Nine Lies at the Center of Campus Antisemitism

What is at the core of the massive antisemitism we have seen happening on college campuses in the US since October 7?

The shock of October 7 to the Jewish community cannot be understated. What was not expected was how quickly positive sympathy, empathy, and support turned to accusations, antisemitism, and outright anti-Jewish hate, especially in US colleges and universities and even high schools and middle schools. While the Jewish community seemed surprised at this turn of events, those who have worked in the campus environment for decades were unsurprised. I have argued that we have a problem in the campus environment for more than 20 years as a dean, an executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, a faculty affairs director for the Israel on Campus Coalition, and a professor of Israel Studies.

For more than 50 years we have seen the drip, drip, drip of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-Jewish ideology being embedded in the curriculum, hiring, and even administration of US colleges and universities especially in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The impact of this intentional, international attack is now coming into full force, impacting even elementary and middle school students. A formal and informal coalition of Arab oil wealth, Palestinian Arab intellectuals, Marxist-socialists, efforts of the ex-Soviet Union, and even neo-Nazis, white supremacists, liberal Christian groups such as the American Friends Service and the Mennonites, coupled with Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Not In Our Time, a radical Muslim group, the Democratic Socialists of America, and college professors advocating post-colonial theories, and post-modern neo-Marxist activism are acting together. Their goal has been to attack the very roots of Zionism, the legitimization of the State of Israel, and ultimately the call for the destruction of the only Jewish nation. All of these groups have been creating and promoting lies and conspiracy myths about Jews, Zionism, and Israel for decades which have culminated in the antisemitic and anti-Israel atmosphere on campus today. These efforts have cemented lies and conspiracy myths into the core of academia in one of the most successful propaganda efforts since the Nazis.

At the heart of this effort are nine lies accepted without question by a small yet vocal group of students and professors on campuses, in high schools, and even middle schools.

Nine Lies at the Basis of Campus Antisemitism Today
Lie 1. Zionism is equal to racism
Lie 2. Israel is an apartheid state
Lie 3. Israel is a European post-colonial settler state
Lie 4. Palestinians are the Indigenous people of the area
Lie 5. Being anti-Zionist is not being antisemitic
Lie 6. Israel is perpetrating genocide against Palestinians
Lie 7. Hamas casualty figures are accurate
Lie 8. Hamas “freedom fighters” rape and murder was an act of resistance
Lie 9. Creating a Palestinian state requires the eradication of the Jewish state of Israel

Lie number 1 is the idea that Zionism equals racism.
In the 1970s the USSR and Arab and Islamic countries sponsored attacks on Israel and the US through the “Zionism equals Racism” resolution passed in the UN. UN GA Resolution 3379 passed in 1975, “Determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination“. The idea came from a Russian general, KGB member, and member of the Soviet Central Committee of the CPSU. He was designated chairman of the newly formed Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public by the Ideological Department of the CPSU Central Committee and the KGB. His name was David Dragunsky. He was one of the creators of the invidious libel that Zionism was equal to racism in part because of the Jewish religious concept of “chosenness”. This false accusation continues to have resonance even today in the additional false accusation that Israel is an apartheid nation.

Lie 2. Israel is an apartheid state
Even though the UN Zionism as racism resolution was repealed, the UN Human Rights Durban Conference, from August 31 to September 8, 2001, continued the path already in place in the UN by setting out the basis of a full-on attack against Israel’s right to exist. The conference covered several controversial issues, including redress for transatlantic slavery and the second-class citizenry issue in Palestine-Israel. Two delegations, the United States and Israel, withdrew from the conference over objections to a draft document equating Zionism with racism. The final text did not include this incendiary language. In parallel to the conference, a separately held NGO Forum also produced a Declaration and Program of its own, that was not approved by the conference. This led to campus demonstrations falsely accusing Israel of being an apartheid state. The absurd conspiracy myth has been promulgated by groups inspired by the Durban Conference including the American Friends Service, Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Democratic Socialists of America, and an alphabet soup of Palestinian NGOs, many of whom were attendees at the Durban Conference. Like all antisemitic conspiracy myths, there is no truth to this accusation. Israeli Arabs are thriving in Israel and are part of every aspect of Israeli society.

Lie 3. Israel is a European post-colonial settler state
Edward Said published his work, “Orientalism” in 1978. Said popularized the theories of post-colonial settler studies which focused on how colonial powers affected colonized peoples and controlled their lands. Yet, there is a major flaw in the theory. So much of the research and writing on post-colonial theory only focuses on the impact of European colonial efforts Ignoring completely the almost 1400-year influence of Arab and Muslim colonization.

