After Hamas attacked Israeli towns near Gaza, U.S. campuses abounded with huge pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Even though Hamas committed horrific atrocities, hundreds of students and teachers across America and Canada showed up week after week supporting the “decolonization” of Palestine and the destruction of Israel.

Featured speakers have expressed support for terror to the frenzied delight of their audiences, who held placards, waved flags, and enthusiastically chanted slogans dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the broader elimination of the Jewish people, such as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free,“ “There is only one solution: Intifada Revolution!”  and “Glory to the Martyrs!”

As time went on, the protests grew larger and spread to more places. In late winter and spring 2024, people started setting up “encampments” on college campuses to support Palestine. When schools tried to take down these camps, sometimes even calling the police, the protesters fought back harder. New encampments sprang up at other schools in solidarity. Some demonstrators occupied buildings reminiscent of earlier student protests against racism or the Vietnam War.

Some young Jews and Jewish organizations, such as the Jewish Voice for Peace, actively and enthusiastically joined the pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Some of these young Jews even joined in chanting the slogans that accused Israel of “genocide” and called for or implied the dismantlement of the State of Israel. Many of them also took part in the “encampments” and held events and ceremonies that emphasized their Jewish identity, such as Shabbat meals and Passover seders.

From the very start, pro-Palestinian protesters harassed and intimidated Jewish and Israeli students. “Jewish and pro-Israel students have been physically assaulted, verbally harassed, bullied online, and generally made to feel unsafe on campus, while Jewish fraternities, Hillel and Chabad houses, and even dorm rooms have been vandalized.”  In some classrooms, professors demanded students show support for Palestinians and made Jewish or Israeli students feel isolated. Many teachers wrote and signed letters in support of Hamas, calling for boycotts of Israel, and charging Israel with committing genocide. In fact, in some fields, a quiet boycott is underway targeting Israeli scholars, and their research and publications.

University administrators have often tepidly responded to reports and complaints of Jewish students who felt unsafe on campuses. In many cases, university administrators reiterated official university policy that all students shall be made to feel safe and allowed to securely pursue their education, but only very rarely have pro-Palestinian demonstrators attacking or harassing Jewish or pro-Israel students been disciplined.  University officials seem to be in a bind. They want to promote freedom of speech and protest, but they have been justifiably accused of insufficiently protecting Jewish students. University administrators whom one would expect to work against antisemitic acts and statements – those associated with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (D.E.I.) policies have either been entirely silent or passive or have actively promoted antisemitic or anti-Israel or anti-Jewish activities. These programs and their officers are often committed to an ideology of championing “the oppressed” – people of color, women, gays and Palestinians (see below) and of opposing “the oppressors” – including of course Jews and Israelis who are not only considered white and privileged but also colonialist racists.

It should be noted that elite universities have played a leading role in the pro-Palestinian movement, specifically Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Berkeley etc. While these universities at one time had large Jewish student and faculty populations – around 25% -40% –   in recent years it has become much less, reaching approximately 10%. This shift has also been due, at least in part, to admissions policies favoring marginalized and “oppressed” populations and reducing the percentage of white, Asian and Jewish students.

As a result of complaints of antisemitism on campus, Republican politicians began to get involved.  On December 5, 2023, the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives held a hearing on campus antisemitism before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, and the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT were summoned to be appear before the committee. The half-hearted response of universities to anti-Jewish activity and rhetoric was again exemplified. The presidents (one of whom is Jewish) of these three very distinguished universities, could not give an unequivocal answer regarding the question raised by Representative Elise Stefanik (R – New York) as to whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated university policy. Both Claudine Gay of Harvard and Elizabeth Magill of Penn responded that it “depended on the context.” At the same time the Justice Department opened investigations into whether the universities violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Jewish students sued Columbia and other universities for failing to provide a safe environment. Almost immediately both President Magill of teh University of Pennsylvania and President Gay of Harvard resigned and subsequently the Presidents of Cornell and most recently the President of Comunbia.

