Campus protests manifesting anti-Zionism as an organized political force became a test-case this year for claims regarding the correlation between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. As Dov Waxman said here at the Forward about the pro-Palestine-anti-Zionist demonstrations that dominated U.S. campuses in the wake of October 7 and the Hamas-Israel war, “If you don’t characterize the protests as antisemitic in any way then it’s easy to just characterize this as free speech and put the onus on those who wish to restrict it. Whereas, if you characterize it as antisemitism, then it becomes hate speech and it does shift the onus somewhat on those who are saying it should be allowed.” As reported also by Arno Rosenfeld at the same site, “almost all Jewish students agree is a tense campus where political disagreements have boiled over into personal attacks, slurs and even some threats.”  

By anti-Semitism, I am bracketing here conscious or subliminal dislike and hatred. There has been only a little overt expression on campus of this sort of anti-Semitism, at least in the United States. The direct object of intentional animus has been Israel and Zionism, not Jews and Jewishness or Judaism. Understood as a psychological mechanism, it is impossible to say one way or the other if anti-Semitism motivates anti-Zionism. It is probably the case that anti-Zionism taps into a reservoir of anti-Semitic tropes. But it is almost never a good idea to accuse a person of being an anti-Semite in the absence of manifest verbal expression. One never knows for sure what is the motivating cause of a personal or political animus.

By anti-Semitism in relation to anti-Zionism, I would rather point to an observable social dynamic: the exclusion of Jews from the public sphere. Not “all Jews,” of course, but of many Jews, or a large class of Jews, or Jews who do not meet or refuse the standard set by an anti-Israel litmus test established by a hardcore of pro-Palestine-anti-Israel activists on and off campus. Anti-Semitism slips out of the positive and negative push-pull between student-protest calls for Palestinian liberation conceived as corresponding to two things: the destruction of Israel as a national community and the isolation and exclusion of “Zionists” from campus.

ANTI-ISRAEL

Jewish anti-Zionists joining the protests testified to a different experience. They expressed feelings of safety and camaraderie with fellow Palestine solidarity activists. They spoke of the emergence of a new kind of Jewish community, especially around the welcome of Shabbat and Passover observance during demonstrations and at protest gatherings –one that conformed to the political point of view at the demonstrations and protests. The flipside of in-group communitas inside the ideological camp is hostility turned against members of the out-group, in this case their fellow Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, and more immediately on campus. From a privileged position relative to the Palestine solidarity movement, they actively contributed to a charged and binary anti-Israel discourse. The discourse is one that vilifies the State of Israel and “Zionist Jews.”

The vast majority of student protests were not physically violent. But they were not necessarily peaceful. Protesters occupied campus centers. They set up exclusive zones from which they projected ideational violence on Jews in Israel, demanded divestment and the boycott of academic institutions in Israel and in the U.S., including study abroad programs, and called for the exclusion of Zionists from campus life. Protest-marshals rejected dialogue with others and restricted access to outsiders. In an aggressive and binary macro-climate, Jewish students and especially Israeli students reported persistent shunning and verbal abuse from students and faculty in classrooms, dorms, dining halls, university sponsored online message-boards, student clubs, and so on. American and Israeli Jewish faculty and staff reported persistent hostility in their place of work. On many campuses, it was not always clear which protesters were students and who came from off-campus, creating a volatile environment. Sporadic threats of physical violence off-campus and sometimes on-campus as well as isolated cases of actual violence left deep impressions on campus life.

In violation of codes of student conduct, actions excluding Jewish students from participating in campus life helped create a social environment placing universities and colleges in potential violation of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Title VI prohibits discrimination at educational programs that receive federal assistance. Under the title, “no person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Creating a hard psychological and social binary, anti-Zionist expression on campus and off campus was layered into distinct but connected discursive/ideational clusters. The meaning of any single statement, such as the much debated “River to the Sea,” would be viewed, not in isolation, but as part of the total aggregate of organized statements in which that individual statement appears. The voices of individuals varied, some of whom were very extreme, others less so. The intensity and persistence of protests varied from campus to campus, college by college within a single university, department by department. But the baseline memes (per below) were consistent and uniform, not “moderate,” and most likely organized and digital, as was the anti-Zionist platform.

–Random cases of physical assault, intimidation, and one reported death threat. Hostile messaging was sponsored by universities on online message boards and listservs.

–The most toxic speech-acts were expressed largely by off-campus activists (but not always). These were not entirely separable from the main protests on-campus. As part of the common political macro-environment, they raised the perception of physical threat. In Morningside Heights, for example, adjacent to Columbia University, the most extreme pro-Hamas messaging heard off-campus included statements like: Al-Qassam, you make us proud, take another soldier out + We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground + Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets too + Go Back to Poland + Zionist Scum Off Campus + Death to Zionists. Statements of this kind were widely reported in the press.

