First They Came for the Zionists...
First They Came for the Zionists...
Every week brings new examples of Jew hatred—and the most virulent cases come from spaces that should be beacons of reason, compassion, and tolerance—university campuses, schools, literary and art circles, and museums. If there is an amusing aspect to this ugly parade of antisemitism, it is the creativity with which these new-wave antisemites present their acts and views to the world. It takes an elite education and the skill of a Talmudic scholar to argue that discrimination is diversity, hate is inclusion, violence is liberation, and of course “Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism.” Once this magical incantation is uttered, anything goes.
In this newsletter, we relate several recent cases of “Zionists” being canceled as well as three thoughtful essays on the origin of antisemitism and the quiet erasure of Jews from the American intellectual sphere. For our many new subscribers, we point out earlier posts of ours that touched upon this topic: “Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitism?,” “Where Antisemitism Can Find You,” and “History Corner.”
We also share a thought-provoking report on the potential costs of BDS to universities.
“How Anti-Zionism Captured the Campus Left,” Robert Huddleston, The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 17, 2024
Huddleston asks what drives those, such as the Nazis and the Bolsheviks historically, who commit atrocities on a large scale. He builds his analysis on the intellectual foundation of two great thinkers—Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the author of The Gulag Archipelago, and an Austrian Jewish writer, Jean Améry. A couple of quotes give you a taste of his analysis:
Political persecution in the modern era bore a crucial difference from earlier periods: It was ideologically motivated. Like religion, ideology allows people to do terrible things with a clear conscience: “It is in the nature of a human being to seek a justification for his actions,” Solzhenitsyn observed. “To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good.”
Ideologies arise from the ardent human need for certainty. They banish doubt and produce a sense of conviction and self-righteousness. According to Solzhenitsyn, the interrogators and guards he encounters in the Soviet gulag are not sadists or cynics but idealists; their sense of moral superiority allows them to torment their victims in good conscience. Revolutions happen when large numbers of such people, motivated by what they perceive as lofty goals or justified grievances, coalesce around a common purpose. Their shared beliefs become self-reinforcing; moral scruples are quickly abandoned. Thus do revolutionary movements give way to terror. “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them,” Solzhenitsyn puts it in The Gulag Archipelago, laying bare the moral problem revealed by totalitarian regimes. “But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” Only a “quaver,” he writes, separates the victim and the persecutor. The ideological temptation is limitless and can make willing executioners out of decent, ordinary folk “squeezed by exuberant evil.” Solzhenitsyn’s phrase shows characteristic insight. Evil is often exuberant. It offers a kind of exaltation, a reprieve from the ordinary.
Solzhenitsyn’s insight offers a powerful lens on last spring’s occupations of college campuses across the country by scores of pro-Palestinian protesters, often accompanied by harassment and intimidation of Jews. The protestors seized on the charge of genocide against Israel to justify hateful slogans, disruptive tactics, and conspicuous flouting of rules governing the time, place, and manner of public gatherings. They used it to defend their targeted harassment of Jewish students, faculty members, and administrators. Their moral logic (“by any means necessary”) would have been familiar to Solzhenitsyn….
Huddleston then comments on the Columbia report (which we covered here), focusing on the antisemitic “anti-Zionist” trope:
The report also addresses the fraught question of the relationship between antisemitism, a label pro-Palestinian campus groups reject, and anti-Zionism, one they embrace. Students interviewed by the faculty panel noted “a slippage that sometimes felt intentional … between ‘Zionist’ and ‘Jew.’” The report’s authors acknowledge that “anti-Zionism is a term carrying manifold and blurred dimensions.” But their commitment to clarity on this topic is admirable. As they write, “to advocate for the active dissolution of the world’s only Jewish state is quite different from even the bitterest critique of its policies.” They conclude that “anti-Zionism, as it has been expressed in campus demonstrations during the past academic year, hews far more closely to antisemitism than to a simple critique of Israel.”
