visas into free speech martyrs.
But let’s try being open-minded.
When Princeton protesters shouted down former prime minister Naftali Bennett, they snarled at Jews, “Go back to Europe,” calling them “inbred swine.” Our over-educated backstabbers probably decided these protesters sensed their fellow students had Eurail passes soon to expire and were misheard giving Passover instructions not to eat bread but drink wine.
By that logic, when anti-Israel protesters flashed blinding lights at Orthodox students at the University of Pennsylvania one Friday night, these masked altruists were anonymously helping students walk home safely, knowing they avoid electricity on Shabbat.
And from coast to coast, from the University of California, Santa Cruz to New York’s School of Visual Arts, calls for universities to “cut ties” with Hillel International and Birthright must be constructive attempts to redraw Jews’ identity journeys, just as spray painting red inverted triangles – the Hamas death signs – on Jewish buildings creatively splashes some color on drab exteriors.
Silly me. I thought academics would actually show originality and bravery. Sociologists could explain how the oh-so-sensitive universities hunting “micro-aggressions” allow macro-aggressions against Jews. Historians might help us understand why, after years of restricting free speech on campus, academics rediscovered freedom of speech once Jew-hatred was targeted. Legal scholars should ascertain if other targeted groups are told the burden of proof is on them to verify that they’re being scapegoated, rather than on the aggressors to distance themselves from bigots.
Finally, psychologists might unpack how Jews – especially well-educated American Jews – produce so many un-Jews who brazenly defend Jew-haters. They rationalize irrational assaults on their own people, and they try to undo Jews’ core consensus emphasizing that, since the Holocaust and Israel’s founding, modern Jewish identity reintegrates the Biblical vision of Judaism, incorporating God, religion, the Land, and the people in the State of Israel, the Jewish people’s headquarters.
Yes, proud Jews can theoretically oppose Zionism, but they’ve got to “do the work” to repudiate the Jew-hating Palestinians programmed into the pro-Palestinian movement. Most Palestinians and their cheerleaders interweave antisemitism into anti-Zionism, not the Jews.
They, not the Jews, attack Jewish institutions, from schools to Hillels to synagogues, when violence flares in the Middle East – usually instigated by the Palestinians. They draw Nazi swastikas, recycle Jew-hating tropes about Jews being rich, supremely-powerful, dastardly monsters, and unite the far Left and far Right in harassing individual Jews for Israel’s or other Jews’ alleged sins.
And they’re the ones who shouted “Itbach al-Yahud,” “slaughter the Jew,” in overrun kibbutzim, found the October 7 massacre “exhilarating,” or proclaimed: “This is what decolonization looks like.”
Most perverse about this conversation is its guiding assumption: that hooligans “only” calling to destroy the State of Israel – 9.757 million strong – “From the river to the sea” or threatening Zionists with mass murder, are OK because they’re not explicitly anti-Jewish!
You don't need to like Trump to recognize his efforts to combat antisemitism
True, it is confusing. US President Donald Trump is polarizing. His sledgehammer approach to genuine problems like campus Jew-hatred risks backfiring. Universities are justifiably mobilizing to defend their autonomy from presidential bullying and to protect critical scientific research from governmental blackmail. But universities seem far more passionate about defending their prerogatives than defending their Jewish students after letting Jew-hatred fester for years.
As anti-Trump Jews reject the boldest governmental assault against Jew-hatred in American history, they should instead become (F. Scott) Fitzgeraldian Zionists, holding “two opposing ideas in mind at the same time” while still retaining “the ability to function.”
Liberals should join conservatives in thanking President Trump for getting universities to do more against Jew-hatred in a few weeks than they did for years. And all must admit that anti-Zionist antisemitism has become so central to modern progressivism that you can’t really fight campus Jew-hatred without bold, systematic campus reform.
Read Trump’s statements carefully. It’s good to ban masks, penalize protesters’ crimes swiftly, hire based on merit, admit based on merit, and foster an open-minded, liberal campus culture that welcomes diverse viewpoints backed by thoughtful, substantive scholarship. But that’s not the government’s job. Universities should have developed such initiatives internally, not been force-fed them externally.
Simultaneously, it’s also true: Universities double down when assaulted by outsiders, especially by unpopular presidents, and most especially by Donald Trump. So, it’s possible to condemn Trump’s tactics while applauding much of his vision and – trigger warning – thanking him for showing the way, even for critics repudiating other aspects of his agenda.
And to my seemingly bold but sniveling Jewish colleagues joining this long chain of un-Jews betraying their people in the pathetic quest to be popular among our enemies, I offer a simple definition: Jew-hatred is an obsessive hatred that exaggerates the centrality and supposed wickedness of Jews and anything Jewish – the Jewish people, Jewish traditions and values, Jewish institutions, and Israel, the Jewish state.
This disproportionate hatred is often expressed in demonization, delegitimization, and double standards – Natan Sharansky’s “3 Ds.”
Be honest. Most protesters share that obsessive hatred. And you’re legitimizing it.
The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest books, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7th and Its Aftermath, were just published.