The Groups Protesting on College Campuses Don't Think Israel Should Exist

According to their own written statements

Awful, antisemitic things have been said during the protests at Columbia University and elsewhere. But who’s saying them? That’s not always clear. Some of the most vile stuff — the stuff that crosses the line from “drunk aunt” to “drunk Kanye” — appears to have been said by non-students protesting outside the school’s gates. Some at Columbia are defending their fellow students’ honor, noting that some protesters are Jewish and that the groups have denounced hateful language. To be fair, those denunciations are hard to square with signs in the encampment that borrow language from militia groups that call Zionists “pigs” and “scum”, but hey: Who among us hasn’t been in a group when someone commits the party foul of quoting a hyper-violent militia? When you’re in a crowd, it can be hard to tell who’s saying what. Consider: the New York Yankees’ manager was thrown out of a game yesterday for something yelled by a fan. Do we know for sure that this fan isn’t behind all the antisemitic hate at Columbia? We can’t prove that he isn’t.

Separating antisemitic criticism of Israel from non-antisemitic criticism can be tough. We can’t know a person’s soul, nor can we hook electrodes to their brain and see if they react to Watto from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. When discussing Israel/Palestine, it’s best to eschew questions of intent and stick to verifiable facts. And one verifiable fact in this situation is that most if not all of the groups involved in this protest believe that Israel has no right to exist.

In the official request for divestment filed by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the group said that the Israeli occupation of Palestine had caused “immeasurable violence” to the Palestinian people for 75 years. That number — 75 years — dates the “occupation” to 1948, the establishment of Israel. It cannot be a reference to the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, which began in 1967. The reference to 75 years is not buried deep in the document — it’s in the second sentence. This letter that considers the very existence of Israel to be an occupation was signed by 89 student groups on December 1.

Solidarity protests have sprung up at NYU, organized by a group called the NYU Palestine Solidarity Coalition. That group also believes that there has been “75+ years of occupation”, as does another group participating in the protest, NYU Law Students for Justice in Palestine. Groups in Michigan’s “Liberated Encampment Zone” handed out fliers declaring that “Freedom for Palestine means death to America”. A group involved in the Columbia Protests called Within Our Lifetime supports the right of the Palestinian people to “resist the Zionist occupation by any means necessary” and defines the Palestinian homeland as “from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea”. All of these are written statements — nobody can argue that they were speaking extemporaneously or actually said that “all juice should leave Palestine”. I couldn’t find statements from every group involved in the protest — the hodgepodge of similarly named groups is a real-life Monty Python sketch — but the only statements I found reflected this same eliminationist belief.¹ I did not find any references to the 1967 borders or affirmations of Israel’s right to exist. It is objectively true that the groups leading these protests seek the elimination of Israel.

Immediately after October 7, there was confusion about the beliefs of various pro-Palestinian groups. The morning of October 8, several Harvard groups signed a letter blaming Israel for the Hamas attack, but some group members later said that the letter was signed without their knowledge. Many campuses had high-profile debates about the meaning of the phrase “from the river to the sea”, and the Wall Street Journal found that some people who used the phrase changed their mind when they learned that it called for the elimination of Israel. Right after the attack, an “I didn’t know” defense was somewhat convincing, especially to people like me who believe that college kids are quarter-formed organisms only slightly more sentient than hamsters. When a college student says “I’m not hateful, I’m just unbelievably dumb,” I’m prone to give them the benefit of the doubt, because I know for certain that the second part of that statement is true.

But now it’s April, and the “I didn’t know” argument doesn’t work anymore. We have had the “from the river to the sea” debate — we have lived through several high-profile episodes of people co-signing hateful statements and then walking their words back. Remember the guy who was so bonkers that The Atlantic wrote an article basically saying “get a load of this clown”? That was less than a month ago. There have been many clues that you should think before you co-sign a movement’s actions, everyone has had ample time to get acquainted with the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and if you still don’t know that “75 year occupation” means “Israel shouldn’t exist,” then the difference between “filled with hate” and “so simple that you soaked up the hateful ideas that you happened to be standing near” is functionally unimportant.

Is calling for the elimination of Israel automatically antisemitic? I don’t know. But it is definitely a call for something bad to happen to the almost seven million Jews who live there (plus I wouldn’t assume that everything would be lollipops and rainbows for the more than two million non-Jewish Israelis). Affirming Israel’s right to exist is usually the starting point for any discussion of Israel-Palestine in American politics. Every member of The Squad except for Rashida Tlaib voted for a resolution affirming Israel’s right to exist, and AOC recently joined a statement affirming Israel’s right to self-defense. Debates about the bounds of antisemitism usually rest on questions that are subjective and unknowable, which is why I’m not addressing them. Instead, I’m focusing on the plain fact that the groups protesting at Columbia and elsewhere have adopted positions that not even the fringiest left-wing figures in American politics support.

People on the left often romanticize protest. Civil rights protesters, suffragettes, and other people who stood up for just causes are lionized. Mainstream liberals sometimes don’t know how to react to protest movements that are extreme, brian dead, or both — consider many liberals’ ambivalent response to Occupy Wall Street. It seems to me that the efforts to separate the protests at Columbia from antisemitism — and to make sure that the latter doesn’t taint the former — represent a belief that the protests are basically just, and that the problem is that a few zealots are going too far. I think the dynamic is different: I think that the protesters are openly calling for ethnic cleansing of the state of Israel, and even if you gave every protester an anti-antisemitism pill that magically purged their minds of all bigoted thoughts, they would still be calling for actions that are absolutely horrific.

Like many liberals, I support parts of the Palestinian cause. I’m appalled by Israel’s actions in the West Bank, and I have major misgivings about how they’re conducting the Gaza War. But I hope that everyone on the left understands: These protesters don’t want a Palestinian state next to an Israeli state. They want Israel wiped off the map. Their own words — written down and unchanged despite ample opportunities to do so — say that. A silver lining of the recent surge in left-wing antisemitism is that many liberals are waking up to the fact that wokeness (or whatever we’re calling it) is not liberalism-except-moreso: It’s a wholly alien, hideous movement. Even if you ignore the torrent of antisemitism that makes the “GOODBYE JEWS!” girl from Schindler’s List look like the head of the ADL, these groups are nakedly eliminationist. Any liberal who supports them assuming that they’re descended from the peaceful movements of years past is actually supporting something a whole lot darker.

*An earlier version of this column included a photo of protesters from Within Our Lifetime holding a banner that said “From Gaza to Jenin/revolution until victory” in front of a Columbia University building. This photo has been removed because the protesters were by the side of the building, outside of the Columbia University gates, and therefore not definitely part of the student protests.

---

1. If anyone has any statements from any of these groups that affirm Israel’s right to exist, please send them to me, and I’ll publish them.