This flaw when coupled with the lie that Palestinians, not Jews, are the indigenous people of the area has given rise to the lie accusing Jews of being a European post-colonial intrusion into the Middle East. As early as the 1960’s Aramco, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Türkiye, Qatar, Gulf states, and Iran began to fund Middle East Studies and Islamic Studies programs at universities all over the world, in part using these faulty post-colonial theories as a core concept. Edward Said was successful in orchestrating the takeover of the Middle East Studies Association from Bernard Lewis and Fuad Ajami in the 1980s to push the post-colonial theories even further along into the mainstream of American and European universities. To complete the takeover of higher education, post-modernist, and post-colonialist scholars gained greater influence and control over academic professional organizations such as MLA, AAA, MESA, etc. Even the much vaunted American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has recently over turned their historical aversion to boycotts has approved of the concept of boycotting specifically to go after Israel. These professional organizations, taking an ideological and political position, have now impacted graduate programs through the teaching of post-colonialism theories and become antagonistic to Israel, Zionism, and by default the history and heritage of Jews. The interface of UN anti-Israel actions and the efforts of post-colonial theorists, Marxists, and Palestinian Arab activists on college campuses and in public have led to the erasure of Jews and Judaism from what these groups call Palestine. The Jews have called this same territory claimed by the Arabs, the land of Israel, for 3000 plus years in our Torah, prophetic and legal writing. The issue of who are the real indigenous people of this land is a central concern for how antisemitism has become so strong on college campuses.

Lie 4. Palestinians are the indigenous people of the area
Arabs are indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula, including today’s Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the Gulf States. Palestinians are the descendants of those Arabs who in the 7th century CE conquered and colonized the land of Israel. They are the best representative of colonialist settler society having occupied North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, the Middle East, the Balkans, and Greece to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific for 1400 years.
Jews on the other hand are the direct descendants, for 4000 years, of the original occupants of the land of Israel and one of the groups who made up the Canaanites living in that area of the Middle East. Jews have a body of ancient literature that gives proof of their indigenousness based on their Torah, Prophets, Judges, Talmud, prayer book, and mystical writings in their biblical language, Hebrew, revitalized and modernized into today’s language of Israel. Jews, like Armenians, Kurds, and Assyrians are all, non-Arab indigenous minorities in the Middle East conquered by the Arabs and treated as second-class barely tolerated subjugated peoples. If one looks at the United Nations definition of indigenous people one sees immediately that Jews fit every category. Palestinian Arabs do not.

See the UN document: https://www.un.org/en/fight-racism/vulnerable-groups/indigenous-peoples#:~:text=Indigenous peoples have in common,cultures%2C beliefs and knowledge systems.

“Indigenous communities, peoples and nations are those which, having a historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial societies that developed on their territories, consider themselves distinct from other sectors of the societies now prevailing on those territories, or parts of them. They form at present non-dominant sectors of society and are determined to preserve, develop and transmit to future generations their ancestral territories, and their ethnic identity, as the basis of their continued existence as peoples, in accordance with their own cultural patterns, social institutions and legal system.”

Lie 5. Being anti-Zionist is not being antisemitic
We Jews need to be unequivocal in our opposition to non-Jews defining us and defining what is anti-Jewish or antisemitic. Only we have the right to define that hate after more than 2000 years. The overwhelming Jewish communal consensus is that the IHRA definition of antisemitism is our definition.

Working definition of antisemitism

The IHRA working definition states: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” One of the clearest examples of antisemitism is the denial of the Jewish right for a nation, which is the very definition of Zionism. This is especially true for those who support the creation of a Palestinian state while calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. This perspective held by many of the campus demonstrators against Israel is quintessentially antisemitic.
Zionism is embedded into Judaism. We pray three times a day facing Jerusalem and Mount Zion, a hill in Jerusalem. Almost every one of our sacred celebrations has to do in some fashion with Zionism whether it is springtime harvest, or fall harvest, celebrating the exodus from Egypt to our homeland in the Land of Israel, the giving of the Torah, or the celebration of and planting of trees in memory of the land of Israel. Our sacred and legal literature all are histories of our land and our national vision. I would even argue that opposition to the IHRA working definition, and its examples, because of the potential for stifling free speech, is an example of antisemitism.

