It’s important to acknowledge two truths about the anti-Israel campus protests. First, they’ve clearly included some antisemitism, much of which is far more radical than conservative speech the same schools and supportive journalists regularly subject to suppression. Second, many if not most of the campus protesters, outside headline-grabbing antisemites, believe they oppose Hamas, do not hate Jews, and genuinely think they are fighting a colonialist genocide.
The point of recognizing this is not to excuse schools for botching their responses or let organizers off the hook for platforming bigotry. (They’ve certainly never let the right off the hook for hangers-on or plants.) The point is actually to suggest that while antisemitism will sadly never be extinguished — and there’s some evidence it may be rising — the ideology motivating campus protesters is becoming much more widespread.
Indeed, many of these protesters are Jewish, a reality that’s very familiar to pro-Israel Jews around the world. One Jewish student protester I interviewed this week actually expressed frustration with the difficulty of keeping legitimate antisemites out of the encampment. More broadly, though, the rapid proliferation of anti-Western worldviews presents a bigger problem for the country at large than the seriously disturbing but minority outbursts of antisemitism among protesters. (Minority at least for now.)
Different people obviously share different definitions of antisemitism. That’s understandable. Oftentimes anti-Zionism is a mask for genuine antisemitic bigotry. Personally, I detest the left’s argument that, for instance, opposing “equity” is racist. I’m sure a lot of genuine