As the new 2024-25 school year has opened a number of universities have tightened and clarified their guidelines regarding campus protests.  The Columbia University Task Force on Antisemitism has also released its second report, which fully describes the harassment and intimidation of Jewish and Israeli students in various university settings (dorms, classes, campus lawns and walkways). However, the recommendations it offers for dealing with the situation, such as sensitivity training at orientation, seem perfunctory, and it is doubtful that they are adequate. With the opening of the school year, the protests have renewed themselves, though in some cases, off campus.

It should be noted that while pro-Palestinian demonstrations also took place outside the campuses, research universities were the major locus for this activity. In fact, polls suggest that the majority of the broader American public supports Israel over the Palestinians. Even though these extreme anti-Israel attitudes are not shared by the broader American public, elite universities provide the future political, cultural and economic leadership of the United States. The situation seems to harken back to the 1930s when there was significant communist influence in the major universities of the United States and the United Kingdom.

The Influence of Qatar and Other Arab Governments

Funding by Qatar and other Arab Governments drives both the general anti-Israel bias in university departments and post-October 7 protests. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait continue to support Middle Eastern Studies departments in many American universities. Beyond this, they have also supported general programs in the humanities and social sciences, having jointly donated about 5 billion dollars over the years. This financial support appears to have contributed to the general spread of anti-Israel progressive ideology.

The Ideas Behind the Protests

The protests are underpinned by the ideas of identity politics, intersectionality, and post-colonial theory, which challenge older liberal views that helped Jews fit into Western societies. Instead, they split the world into “oppressors” (often seen as white, Western, and male) and “oppressed” (people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ individuals).

In this new ideological constellation, Israel is cast as a colonial oppressor, and Palestinians as the oppressed fighting for freedom. This way of thinking makes the very existence of Israel seem unjust, not only its policies.

Liberalism and the Jews as a Minority

For about 230 years, since Jews were granted citizenship rights in France in 1791, liberal ideas helped Jews join Western societies. Liberalism treats people as equal, autonomous individuals with rights. This has allowed Jews to join modern Western nation states as free and equal individuals and has allowed them to maintain their unique culture and religion, at least in the spheres of the individual, the family, and the voluntary community.

The widespread adoption of liberal philosophical ideas was complemented by a certain perception of the Jews.  Constituting around 2-3% of the American population, they were considered a minority because of their singular religious and ethnic identity, one that had been persecuted to the point that their extinction was threatened. Thus, after the Holocaust, which decimated about a third of European Jewry, the Jews found themselves in a relatively favorable position. Western Europe and North America had adopted liberal political orders allowing for Jewish participation, and Jews received a modicum of sympathy as a downtrodden minority that had suffered genocide at the hand of the Nazis.

Liberal values also helped enable the birth of Israel. The idea of the right to self-determination, plus post-Holocaust sympathy for Jews, helped legitimize the creation of a Jewish nation-state. Thus, most Jews in Western Europe and North America and elsewhere, such as South Africa and Australia, identified with liberal political principles.

From Liberalism to Progressive Identity Politics

Over time, liberalism ideas changed into something new: an ideology that demanded new and radical policy steps in an effort to achieve equity among different racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual identities. This new ideology had several parts:

It rejects the existence of objective truth. It says there are many equally valid ways to see any situation. Furthermore, social relations and social knowledge, especially, reflect the dynamics of  power.

It says power isn’t equal in society. Some groups (the oppressors) control other groups (the oppressed). Oppressors are usually White, Western, male, and straight. The oppressed are people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ people.

It says colonialism is in large measure oppression and is therefore now regarded as nefarious. Colonialism and any aspect associated with it is deemed to be created in sin.  Those who are perceived as White and privileged are to be made to feel as if they need to purge themselves of these negative characteristics (“be less white”).

It says the way people talk can oppress others. Talking about White people, men, or straight people as “normal” is seen as a “micro-aggression” because it casts non-whites, women or LGTBQs as “abnormal.”

It says racism is built into society and White people’s behavior, even if they don’t mean to be racist. Thus, the only way to achieve racial equity is by allocating resources and positions on the basis of racial and ethnic identity. People are not to be judged as autonomous individuals but as members of identity groups.