Lie 6. Israel is perpetrating genocide against Palestinians
In what is probably the most egregious example of antisemitic projection, accusing Israel of genocide, when the clear policy of Hamas (written in their charter) is the eradication of all Jews. There is a confusion with the word genocide. Palestinians and their supporters misuse the term. They use the term genocide because it communicates horrific murder beyond just the casualties of war. Genocide is the eradication of a people as a governmental policy. The national, or ethnic group, religious group, or racial group targeted is usually unarmed or only lightly armed and relatively defenseless against the perpetrator of genocide. The unarmed victims are rounded up and executed, starved, enslaved, or in some fashion harmed by the perpetrator. Hamas was armed with thousands of missiles, Katyusha rockets, mortars, and a well-trained army focused only on the destruction of Israel. The UN Genocide Convention defines genocide as any of five “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” These five acts include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly. The key here is the unarmed nature of the victims, the effort of the perpetrators to prevent births, the forcible transfer of children out of the group, and the clear intent of governmental policies directly intended to destroy the group as a whole.

Israel has never had such a policy. The government of Israel has never created any policies or programs of the sort mentioned in the genocide convention. All wars result in civilian casualties. All wars though are not genocides. This war was started by Hamas with the clear intention of specifically murdering Jews. Yes, there are civilian casualties caused by the war started by Hamas, but the Israeli IDF has gone beyond what most armed forces in the world have to reduce the harm to the non-combatant population of Gaza. It is Hamas that has violated the international conventions for war by embedding itself in the civilian population, using hospitals, medical facilities, ambulances, schools, and Mosques, and generally forcing its population to act as human shields against Israeli attacks and taking hundreds of Israeli and foreign hostages. While Israel has no policy advocating genocide against Arabs, Hamas does have a stated policy of genocide against Jews. If Israel was intent on genocide of Arabs why would Arab Israelis be thriving in Israel? Why would they be a central part of the economy, the academy, and the government including the Israeli Supreme Court? Who, therefore, really is the advocate and perpetrator of acts of genocide?

The use of the word genocide and the use of the word apartheid without any evidence of either in describing Israel are used for their shock value and add to the body of conspiracy myths at the core of antisemitism. It is irresponsible for so-called comedians and commentators like John Oliver to banty the term genocide when referring to Israel when the reality is that Israel itself and Jews, in general, are marked for genocide by Hamas and other groups connected to either the Islamic Brotherhood or Iran. “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him… “

(Article 7 of the Hamas Charter https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp)

Lie 7. Hamas casualty figures are accurate
In all of the previous Israel-Hamas conflicts Hamas reports of casualty figures have been questioned. Generally, after the dust settled and the fog of war cleared the large numbers reported by Hamas were significantly reduced. This war is different. First of all, the casualty figures for this war have been reported by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which is also an arm of the Hamas propaganda wing. In the past casualty figures have been reported by the Arab Red Crescent Society connected to the Red Cross. A statistical analysis of the numbers produced by the Hamas Gaza Health Ministry shows many anomalies.
(see: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers)

“While the evidence is not dispositive, it is highly suggestive that a process unconnected or loosely connected to reality was used to report the numbers. Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70% of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total. This explains all the data observed.”
“There are other obvious red flags. The Gaza Health Ministry has consistently claimed that about 70% of the casualties are women or children. This total is far higher than the numbers reported in earlier conflicts with Israel. Another red flag, raised by Salo Aizenberg and written about extensively, is that if 70% of the casualties are women and children and 25% of the population is adult male, then either Israel is not successfully eliminating Hamas fighters or adult male casualty counts are extremely low. This by itself strongly suggests that the numbers are at a minimum grossly inaccurate and quite probably outright faked. Finally, on Feb. 15, Hamas admitted to losing 6,000 of its fighters, which represents more than 20% of the total number of casualties reported.”

Hamas reports more than 40,000 casualties to date without differentiating between non-combatant men, women, and children and combatants. The IDF estimates that more than 17,000 Hamas, PIJ, and other fighters have been killed in combat. While the world media and various governments do not seem to question the Hamas figures they ignore the IDF reports. In all of the previous Hamas-Israel conflicts the IDF estimates turned out to be relatively accurate. Moreover, Hamas casualty figures do not differentiate between Gazans killed by Hamas and their allies directly or by misfires of rockets that fell short and exploded in Gazan-populated areas killing many innocents. The best example was the PIJ misfire at the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City in November 2023. In addition, there are no reports of casualties from accidental explosions, deliberate killings, or internal battles caused by Hamas and its allies.