Quoting Améry, Huddleston describes today’s campus antisemitism as “age-old and evidently ineradicable, utterly irrational hatred.”
That an allegedly progressive form of antisemitism should reappear in twenty-first century America is shocking, but Améry would probably not have been surprised. As a Holocaust survivor and an acute observer of postwar European culture, he had seen it all, Tiresias-like, more than once. For Améry, antisemitism was pure ideology: one of those “collective psychological presuppositions that are not amenable to reasoned debate. The antisemite both wants to see radical evil in the Jew and is compelled by these presuppositions to do so.”
To put it more simply, for both Améry and Solzhenitsyn, each person had to decide, based on the dictates of conscience, how they would respond in a crisis. Much turned on that decision. Historical events were not predestined; they required individual human beings to embrace good or evil — either to bend to a collective dogma or resist it. Abdicating that responsibility was the purpose of ideology, which offered the follower’s excuse of going along to get along. Both also embraced, personally and politically, an ethics of decency against the prevailing climate of factionalism. Recent experience suggests we have yet to absorb the lessons they sought to teach.
Let’s hope we can wake up in time to avert disaster. Over the past year, liberal institutions, including colleges, have shown themselves to be frail and vulnerable to disruption. They remain resilient only to the extent that they take stock of their failures and self-correct. The Columbia report gives a glimmer of hope that the core principles of elite colleges hold firm to some extent — and that they can still change course.
Zombie Anti-Zionism, Izabella Tabarovsky, Tablet, July 30, 2024
One of our favorite writers, Izabella Tabarovsky, has penned another illuminating essay for Tablet. (We will do a separate post about Izabella’s work soon.) In her Tablet essay, Tabarovsky reminds us about the Soviet roots of today’s Woke antisemitism:
In November 1967, the Indian chapter of the World Peace Council, a Soviet front organization, held the International Conference in Support of the Arab Peoples in New Delhi…
Some 1,200 delegates and visitors attended the opening plenary, at which Herbert Aptheker, a senior member of the American Communist Party (CPUSA) and influential scholar of Marxism, argued for framing the Arab-Israeli conflict in terms of “imperialism and colonialism versus national liberation and social progress,” as well as through the lens of racial oppression. Contrary to Israeli rulers’ claims, he declared, the greatest threat facing Israel came not from Arabs but from Israel’s own extremist right-wing government, which had turned Israel into the “handmaiden of imperialism and colonialist expansionism.” He equated Israel with Nazi Germany by referring to the recent Six-Day War as a blitzkrieg, a quintessentially Soviet propaganda term meant to evoke Hitler’s invasion of the USSR. Today, said Aptheker, it was Jews who were “acting out the roles of occupiers and tormentors” of the oppressed. He called on the audience to work tirelessly to unmask “the horror of the June war and its aftermath.” So closely did Aptheker’s speech follow the anti-Israel logic and idiom of Soviet propaganda that it may well have been written for him in Moscow….
That what we are watching is less an upsurge of a new and terrifying phenomenon than the zombielike repetition of the state-sponsored propaganda of a dead empire that was hardly known for truth-telling explains why the anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist prattle of today’s college students feels like déjà vu to those of us who grew up in the USSR. We’ve heard it all before: anti-imperialism mixed with anti-Zionist sloganeering; anti-racism interwoven with the demonization of the Jews; incantations about “world peace” and “friendship of the peoples” intertwined with the fomenting and financing of wars in faraway lands.