–The baseline discourse was only one degree less toxic. The standard, uncompromising messaging on-campus and off-campus were charged by loud and rhythmic chants and boldly graphic flyers: From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free + From the Water to the Water Palestine is Arab + The Only Solution is Intifada Revolution + Free Free Palestine + End Israeli Genocide + Globalize the Intifada +  Intifada Intifada + Glory to the Martyrs + Israel Will Fall + We Don’t Want 2 States, We Want ’48 + Resistance is Justified By Any Means Necessary + Zionism Will Fall + Zionist Donors Hands Off Our Campus + Zionism is Terrorism + We Don’t Want Zionists Here.

–The protests were not “anti-war.” There were no calls for peace, much less coexistence between Palestinians and Jews in Israel, or between Jews and Muslims in the United States, at least not outside the narrow frame defined by the protesters themselves. From day-1, student and faculty voices on-campus embraced Hamas violence against Jews in Israel. Pro-terror protesters and supporters (affiliated with SJP) were “exhilarated” by the violence against civilians on October 7 and promoted images of Hamas fighters under the banners of “decolonialism” and “armed resistance.” The violence of October 7 directed at civilians in Israel was seen as the path to Palestinian liberation. Some protest leaders turned a blind eye to Hamas attacks, including credible reports of rape as a weapon of war, or placed blamed for this anti-Jewish violence on the occupation or Israeli settler-colonialism.

–The constant destruction of flyers calling attention to the Israeli hostages left their own visual mark in the neighborhoods directly off-campus. No doubt the flyers were seen as a provocative challenge to Palestine solidarity, as if they were meant to justify the war by Israel against Hamas in Gaza. But this does little to explain the utter cruelty. The de-facing of the human image (old people, women, young men, children) was a palpable act of symbolic violence manifesting deep hatred for Jews in Israel and for the American Jews who care about their fate, regardless of their own varied political positions about Israel.

American Jews and Israeli Jews on-campus had more than sufficient reason to recoil from this hostile macro-environment; from fellow students and faculty calling for the destruction of Israel, including calls for violence and death to Jews in Israel; and from fellow students calling for their own exclusion on campus; from the imposition of political litmus tests on Jewish students in violation of the formal principle of academic freedom and deeply held understandings of core Jewish communal belonging.

ANTI-SEMITIC

The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism was the first document of its kind that set out to identify context-dependent guidelines with which to assess discourse concerning Israel. It has since been weaponized by the Jewish right to penalize all criticism of Israel. Even before that, the anti-Zionist left had turned the IHRA into an odious object many/most on the left reject and and all and even context-dependent links between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Pointing to a small group of Jewish allies, the anti-Zionist left is too quick to claim that “anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.” But even by metrics determined by the liberal-progressive Jerusalem Declaration On Anti-Semitism,  the anti-Zionism manifest in campus protests was anti-Semitic. 

According to the Jerusalem Declaration’s definition, “Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).”

The Jerusalem Declaration leaves open the precise contours delineating the relation between Jewishness and Israel. But it does not support in full the claim that “anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitic.” Anti-Zionists contend that Judaism and Jewishness are not the same as Zionism and Israel. Anti-Zionism then demands Jews to part ways with Zionism and Israel on that basis. According to the counterargument, Zionism and Judaism are two distinct social forms that are impossible to separate, especially after the establishment of the state in 1948. Anti-Zionism is for that reason arguably anti-Jewish, while using “Zionist” as an epithet against a broad class of Jews is intentionally abusive and anti-Semitic.

As understood by the Jerusalem Declaration, anti-Semitic expression includes [1] the demonization of Israel, [2] the imposition of anti-Zionist litmus tests, and the [3] unconditional rejection of collective (presumably political) Jewish life in the State of Israel.

–According to the Jerusalem Declaration, ascribing unique and total evil to Jews is anti-Semitic:

“What is particular in classic antisemitism is the idea that Jews are linked to the forces of evil. This stands at the core of many anti-Jewish fantasies, such as the idea of a Jewish conspiracy in which ‘the Jews’ possess hidden power that they use to promote their own collective agenda at the expense of other people. This linkage between Jews and evil continues in the present: in the fantasy that “the Jews” control governments with a ‘hidden hand,’ that they own the banks, control the media, act as “a state within a state,” and are responsible for spreading disease (such as Covid-19). All these features can be instrumentalized by different (and even antagonistic) political causes.”

–According to the Jerusalem Declaration, Israel-coded speech can sometimes count as anti-Semitic:

“Portraying Israel as the ultimate evil or grossly exaggerating its actual influence can be a coded way of racializing and stigmatizing Jews. In many cases, identifying coded speech is a matter of context and judgement, taking account of these guidelines. Holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s conduct or treating Jews, simply because they are Jewish, as agents of Israel.”