Because of these problems and anomalies, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs significantly adjusted their figures as reported by the Washington Institute for Near East Affairs which stated: “…news outlets and analysts noticed that the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs had substantially altered the Gaza death toll it relays from Palestinian sources. Between May 6 and May 8, OCHA reports decreased the total number of women and children killed during the war by almost 47%. The organization also indicated that men aged 19-59 made up 40% of the dead, contradicting previous claims that 70% were women and children.”

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/untangling-uns-gaza-fatality-data

20,000 to 24,000 casualties in an urban warfare environment where the enemy is embedded in the civilian population, using it as human shields is a remarkably low figure when compared to the Soviet Union’s record in Afghanistan and the US record in Iraq. Haaretz compares these numbers with other conflicts in the Middle East including “Syria, 405,000 dead, Iraq, 210,000 dead, Yugoslavia, 100,000 dead, and Ukraine, 172,000 dead”. All civilian casualties are the unfortunate result of war. Still, Israel and the IDF have gone to amazing lengths to reduce the number of non-combatant casualties in this war at great risk to their military. So, the continued use of Hamas casualty figures is unwarranted because they are false and are a part of the asymmetric propaganda warfare Hamas is waging against Israel. The Hamas casualty figures are also problematic because they are never reported in the context that these civilians have died. After all, Hamas is using them as human shields.

Lie 8. Hamas “freedom fighters” rape and murder was an act of resistance
This lie is probably one of the most ridiculous of all the lies used by anti-Israel, anti-Jewish demonstrators on campuses. Rape is not permitted under any law or treaty governing warfare. It is a grievous violation of human rights. It is also not allowed under any circumstance in Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and other religious groups. There can be no pass given to anyone for rape just because they are called a “freedom fighter”.
Lie 9. Creating a Palestinian state requires the eradication of the Jewish state of Israel
This is probably the quintessential lie of the organizations and groups agitating on campuses today. They argue as Peter Beinart did in a July 8, 2020, NYT editorial that he no longer believes in a Jewish state but is arguing for a confederation or some other governmental form that will not be a state but a “Jewish society, a Jewish home.” Jewish Voice for Peace uses this formulation in their campus propaganda blaming Jewish nationalism in the form of Zionism as the whole problem in the Middle East. Why is Arab nationalism then not a problem? There are 57 Muslim countries of which there are 49 are Muslim majorities and 22 are Arab countries. There is only one Jewish nation. The call for either Arab-Jewish co-governance of Israel-Palestine or a singular Arab Palestine with a Jewish home connected to it is nothing more than an eradication of the one Jewish state and is by its very definition antisemitic. The purist example of the level of antisemitism surrounding this issue is that one of the concerns of the Palestinian Authority in its discussions of future boundaries between Israel and a Palestinian state is that there not be any Jews left in their territory with all Jewish settlements in their areas of control dismantled. Israel on the other hand from its beginning has had a significant Arab minority who have become integrated with all aspects of Israeli society. Why should a future Palestinian State not have a Jewish minority (for those settlers who choose to stay) in its midst, protected and integrated into society, like the Arab citizens of Israel? Palestinian Arab refusal to accept this idea is the most serious example of antisemitism. Any advocate of such an act therefore is antisemitic.

The problem for much of the Arab world and some of the Muslim world is their colonial vision of an Arab Muslim world that once existed where Jews and Christians were “tolerated peoples” subservient to the Muslim majority but could continue to live where they were but without any equal rights. The success of the Arab-Muslim colonial effort can be seen across the Middle East from North Africa to Afghanistan where there no longer exist any Christian nations except for Armenia. Lebanon at one time was a country with Christians cogoverning with Muslims but with the advent of Hizballah, that ability to co-govern has all but disappeared. So much for Peter Beinart’s vision of a Jewish home in Arab-Muslim Palestine. The idea is quintessentially antisemitic.

These are the nine lies that one will hear on college campuses and even in high schools in the coming school year promoted by the following groups and organizations:

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI 2004)
The American Friends Service Committee
Jewish Voice for Peace
Democratic Socialist of America
Within Our Lifetime
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity
National Lawyers Guild
US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI)
Students for Justice in Palestine
Various small trade unions and labor groups
Academic professional organizations such as the American Studies Association, American Anthropology Association, and Middle East Studies Association

What donors are funding these demonstrations?
These various organizations are funded by a host of contributors as discussed by Dr. Mitchell Bard who has said “The total contributions by Arab donors between 1986 and October 2022 have now reached nearly $11 billion. More than 10,000 contracts and gifts were spread across 273 institutions.”