The essay is a treasure trove of fascinating historical facts and anecdotes. It is also very insightful. Izabella explains the underlying reason for the former Soviet regime’s anti-imperialist agenda: their plan was to win the Cold War by mobilizing what is today called the “Global South.” This agenda included the demonization of Israel as an agent of imperialism. Izabella explains the mechanisms by which the Soviet propaganda machine spread anti-Zionist narratives. She also lists a number of world leaders who were groomed by the Soviets—you will find some familiar names on this list and will understand where these prominent intellectuals got their hatred of Jews and from whom they learned their anti-Israeli arguments. The essay presents an insightful analysis of the present through the lens of history, highlighting America’s failure to recognize the danger of these Communist Party ideas and to defeat them:
Somehow, liberal America has slept through all of it. Having won the Cold War, it didn’t even bother to disarm and discredit the ideas it opposed, the way it had after it defeated Nazi Germany. Too many American intellectuals had been leftists or had leftist parents or had been fellow travelers with leftist causes to want to look too closely at the moral and physical rot of the empire that America defeated—a victory that moreover belonged to the arch-enemy of the American left, Ronald Reagan. Why give Reagan and his fellow anti-communists and troglodyte McCarthy-ites credit for having been right?
The essential conclusion can be summarized in one sentence:
The left’s addiction to warmed-over Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda from half a century ago proves that its criticism of Israel has nothing to do with facts on the ground in Gaza.
“Opinion: Can Legitimate Campus Protest Be Distinguished From Antisemitism? This Guide Aims to Help,” David Myers and Nomi Stolzenberg, The LA Times (September 16, 2024)
Penned by two academics—one from USC—this recent op-ed is yet another illustration of the current anti-”Zionist” rhetoric. The piece touts the report prepared by the NEXUS group, who are pushing their own definition of antisemitism. The gist of the report is that the magic words—“Criticizing Israel is not antisemitism”—immediately convert even the most extreme expressions of hatred and acts of vandalism and violence (such as those we witnessed at USC and UCLA) into legitimate—even commendable—expressions by concerned citizens.
The guide uses these questions to assess some of the terms and slogans commonly used in the protests, including “From the river to the sea,” “intifada,” “apartheid,” “genocide” and “By any means necessary.” Are they antisemitic? The simplest answer is that it depends. But the baseline assumption should not be that these words and phrases are antisemitic unless and until it can be established that they are accompanied by anti-Jewish stereotypes, animus against Jews as Jews, or conflation of Jews and Israelis.
For example, the guide maintains that the phrase “From the river to the sea” is not antisemitic if it’s proposing a single state in which all citizens, Jewish and Palestinian, have equal rights. By contrast, if the phrase is a call to eliminate Jews from the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean or to relegate them to second-class status, it is antisemitic.
The op-ed and report are prime examples of academic gaslighting. Using the same arguments, one can excuse any historic instance of antisemitism. No, the Nazis weren’t antisemitic—they just criticized Jews for their disproportionate financial power. The Russian pogromists? No, they weren’t antisemites either—they were expressing their criticism of Jews drinking the blood of babies.
Recent Examples of Academic Intolerance Against Jews
These two examples are from The Free Press (September 24, 2024)
University Cancels Panel Because Author Is a ‘Zionist’, by Joe Nocera
For the last seven years, the New York State Writers Institute has held an annual book festival at the University of Albany. It’s been a place for writers to discuss big ideas. But not for Elisa Albert, a 46-year-old novelist and progressive feminist. At a festival event this past Saturday, she was supposed to moderate a panel about “Girls Coming of Age.” But the two authors slated to speak refused to appear alongside her. Why? Because Albert is a “Zionist.”
“Let’s face it,” said Albert when she spoke to Joe about the event’s cancellation. “The word Zionist is a newfangled word for Jew. Refusing to participate on a panel with a Zionist is a straight-up, bare-assed excuse for antisemitism.”
Update on the above from The Free Press (“Fallout After ‘Zionist’ Canceled from Author Panel”): The two woke antisemites who refused to sit on the panel with a “Zionist” are facing consequences!
“How Harvard Divinity Teaches Hate,” by Robert Friedman
The same mindset—one that counts Jews as “oppressors”—has infected Harvard Divinity School. That’s what Robert L. Friedman, the author of our second story, discovered when, at 63, he enrolled for a master’s at the school.