–According to the Jerusalem Declaration, establishing litmus tests for Jews re: Israel is anti-Semitic:

“Requiring people, because they are Jewish, publicly to condemn Israel or Zionism (for example, at a political meeting).”

–According to the Jerusalem Declaration, to reject in principle and without qualification the State of Israel is anti-Semitic:

“Denying the right of Jews in the State of Israel to exist and flourish, collectively and individually, as Jews, in accordance with the principle of equality.”

In this view, persistent and rhetorically charged protests that seek the elimination of Israel, that demonize the country, and create litmus tests for Jewish students are almost definitely anti-Semitic. These features of anti-Zionist discourse predate the atrocities of October 7 and the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza. They color the current messaging of pro-Palestine protests against Israel. They underpin attempts to isolate Jewish student organizations under the banner of anti-normalization. Regardless of one’s position on the war and the State of Israel, this is why it is claimed with justifiable cause that anti-Zionism creates hostility against Jewish students.

Anti-Semitism is recognized by scholars as systemic in western society. This means that the presence or absence of an intention or even underlying bias has nothing to do with whether anti-Zionist speech or speech-acts are anti-Semitic or not. Anti-Semitism is a reservoir of historically embedded tropes twisting perception of real and imagined Jewish power. Such tropes are especially virulent during moments of crisis. It is anti-Semitic to exclude Jews from the public sphere on the basis of an uncompromising ideological litmus test. It is anti-Semitic to hold Israel responsible for the collective ails of society. Accusing Jews of genocide and supporting genocide, placing Zionism at the root of capitalism, colonialism, and anti-Black racism is steeped in coded anti-Semitism.

Judaism and Zionism are distinct phenomena, but they are not, in the final analysis, separable. In Jewish tradition and cultural memory, Jerusalem and the Land of Israel are symbolically charged organizing topoi; they are objects of spiritual attention and utopian hope. In modern times, the State of Israel was established as a refuge for a long-suffering people. The State of Israel constitutes a major, if not the most significant in-gathering of Jewish life in the world today and in the history of the Jews. Israel is the national home of some seven million Jews. Setting aside abstract ideals, if the essence of Jewishness is the social bond connecting Jews with each other, then cutting off a major part of that social body is, by definition, anti-Jewish; to impose this violation of engrained social norms on Jews is probably anti-Semitic.

NOT ANTI-SEMITIC

I refuse to believe that all protesters against Israel during the war against Hamas in Gaza are motivated by anti-Semitism or tap into latent anti-Semitism. Supporting Palestinian independence and Palestinian human dignity is not anti-Semitic and not anti-Zionist. Criticism of Israel and Zionism is not anti-Semitic and not anti-Israel or anti-Zionist. Across the political spectrum, people of good faith and common decency are appalled by the enormous loss of civilian life in Israel on October 7 and in Gaza. Without knowing anything about the history of the conflict or the complexity of the politics, many of us are horrified by the simple public face of the ultra-rightwing-religious-right government that represents the State of Israel. For students on campus today, this is the only Israel they have known for as long as they have been alive; for junior faculty this is the only Israel they have known since becoming politically conscious. They have not seen something better.

It is not anti-Semitic, indeed, it is profoundly Zionist, to want a ceasefire, the safe return of hostages, cessation of the war, the rebuilding of lives for people in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon, justice for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, ending settler and IDF violence against them, and Palestinian self-determination. Between the River and Sea, there are Jews and Palestinians, two national communities, political horizons based on the possibility of regional alliances and international frameworks. It is not anti-Semitic to recognize the humanity of Israelis and Palestinians, and oppose their violent dispossession, to want to see an end to the death and destruction of this war on the basis of a viable political horizon that meets the needs of two peoples.

Anti-Zionism, for its part, is its own distinct phenomenon, with its own history and norms established in opposition to the Zionist project and the establishment of the State of Israel. Since the late 1960s, the progressive left in the United States have attached colonial, settler-colonial, and anti-racism paradigms onto pro-Palestine-anti-Zionist maximalism. In the name of anti-Zionism, uncompromising pro-Palestine activism promotes the destruction of Israel. At the most radical extreme, activists glorify violence by Hamas against Israeli civilians “by any means necessary.” Far from the actual violence in Gaza and Israel, the call for an Arab Palestine without Israel between the river and sea is, at best, a utopian pipedream made in bad faith by people with no direct stakes in the region. The progressive anti-Zionist left rejects the possibility of mutual recognition between what are two national communities. This refusal entails a future of inter-communal conflict and endless cycles of violence, war, and death that is anti-Jewish and anti-Palestinian.

In an ideal world, but not in this one, a thick redline would separate the cause of Palestine and Palestinian self-determination, on the one hand, from anti-Zionism, the total rejection of Jewish self-determination, on the other hand. People of good faith would reject dead-end animus and hatred, and uphold a common future based on mutual recognition, the value of human life, dialogue and understanding, not violence and division between Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims and Jews.