Professor Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor has identified the largest of the donor groups funding the above organizations. (see https://www.ngo-monitor.org/reports/ngo-network-orchestrating-antisemitic-incitement-on-american-campuses/

The organizations identified by NGO Monitor include but are not limited to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, WESPAC (West Chester Peace Action Committee Foundation), The Tides Foundation, and The Alliance for Global Justice. Legal services are provided for the demonstrators by The Central for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Palestine Legal, CAIR, and the National Lawyers Guild Foundation.

What has been the Jewish community’s response to what is happening on the campuses?
Before 2000 the Jewish community’s support for Jewish students and pro-Israel faculty centered around funding and support for Hillel campus organizations and various Jewish Student Unions as well as funding for Holocaust Centers at major universities and colleges in most states. As the field of academic Jewish Studies began to grow Jewish donors began to invest in these programs with endowments and funding support for academic chairs of Jewish Studies as well as funding for the then newly developing Israel Studies programs. One of the most important pro-Israel academic groups that developed in the US after the 6-Day War was the American Professors for Peace in the Middle East, founded by Allen Pollack, Seymour Martin Lipset, Michael Curtis, and other scholars of note. This amazing organization had over 15,000 members and actively supported junior faculty with research support, travel to Israel, and mentoring. Their academic trips to Israel gave a generation of young scholars the first-hand knowledge to support pro-Israel perspectives and legitimately balanced courses and curricula on campuses devoid of today’s biased diatribe and anti-Israel propaganda which masquerades as legitimate research and study.

Unfortunately, in the euphoria of the Oslo peace process and the acceptance of Nobel Prizes by Rabin, Peres, and Arafat, Jewish funders, including the United States National Jewish Federations, ended their faculty support. American Professors for Peace in the Middle East, one of the most successful pro-Israel faculty groups withered and died by 2000 just as the antisemitic and anti-Israel forces inspired by the UN Durban Conference were launching their campus-based efforts.

Sensing a need and a changing campus environment as early as 1999 the Jewish community began to put money into Jewish students with increased funding for Hillel’s and the Birthright program. By 2004 funding from the Federation and many other endowments and philanthropists helped start a variety of campus-based organizations still active on campuses and acting as a bulwark of support for Jewish students and pro-Israel students such as:

Stand With Us
Israel on Campus Coalition
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (replacing the defunct APPME)
JNF’s Faculty Travel to Israel Program

New organizations include
The Academic Engagement Network( a faculty group loosely connected to the ICC)

These organizations coupled with a plethora of new and innovative groups on campus have acted as the only real block to the rabid anti-Israel anti-Jewish forces who have been slowly building and building in the social sciences, arts, and liberal arts and humanities programs for more than 24 years now.

What Can Be Done to Arrest the Anti-Israel Anti-Jewish atmosphere?
1.Fully fund the above organizations to enable them to do what needs to be done on campus.
2.Fund legitimate Israel Studies and Jewish Studies programs without the involvement of anti-Israel scholars and propagandists. This is not to say that scholars who legitimately criticize Israel should be illuminated but rather those scholars who deny the right of Jews to have their nation have no place in Israel Studies.
3.Provide funds for taking teachers, scholars, university and campus administrators, diversity administrators, and Academic Senators to Israel to meet their Israeli counterparts.
4.Actively support congressional oversight of Title XI programs funding Middle East Studies in universities to assure fair and balanced education and research be developed not biased anti-Israel anti-Jewish propaganda be disseminated. Stop funding those Middle Eastern Studies programs not in compliance.
5.Call upon Senator Chuck Schumer to finally permit a vote to be taken on H. Res 6090 “The Antisemitism Awareness Act” which would codify the IHRA definition of antisemitism into law giving authority for the “requirement of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to take into consideration the International Holocaust Alliance’ working definition of antisemitism” when pursuing Title XI lawsuits against institutions of higher education as well as public schools. Currently presidents from George Bush (2) to Joe Biden have, through executive order, seen fit to continue this practice. Passing and signing this into law makes it a permanent part of the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights and protects Jewish students no matter the party in power.
6.Ban Jewish Voice for Peace from any involvement with any Jewish organization in the United States. Make your friends and acquaintances in the Quaker American Friends Service know how anti-Israel and antisemitic their organization has become.
7.More can be done but the above list is a good beginning.

Time is of the essence. What is happening on some campuses and high schools in the US today is bad but there is still a chance to arrest the evil burning in some of our universities and colleges. Currently, a small number of campuses are involved (approximately 50 campuses in 25 states out of 4,000 colleges and universities nationwide according to CNN) with relatively small groups of students and faculty involved. Without a strong Jewish and Congressional response here, it will only get worse.