The Jewish magazine Forward has published two different letters written by Jewish university students insisting that the anti-genocide demonstrations on their campuses have NOT been antisemitic, but that all impulses towards
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violence and antisemitism have been imported by outside instigators.
Editor’s note: Today we published two open letters from college students regarding the protests that have been roiling campuses nationwide for weeks. Below, 750+ Jewish students from 140+ campuses say they “reject the claim that these encampments are antisemitic and that they are an inherent threat to Jewish student safety.” In the other letter, 280+ Jewish students at Columbia University argue that their “concerns have been brushed off and invalidated” when calling out antisemitism on campus. The original letters can be found here and here.
We the undersigned are Jewish students on college campuses in solidarity with student encampments for Gaza. We reject the ways that these encampments have been smeared as antisemitic and we call on our institutions to take action to stop Israel’s assault on Gaza.
In the last week, we have watched the movement of student encampments for Gaza spread across the country. We have also watched as these protesters have been met with repression, arrests, violence, and false claims of antisemitism. As Jewish students, we wholeheartedly reject the claim that these encampments are antisemitic and that they are an inherent threat to Jewish student safety. We believe that safety for Jewish students can only come when all students are safe, including Palestinian students, BIPOC students, and queer and trans students.
While journalists, students, and even police have consistently reported encampments to be peaceful, school administrations and city officials have intentionally and consistently escalated through state violence. Their tactics have included arresting and brutalizing students, and denying students access to housing, medical care, and religious spaces. The majority of these acts have targeted Arab, Muslim, Black, and brown students. This violence we’ve seen this week does not make any of us safer. We wholeheartedly condemn the brutal repression of the encampments.
“The narrative of protesters endangering Jewish students has been used to justify police repression. But at the Columbia encampment, I saw a commitment to confronting antisemitism.”
Journalist Hadas Thier has written a good article for The Nation magazine giving an insider’s look at the anti-genocide demonstrations happening on American campuses.
. . . Since then, the story of protesters endangering and threatening Jewish
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students has been used to justify the brutal repression that they’ve been met with. But I spent the last week speaking to students across many campus encampments, and last Wednesday I made my way to Columbia’s encampment to get a picture of it for myself. My experience was decidedly different from the story we’ve been fed.
In the middle of the lawn, surrounded by a low buzz of students sitting in study circles, making art, pointing out a hawk that flew nearby, working on laptops, I met Atesh, a Columbia student who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisal. He told me how meaningful it was for him to participate in his first Passover seder with about 100 other students and professors on the lawn. There, Jewish students had led their peers in songs and rituals. The Passover seder is a Jewish tradition that celebrates liberation and is rooted in community, inquiry, and questioning. It was a fitting celebration for the encampment.
As Atesh was talking to me,another student approached us, looking for a Jewish member of the encampment to connect with. Atesh shrugged and said, “We’re all Jewish. We’re all Palestinian.”
Later that day, I sat on the lawn with nearly 200 students to listen to Jewish students lead a teach-in about antisemitism. Some discussed their experiences growing up in predominantly Christian towns where pennies were thrown at them and conspiracy theories about Jews were ubiquitous. Others shared their impressions of why so many American Jewish communities feel connected to their Israeli counterparts and why conversations about Palestine are difficult to have. A few recounted why their opposition to the current war is rooted in their traditions and observance of Judaism. All of them expressed discomfort at having to take center stage. But they felt an obligation to do so because of the ways in which the “safety of Jewish students” has become a disingenuous rallying cry of everyone from liberal college presidents to MAGA-aligned politicians.
I am an Israeli-born Jew who has been involved in Palestine activism for over 20 years, and I have never experienced the level of solidarity and the depth of understanding about antisemitism that I am seeing across college campuses right now. In the past, I had seen antisemitism only on the fringe of the movement, turning up through an occasional odd and unsettling poster at a protest, summarily dismissed and removed by organizers. At the center of the movement, I always felt welcome and comfortable as an Israeli-born Jew. But, still, until the recent phase of the new movement for Palestine emerged on American campuses last fall, I had never before witnessed such a deliberate commitment to learning about and confronting antisemitism head on. . .
. . . “It is not that they care about Jewish students,” JVP [Jewish Voice for Peace] member Maya, told me. “They actually care about Zionist students.” Among those arrested and suspended were many Jewish students, she said. “They do not care about the safety of the Jewish students that are in the camp or that are part of this movement. And they’ve shown that by arresting and by attempting to erase the fact that we even exist.” Anti-Zionist Jews, she explained, “are not part of [the administration’s] fight against antisemitism.” . . .
Jewish students have been in the lead of the current anti-genocide campus protests. Here a Jewish student at Columbia clearly explains the difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, a distinction that our corporate media, as well as Congress, is working hard to erase.