It believes all oppressed groups should support each other because they’re oppressed by the same forces. Hence, the world is basically divided into two categories – the oppressors and the oppressed.

Because the oppression of each identity group is unique no one can really feel or understand the experience of another identity group. Therefore, members of one identity group must accept the fears, vulnerabilities and perceived opression of an allied group at face value. This ideology has become prevalent in universities and some big companies in the last ten years. It’s created a new kind of bureaucrat – the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) administrator. They monitor student admissions, and, to a certain extent, academic appointments in universities, making sure that disadvantaged minorities are admitted, appointed, and given access to resources.

Their activity is primarily race or identity based, that is, they relate to students and faculty on the basis of the identity group they belong to (Blacks, Latinos, women, LGBTQ), and not as individuals in a meritocratic situation of equal opportunity. They (together with faculty) also police what people say in classrooms to avoid “micro-aggressions” that might make minority students feel “unsafe.” The DEI position is not only found in university and college settings, but also in private K-12 schools and in some large corporations.

The Colonial Perspective

This new way of thinking, sometimes called “Wokism,” is about people finding themselves through group identity and activism. That’s why the idea of de-colonization has become so important to them. According to post-colonial theory, as explained by Frantz Fanon, de-colonization is how the “native” gets back their humanity. They do this by turning the violence that took away their humanity back on the colonizer.

In this view, de-colonization is the highest form of progressive identity politics. Because some post-colonial thinkers argue that any de-colonizing violence is justified, many of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators couched the October 7 attacks as legitimate “resistance.” Furthermore, the celebratory manner in which the October 7 Hamas massacre was greeted by a few pro-Palestinian elements, was not due to a lack of knowledge or understanding of what had occurred. Rather, the violence – including the atrocities of killing babies and children, rape etc. – was celebrated as restoring the humanity of the oppressed Palestinians.

Why the Jews?

The outpouring of support for Hamas in this war shows how successful an Islamic fundamentalist group’s propaganda can be. Palestinians have managed to make the world see the Israel-Palestine conflict as a fight against colonization. The traditional Israeli (and Jewish) view is that this is a conflict between two populations and two ethno-national movements.  Israel sees it as similar to conflicts in the Balkans or Caucasus.

In the last quarter of the 20th century, the Palestinians started to reframe the conflict as anti-colonialist. They painted Israelis as foreign invaders who came to appropriate land from indigenous Palestinians. It spins a narrative that Israel was born in sin. Israel supporters are seen as being on the “wrong side of history” and as condoning racism. This new way of seeing the conflict frames it as analogous to the fights against colonialism in Algeria, South Africa, and Angola.

Thus, from this black-and-white view of the world, Israel finds itself on the “wrong side.” Israel, as well as the Jews in general, are colonial oppressors seeking to disinherit and exploit the indigenous Palestinian population and are wholly illegitimate. The strategic importance of this reframing is that it negates the legitimacy of Israel, “within the Green Line,” the negotiated borders established in the 1949 ceasefire agreement, and which, in principle, were set by General Assembly resolution 181 on November 29, 1947. As such, the kibbutzim and towns Hamas attacked on October 7, established in the 1940s and ‘50s, were well within the Green Line. Still, Hamas claims that the inhabitants of these places were “settlers” and had stolen Palestinian land. Congruent with that, pro-Palestinian (or pro-Hamas) demonstrators chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free” thus negating the very existence of the State of Israel despite the verbal gymnastics claiming otherwise.

Why this View Is Prevalent

There are additional reasons why this way of seeing the Palestinian struggle has become so prevalent in progressive circles:

An armed fight for freedom seems more exciting than other progressive causes, like arguing over pronouns.

The word “settler” means different things, which causes confusion. In Israel, it usually means someone living in the West Bank. But in post-colonial theory, it means any European who moved to a colony in Africa or Asia. This makes it easy for people to wrongly label all Israeli Jews (over 7 million people) as illegitimate European “settlers” in the Middle East.