“I anticipated two years to contemplate the great works of the past and engage in stimulating discussions with brilliant teachers and students,” writes Robert. “That, I accomplished. What I didn’t expect was that the school would also provide a chilling education in the contemporary antisemitism that’s on its way to overtaking higher education.”
“The Review: Does Harvard Have 'Too Many' Jewish Administrators?” Len Gutkin, The Chronicle of Higher Education (September 23, 2024)
In his letter, Gutkin responds to a recent op-ed that articulated the archetypical antisemitic DEI trope—that is, that there are too many Jews in positions of leadership.
I was a bit surprised to read an op-ed last week in The Boston Globe that seemed to argue—that came right up to the line of arguing—that there are too many Jews among Harvard’s administrators. You wouldn’t at first realize that the column, by Shirley Leung, was about Jews at all. Its title doesn’t say so: “With Claudine Gay Gone, Harvard Leadership is So White.” But “white” turns out to mean, in large part, Jewish—and not by implication or omission but explicitly. After lamenting the fact that “six of the seven major leadership appointments at the university since January have gone to white people,” Leung offers this bit of demographic specificity: “Four of these new appointments are Jewish.”…
The disproportionate Jewish presence in academe represents one of the great victories over discrimination in the history of American life. The prejudice against Jews was deep-rooted and intense, so much so that for many years letters of recommendation for Jewish graduate students needed to confront the Jewish question head-on, at least if the student had a recognizably Jewish surname. Consider this excerpt from a 1937 letter on behalf of the great literary critic Earl Wasserman, written by the chair of the English department at Johns Hopkins, where Wasserman received his Ph.D.:
Having arrived at this point in my description of Wasserman’s qualifications, I am wondering whether they will be obliterated in the mind of your department by the fact that he is a Jew. If you could see and talk with him I have little doubt that this consideration would not weigh heavily with you. He is a fine, alert, clean-cut lad, not swarthy—in fact, almost blonde and neither the brassy nor the over-obsequious kind. He is a valued member of the Tudor and Stuart Club, and I can assure you that unless Jews as such are taboo in your department, it is inconceivable to us that the racial question should prove troublesome in Wasserman’s case.… I hope you will give him very serious consideration.
Leung concludes her Boston Globe column by enjoining Harvard to “get back on the right side of history.” Her concern over Harvard’s many Jews raises some worrying questions about which side she imagines to be history’s right one.
Jerry Coyne covered another rebuttal to Leung’s racist and antisemitic article.
We note that this DEI sentiment—that improving “diversity” means de-Jewifying—has been put to practice in many institutions. Last week, we heard at a JFrg event about the disappearance of Jewish students from the UCLA medical school. Jews are even disappearing from movies about the Holocaust!
The quiet erasure of Jews has also been documented and discussed in the following essay.
“The Vanishing,” Tablet, Jacob Savage (February 2023)
Suddenly, everywhere you look, the Jews are disappearing.
You feel it like a slow moving pressure system, an anxiety of exclusion and downward mobility. Maybe you first noticed it at your workplace. Or maybe it hit when you or your children applied to college or graduate school. It could have been something as simple as opening up the Netflix splash page. It’s gauche to count but you can’t help yourself: In academia, Hollywood, Washington, even in New York City—anywhere American Jews once made their mark—our influence is in steep decline.
Using YouGov data, Eric Kaufmann finds that just 4% of elite American academics under 30 are Jewish (compared to 21% of boomers). The steep decline of Jewish editors at the Harvard Law Review (down roughly 50% in less than 10 years) could be the subject of its own law review article....
From 2010 through 2019 there were at least three Jews in every MacArthur Fellowship class, sometimes as many as five or six. The Forward would write effusive columns celebrating the year’s Jewish geniuses. Since 2020, just 0-1 Jews a year have been awarded grants. The Forward hasn’t bothered to take note.