Professor Omer Bartov is a long-time Israeli scholar of genocide and Holocaust studies. One of his recent books is titled Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis, where he compares the Nazi holocaust with the Palestinian Nakba (the violent Israeli displacement of750,000 Palestinians in 1948).
Today he was interviewed by Amy Goodwin on Democracy Now. They talked about Gaza, student protests and antisemitism:
This gentleman shares a number of crucial insights into Israel’s manipulation of Holocaust memory, and the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
Both of these guys are friends of mine. I am a member of the discussion group they both mention. Darrell Bock is a Zionist and supporter of Israel. Rob Dalrymple is a non-Zionist and critic of Israel.
Here is a great example of how two brothers in Christ can disagree amicably while holding very different positions on an important subject — Israel’s assault against Gaza.
It makes for a very interesting conversation.
After the video, I make a few comments below to further nuance the conversation in ways that I thought could be helpful.
I notice that Darrell prioritizes Israel’s ostensible, divine right to the land over and above anyone else’s claims to the land as their home. I cannot agree with this decision for a number of reasons, both theological and practical.
Darrell wants to date the beginning of the Gaza trajedy to October 7. This is another example of what I call “APR time,” that is “After Palestinians Respond.” October 7 did not occur in a vacuum. The members of Hamas were responding to a very long history of Israeli antagonism. It was a response — yes, a terrorist response, but a response nonetheless — to Israel’s prior oppression.
The weight of the current problems cannot all be layed at the feet of Hamas. Yes, Hamas is bad news. But these hostilities existed long before Hamas came into the picture. They are now a major factor, but cannot be seen as the principle cause of today’s conflict in Gaza.
I am not a scholar of Hamas, but I will note that the Hamas charter (revised in 2017) does NOT call for the elimination of Israel, as so many seem to believe. You can read the full charter here. I agree with much of it, although I definitely do not endorse Hamas Islamicism. However, for the sake of fairness and honesty, I must point out articles 16 and 20 of the charter: 16. Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity. 20. . . . Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967 . . .
Notice two important points: Hamas condemns Zionism (as do I) NOT Judaism. It is an anti-Zionist movement; it is not promoting antisemitism, per se.
Secondly, the charter calls for a Palestinian state with its western border along the Green Line, the 1967 armistice border separating Israel proper from the West Bank. In other words, they ARE NOT calling for the eradication of all Jews from Palestine. They are calling for the eradication of Zionism from Palestine. As I do. I read these two sections to say that Hamas is calling for the coexistence of a Palestinian state and a non-Zionist Israel side by side. In other words, they are willing to accept a two-state solution.
“From the border to the sea, Palestine will be free” is not an antisemitic slogan. It is an anti-Zionist slogan calling for equal rights, justice and liberty for ALL the people of Palestine, Jews and Palestinians alike. The slogan has nothing to do with ethnic cleansing.
Whether or not you choose to believe Hamas and trust the words of their 2017 charter is a separate question from whether or not we represent them honestly and accurately in our debates. The 2017 charter explicitly contradicts some of the more common, extremist claims made about Hamas by the representatives of Israel and the defenders of political Zionism.
My friends Lisa Loden and Richard Harvey are both Jewish Christians. Lisa lives in Israel. Richard resides in England.
Today Rob talks with them about their Jewish, Christian perspectives on the current war. Their commitment to following Jesus as the Prince of Peace during a time of war provides a powerful testimony to the presence of God’s kingdom in this world.
I will make only a few brief comments of my own to follow up on some of the issues raised in the interview:
First, I believe it is long past time to stop using the history of Jewish suffering, as horrific as it is, to excuse Israel’s current oppression of the Palestinian people.
Second, by Richard’s own definition of terrorism, Israel is now committing acts of terrorism against the people of Gaza.
Finally, I completely agree with Lisa when she says that this war is not about Israel’s self-defense.
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
I am sure that the majority of Americans are aware by now of the controversy stirred by Whoopi Goldberg’s comment about the Holocaust on the TV program The View.
Whoopi Goldberg on The View
During this discussion, Ms. Goldberg had the temerity to say, “The Holocaust was not about race. It was about man’s inhumanity to man.” Of course, the feathers began to fly.
In a late-night conversation with Stephen Colbert, Ms. Goldberg clarified what she meant, referring to her experiences as a black woman in America. She made it clear that her reference point for understanding racial discrimination was skin color, whether a person was black or white. This was not surprising. Most people rely on their own personal experiences, their own subjectivity, to lay the initial foundation for how they view the world around them.