Utopian and Religious Characteristics of Progressive Identity Politics

Contemporary progressivism has the earmarks of a perfectionist utopian movement. The notion that certain people (White male oppressors) are inherently “sinful” (i.e. racist or sexist) and need to atone for their very being, and that one can and should police casual conversation, indicate the expectation of a perfect society in which issues of racial inequality and power relations have been resolved once and for all.

This isn’t the first movement like this in American history. America, with its Protestant-Calvinist background and idea of “starting fresh,” has seen many similar movements, often with a religious or semi-religious feel. (One well known example is the movement for the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.) “Wokism” carries many religious-like traits:

It divides the world into good people (the oppressed) and bad people (the oppressors).

It tries to control small behaviors, like a totalitarian system.

It creates passionate enthusiasm in its followers.

It has the markings of a belief system that conflates challenges with attacks.

Wokism as an Ideology

As a corollary of being a perfectionist utopian movement with totalitarian aspects, progressivism has also developed into an “ideology.” According to the political theorist Hannah Arendt, “Ideologies are pseudo-scientific theories that attempt to explain all that is wrong with the world and that thereby justify violence and terror to set the world aright.^,  Ideologies divide the world into simplistic categories of those who are eternally innocent and victims and another group which is inescapably evil. Such a binary facilitates the utopian remaking of the world. According to this simplistic worldview, the evil oppressor group cannot endure suffering or injustice and the victims cannot perpetrate wrong or evil.

This might explain why some pro-Palestinian demonstrators deny or ignore the terrible things Hamas did on October 7, or why they tear down photos of Israeli hostages. It might even explain why some university presidents gave confusing answers when asked if calling for genocide of Jews was against university rules; they simply couldn’t imagine Jews, who they see as privileged and white, could be victims of injustice.

Israel/Palestine – Deeper Philosophical and Theological Meanings

The Palestinian cause has become the main focus for many left-wing groups and students. In France, the united left has even replaced its traditional red flag with the Palestinian flag. Palestinian symbols have become fashion items for celebrities who want to show they support the “right” cause. Supporting Palestine, and even Hamas, has become a way to prove you’re “truly” progressive. It’s seen as so important that some schools in very progressive places like Portland, Oregon are creating curricula for young children about Israel’s “evils” and Palestinian suffering.

Why is being anti-Israel so central? Why has Palestine become more important than other progressive causes, even pushing aside groups like Black Lives Matter?

Another interesting aspect is how words and ideas from the Holocaust are being used in pro-Palestinian protests. They’ve moved from calling Israel racist to accusing it of “genocide.” They compare Gaza to a huge “concentration camp.” In other words, the pro-Palestinian supporters are attempting (and apparently succeeding) in conducting an inversion – the Jews are not only the victims of the Holocaust, they themselves are perpetrators of a Holocaust.

Palestinians understand that the Holocaust is an important reason why many people support Israel.  As a result, there have been attempts to debunk the narrative of Jewish suffering and extermination. And indeed, one of the central paths of such debunking by Palestinian writers and scholars has been to accuse the Jews themselves of committing genocide. Since October 7, though, this charge and other Holocaust related charges have been trafficked by the pro-Palestinian progressives in a broad and general way, becoming a staple of the iconography and mass chants at demonstrations, sometimes even by Jewish pro-Palestinian activists.

How “Wokism” Challenges this View

Progressive “Wokism” goes against this liberal way of thinking. It doesn’t see Jews and Israelis as unique individuals, but as members of a privileged oppressor group that is perceived as bad.  The charge of genocide against Israel is meant to overthrow the Holocaust as the basis for the liberal order.

As has happened before, Jews become a test case for new social and political ideas. They have become the litmus test for the new socio-political order that wants to treat people more on the basis of their group identity than as individuals (and hence end the meritocracy in American life and undermine the market economy). Jews are seen as a symbol of the liberal order, so to prove you’re truly “progressive” and not just liberal, you need to attack Jews, which means attacking Israel.

Even though being against Zionism (the idea of a Jewish state) and being antisemitic (hating Jews) are different in theory, today they often look very similar. In both cases all Jews share an evil essence. Just like in old Christian antisemitism where all Jews were blamed for killing Jesus, even hundreds of years later, Jews in Los Angeles are blamed for what is happening in Gaza, even though they’re thousands of miles away.