Strong Leadership At Cornell: Can We Emulate It at USC?
“Pro-Palestinian Activists Shut Down a Campus Job Fair. One Student’s Punishment Could Get Him Deported,”Garrett Shanley, The Chronicle of Higher Education (September 24, 2024)
After more than 100 students disrupted an on-campus job fair last week, Cornell University vowed to suspend all of them. For Momodou Taal, the promise came with an additional worry: deportation.
Taal, a 30-year-old British graduate student and a prominent voice in Cornell’s pro-Palestinian protests, said this week that he is facing possible deportation as the university threatens to revoke his student visa.…
Cornell’s interim protest policy, last updated in March, requires students to pre-register for overnight encampments and promises to respond to infractions of the policy “without resorting to force” by suspending violators. Officials plan to release a new draft policy this month. Cornell also has a new interim president, Michael Kotlikoff, who took office in July.
At the career fair last week, over 100 students marched to the Statler Hotel, located in the heart of Cornell’s campus, in support of a student-backed referendum calling for the university to cut financial ties with weapons manufacturers and other companies supporting Israel’s war in Gaza and demand an immediate ceasefire. According to The Cornell Daily Sun, the independent campus newspaper, protesters delivered the referendum to a Boeing representative at the fair, who took down the company’s tables about 20 minutes later.
Updates on BDS
A recent research paper, “Anti-Israel Divestment Campaigns on U.S. Campuses After October 7,” by Professor Andrew Pessin for the Academic Engagement Network, provides a comprehensive report on BDS on American campuses.
The paper explores the demands for divestment from Israel made by many campus activists in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre in Israel and the subsequent military action against Hamas. It urges university leaders to forcefully reject these demands, on factual, moral, and strategic grounds, and highlights how they run contrary to the principles of academic freedom and institutional neutrality. As radical campus activists double down on these demands in the new academic year, this paper serves as a valuable tool to refute their arguments and create the basis for a more constructive discourse in the academy.
The report offers recommendations on how administrators should deal with BDS. The most important policy is, in our opinion, that:
There should simply be no negotiations with students, faculty, or staff who are breaking campus rules or the law, much less intimidating, harassing, or otherwise aggressing toward other campus community members. There is a name for threatening behavior accompanying demands: “extortion.” And no university should allow itself to be extorted by its constituents. Whether encampments, occupations of libraries, offices, and other buildings, or other behaviors disrupting university operations and the rights of its other constituents to learn, the proper administrative response is: “You must desist immediately or disciplinary proceedings, culminating in possible suspension or expulsion, will begin.”
If the behavior continues, campus security should intervene immediately and, if necessary, local police should be brought in. Follow-through disciplinary proceedings are absolutely essential.
The Cost of Antisemitism
New York, NY, September 19, 2024 … Adopting an Israel divestment strategy aligned with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement could lead to significant negative financial implications for university endowments, finds a report released today by JLens, the leading Jewish values-based investor network, part of the ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) family.
The report, the first of its kind to thoroughly quantify these risks, analyzed the historical performance of two hypothetical large-cap U.S. equity portfolios: one broadly diversified without restrictions and another excluding companies targeted by BDS campaigns such as Alphabet, Amazon, Caterpillar, Lockheed Martin and Microsoft. Due to the effect of compounding interest, the 1.8 percent performance gap between the two portfolios (an annualized return difference of 11.1 percent compared to 12.9 percent) translates to substantial differences in returns over time.
The full report includes detailed forecasts for the 100 largest university endowments, if the universities were to invest based on BDS-aligned divestment strategies from 2023 to 2033. For example, Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Princeton are projected to collectively lose more than $8 billion in estimated returns on their endowments over the decade. Brown University, which is actively considering demands for Israel divestment, could miss out on an estimated $309,787,060 in returns on its $6 billion endowment.
Could this motivate our universities to do the right thing, if only for the wrong reason?
Powerful essays!