No longer an academic debate: Anti-Zionism is antisemitism - opinion

In the wake of the Hamas pogrom of October 7, the American people and their institutions spoke out in unison against this heinous antisemitic massacre. However, one sector of our society stood out in its silence: our higher education system. I was not alone in being surprised by the sheer number of university presidents who, in the days after the Hamas pogrom, sent out craven messages in which Hamas was not named and the word ‘antisemitism’ was not uttered.

As we learned in the months since – after disruptive protests, antisemitic riots, and now illegal encampments – this was no accident: a hardcore group of radical students, faculty, and staff on these campuses, along with outside agitators, embraced the cause of the Hamas terrorist army. Concealing their faces with terrorist paraphernalia and berating campus administrators and security personnel, these elements unleashed a wave of bigotry on our universities. Chanting slogans like “Globalize the Intifada,” “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free,” and “All Resistance Is Justified,” the so-called ‘Palestine Solidarity Movement’ feels no need to hide its blatant antisemitism and Jew-hatred.

The real goal of their campaign became clear soon after October 7th: to harass, intimidate, and even assault Jewish students and faculty. At Cooper Union in New York City, a group of Jewish students had to be corralled into a library for their own safety. At the University of California-Berkeley, pro-Hamas apologists orchestrated a riot in which multiple Jewish students were assaulted and harassed. Now, all over the country, there are encampments where one can espy the flags of various terror groups and slogans such as “Palestine is Arab.”

The response from university presidents and campus bureaucrats has been disgraceful and spineless. Far too many administrators speak out of both sides of their mouths, making misleading appeals to free speech. Far too few campuses have taken decisive action against encampments that are plainly against the law and create a hostile climate for Jewish students.

The presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania resigned under fire after infamously telling Congress that it “depended on the context” whether advocating for the genocide of Jewish people would violate their codes of conduct. Now the focus turns to the president of Columbia University, who until this week had reneged on her commitment to clear the encampment there and the takeover of an administration building, Hamilton Hall, with the aid of the New York Police Department.

The miseducation of a whole generation is now apparent. A sinister ideology has taken over these university campuses: a juvenile and simple view of the world as oppressed versus oppressor, in which, in a completely inexplicable manner, the Jew has become The Oppressor.

Does it occur to them that we, as a people, experience what is accurately called “the oldest form of hatred in the world” and that the Jewish story is literally defined by expulsion, pogroms, mass extermination, and second-class status? It does not seem to matter.

Viewed as an all-powerful group

In this new worldview, antisemitism rears its head once again by painting us as an all-powerful group with the intent to kill and subject other people to our whims. Indeed, it is the oldest form of hatred. It turns even the passive liberal arts student, who would not imagine donning a Hamas headband, and your friendly humanities professor, who would never march at Charlottesville, into allies of the terrorist movement. It drives them to rationalize, maybe out loud but perhaps only internally, “Well, maybe October 7 was justified.”

American Jews are scarred by this institutional failure. Higher education has long been our community’s path to the middle class and high-achieving professions. In recognition of the university’s role, American Jews contributed billions to these institutions and sent generations of our children to be molded there. Jewish students, from the Freedom Summer participants of the 1960s to the campus labor activists of the recent past, spent an inordinate amount of time building coalitions with various groups and defending the rights of the marginalized.

Yet our long history is repaid by a new generation that “knows not Joseph.” American universities ought to be guardians of our country’s free institutions and fierce defenders of the bedrock values of pluralism and civic conversation. These institutions, instead, are now incubators for the most noxious forms of antisemitism.

Let me be very clear. When Jews who are not connected to the IDF – or even to Israel – are harmed in protest of the actions of the Israeli government or military, when a synagogue in America has a Molotov cocktail thrown at it, and when non-Israeli Jewish institutions are targeted, we know this is prima facie antisemitism, which wipes away any doubts about the distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

Those who advocate for the destruction of Jews anywhere, rejoice at the harm done to Jews everywhere. 

This is no longer an academic debate. Anti-Zionism is antisemitism, full stop. And those who permit anti-Zionists to justify harming Jews and enable the violence against the Jewish people to continue are also antisemitic.

The writer is the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (COP), the recognized central coordinating body representing 50 diverse national Jewish organizations on issues of national and international concern. Follow him on X at @daroff.