Do anti-Israel attitudes have a theological character?

This symbolic antisemitism has even deeper roots. We have seen above that many “woke” supporters act like their progressivism is a kind of religion. What’s striking about the current anti-Israel protests is how much they call for destroying Israel without caring about what happens to the Jewish people living there. Many see Israel as pure evil, responsible for all the world’s problems. They believe Israel is a racist, colonial state that commits genocide, so they think almost anything can be done to fight against it.

The way they talk about Israel in absolute terms of good and evil sounds almost religious or theological. Only religious ideas can deploy such absolute, black-and-white language. Also, the fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict is so central to these protesters, even though it doesn’t really practically affect their lives (unlike, say, the Vietnam War protests), suggests it has something similar to religious or theological importance to them.

In a very negative way, Israel and the Jews have become central to world culture and politics. A small country of nine million people, about 0.001% of the world’s population, has become hugely important. This can only be because of cultural, symbolic, and theological reasons.

The Deep-Rooted Question About Jews

The problem Israel poses today is really the same problem Jews have always posed to Western, Christian civilization. It’s the question of whether a particular group of people can have legitimate cosmic importance. In other words, can there be a “chosen people” – a particular group that has special meaning for God and the world?

For many centuries, the official answer from Western powers was “no.” They said the Israel in the Bible was just a metaphor or a symbol for the universal Christian church. The actual, physical Israel wasn’t important in a cosmic or divine sense. They were just a sign pointing to something bigger – a Christianity that includes all of humanity.

Christians thought the Jews misunderstood their own history. They believed that when Jesus came, the Jews were supposed to lead all of humanity into the new, bigger Israel – the Christian Church. But the Jews didn’t do this because they were too focused on their ethnic identity.

When Jews started to be accepted into Western societies, most were willing to give up this idea of cosmic importance. They wanted to “become like everyone else” as French, German, or American citizens. But even though modern Western societies are supposed to be secular, the question of Jewish uniqueness came up again with the Holocaust.

The Usual Way of Understanding the Holocaust Was Twofold:

As a unique event, it showed how bad racism, extreme nationalism, and hatred could be. It became a key part of the new liberal-progressive world order that rejects racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination.

For Israel and many Jews, it showed why Jews need their own state with an army. They saw it as proof that being powerless and stateless was dangerous for Jews.

These two conceptions of the Holocaust can exist together if they’re not taken to extremes. Leaders like President Joe Biden and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel accepted Israel as a nation-state with an army, as long as it mostly followed Western rules regarding human rights and international law.

New Challenges to this Understanding

Palestinians have tried to challenge the way the Holocaust is used to support Israel. They’ve gone beyond merely accusing Israel of perpetrating doing a Holocaust itself. In addition, progressive supporters of Palestinians have revived and adopted an old Christian accusation against Jews – that they’ve misunderstood their own history and purpose.

That is, the Jews missed their chance to lead everyone into a universal Christian church when Jesus came, they’ve now missed their chance after Auschwitz. According to this view, Jews were supposed to lead humanity into a new universal existence focused on human rights and dignity, not on a specific ethnic state. Instead, they took the “wrong” lesson from the Holocaust and created a state that itself commits genocide.

Thus, according to this progressive adoption of traditional Christian thought patterns, the Jews represent a negative cosmic principle – their betrayal of their universal spiritual-ethical task and destiny. They are, in a certain sense, essentially evil.

This approach contains a built-in double standard. The Jews are not like everyone else. Their task was to bring humankind to a higher level of humanity both in terms of faith (through leading humankind to accept the Gospel of Christ) and ethics (through teaching the right lessons of Auschwitz). In both cases they willfully failed. Thus, when the Jews act like the Azeris, the Turks, the French or the Americans and use military force to defend their ethno-state they are continuing the betrayal of their real mission. Anti-Israel progressives deep down feel that when Israelis incur civilian deaths when defending themselves, say, by bombing Gaza City, it is not legitimate because they were not supposed to have a state or an army to begin with. If they cause innocent civilian death even in a manner permitted by the rules of war, it is all the more heinous.

Two Kinds of Antisemitism

According to this view, anti-Zionism and being anti-Israel is a form of antisemitism. It adopts the position that the Jews are uniquely evil, because they betray their cosmic mission, and Jews everywhere share this essence unless they prove themselves otherwise.

So, we see antisemitism from both the right and the left, but they are different:

Right-wing antisemitism is racist. It sees Jews as a foreign racial group that contaminates and corrupts.

Left-wing antisemitism is “metaphysical” or theological. It says Jews willfully fail to carry out their special spiritual mission.

In left-wing antisemitism, a Jew can “convert” by accepting this special mission and working for justice for all oppressed people, especially Palestinians, whom the Jews themselves have oppressed. Then they’ll achieve true salvation and acceptance.

This complex view shows how traditional religious ideas about Jews have been adapted into modern political thinking, creating a new form of prejudice disguised as progressive politics.

Recommendations

• Jewish philanthropists and the organized Jewish community should devote resources to documenting, and exposing Arab (Qatari, Saudi, Emirati) and Iranian funding and mobilizing pro-Palestinian protests. The various channels through which funding flows should be exposed. Efforts to “buy influence” in the United States and how social media is used for this purpose, especially by Iran and Russia, should also be exposed.
• Jewish philanthropists and the organized Jewish community should include and prioritize modern Jewish history and the history of Zionism in Jewish education curricula – including all formal and informal Jewish educational frameworks: day schools, afternoon schools, summer camps etc. Such curricula will prepare students to handle and to respond to charges that Israel and Zionism are settler-colonial enterprises and the like.
• Jewish philanthropists and the organized Jewish community should, together with conservative, traditionally liberal, and Christian groups contemplate establishing alternative institutions of higher learning dedicated to excellence and free intellectual inquiry. These institutions should not be underpinned by a conservative or religious world view and should allow and encourage a wide range of opinions. In short, this would provide (as Bret Stephens has argued) an alternative to the totalitarian tendencies of progressive “Wokism” at elite universities. Such alternative institutions would treat students and faculty as autonomous individuals and not members of identity groups, while making robust efforts to recruit minority students and top tier academic talent.
• We recommend that Jewish and pro-Israel communities and academics initiate an intellectual project to mitigate and challenge progressive identity dominance in education and especially in higher education. Such a project should aim to return universities to their primary task of research and teaching in a spirit of free and open inquiry (challenging the totalitarian aspect of contemporary progressivism). It should also challenge simplistic narratives of “oppressed” and “oppressors” and other predictable scripts featuring “good guys” vs. “bad guys”. If necessary, it should consider founding its own peer-reviewed journals and new academic departments.

1 Sara Hirschhorn, “Academic Failures,” Antisemitism Worldwide Report 2023, ADL.
2 See Sharon Otterman,  Eliza Fawcett and Liset Cruz, “ A Night Different from all Others as Campus Protests Break for Seder, The New York Times, April 24, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/22/us/campus-protest-seders.html
3 Hirschhorn.
4 Alan Blinder, “New Training and Tougher Rules: How Colleges Are Trying to Tame Gaza Protests,” The New York Times, August 24, 2024.
5 This summary is based upon Yascha Mounk, The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power of Our Time, NY, Penguin Press, 2023.
6 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, N.Y., Grove Press. 1968,. See also the Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre.
7 See for example Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Yea’s War on Palestine, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2020.
8 Roger Berkowitz, “Ideology, Settler Colonialism and Moral Derangement”, Humanities for the People. https://medium.com/humanities-for-the-people/ideology-settler-colonialism-and-moral-derangement-bd6fcc9ceaa8
9 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism.  New York :Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.

10 See for example, Mohammed Nijim, “Genocide in Palestine: Gaza aa a Case Study, International Journal of Human Rights, April 21, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2022.2065261

11 Karma Ben-Yochanan, “Hayehudim Shuv Lo Hevinu.” .“  HaZman HaZeh, November 2023. https://hazmanhazeh.org.il/progressive-religious_left/