Whoopi’s comments could have provided a useful opportunity for a broader, public conversation about the history and meaning of racism. We all could have discussed the fact that skin color is only one of numerous characteristics that have been used to make “racial” distinctions throughout history. Oh, but wait. I forgot. This is America. We don’t do serious thinking in public (or in precious few other spaces) here in this great nation of ours.
In another follow-up interview Ms. Goldberg corrected herself further by adding that she should have said “both” when she spoke out on The View. In other words, the Holocaust was about both Hitler’s extermination of the Jewish race as well as man’s inhumanity to man, implying that the former was an example of the latter.
Unfortunately, Whoopi’s attempts to reframe our conversation about the Holocaust – a very worthy project, in my opinion – has been completely squashed. She knows that she has been silenced. Her most recent statement states that she has now decided simply to never talk about the Holocaust again.
Three cheers for our Holocaust cancel culture!
Yet, this entire affair has been highly unfortunate for a number of reasons.
Quite predictably, Ms. Goldberg’s original statement on prime-time television prompted pro-Israel and pro-Zionist apologists to attack her like sharks after red meat. The leader of this pack has been Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League. Fortunately, after discussing the issue personally with Goldberg, Greenblatt came to her rescue, extended a special dispensation by insisting that the now chastised and enlightened TV host not be criticized too harshly for her former ignorance.
Yet, even Greenblatt’s intervention could not save Ms. Goldberg from a two-week suspension from her hosting duties on The View. Luckily for us, her network’s corporate virtue-signaling has saved us all from any more of Whoopi’s “inappropriate” comments about the Holocaust.
Boy, am I relieved!
The supreme irony found at the heart of this ridiculous controversy, however, is the simple fact that Whoopi was not wrong, at least not in the sense that her critics have derided. Let me explain.
I begin with a short bibliography that will allow my reader to make sense of the parenthetical notations included below. I strongly suggest that you read at least one of these important books if you hope to understand what is going on in this contrived controversy:
Avraham Burg, The Holocaust Is Over We Must Rise From Its Ashes.
Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry.
Shlomo Sand, How I Stopped Being a Jew.
Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust.
Beginning with the 1961 trial of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, pro-Israel/pro-Zionist advocates have worked steadily to conjure a global amnesia about the full diversity of victims in the Holocaust. Frankly, the goal has been to make the world forget that anyone other than Jews were exterminated by the Nazis.
And they have largely succeeded, at least in public discourse. Whoopi Goldberg is only the latest victim of this monolithic Zionist-Israeli Holocaust-management network.
Dr. Norman Finkelstein is an American-Jewish historian whose parents were Holocaust survivors. He has written an important book entitled, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. Quoting the Israeli writer Boas Evron, he explains, “Holocaust awareness is actually an official, propagandistic indoctrination, a churning out of slogans and a false view of the world, the real aim of which is not at all an understanding of the past, but a manipulation of the present” (Finkelstein 2000: 41).
Avraham Burg, a former speaker in the Israeli parliament, called the Knesset, traces the beginning of this manipulation process to the Israeli trial of the Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann. In his book, The Holocaust Is Over We Must Rise From Its Ashes, Burg laments Israel’s decision to make the Eichmann trial a strictly Jewish, Israeli affair rather than opening up the proceedings to an international judiciary.
He describes Eichmann’s trial as “an initiation ritual” in which Israel (and world Jewry) reasserted their unique status as the eternal victims of never-ending gentile antisemitism (Burg 128). “We must always feel like perpetual victims,” he writes. “When we tried [Eichmann] for genocide, we meant only genocide against ourselves (Burg 129) …We took the Shoah to be exclusively our own. Thus, we missed the option of turning it into a much more meaningful, universal event…We nationalized the Shoah, monopolized it and internalized it, and we do not let anyone get closer” (Burg 143).
According to Burg, the Holocaust can best be described as “a crime against creation” (126) – a description that is in the same ball park as Ms. Goldberg’s reference to “man’s inhumanity against man.”
Romanian born author Elie Wiezel (1928 – 2016) appointed himself high-priest of this now all-pervasive Holocaust mysticism, an exclusive realm where non-Jewish victims are erased from historical memory, while exclusive racial curators conjure the Holocaust an utterly unique, incomparable event that only properly trained Jews are capable of discussing appropriately.
It is worth remembering that when the American Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. was in the planning stages, it was Wiesel who “led the offensive to commemorate Jews alone.” Finkelstein explains, “Deferred to as the undisputed expert on the Holocaust period Wiesel tenaciously argued for the preeminence of Jewish victimhood” (2000: 75).
Fortunately, the Jewish historians listed above have all called out this Israeli, Zionist game for what it is: inaccurate, unhistorical twaddle.
It’s malicious imposition on the rest of us, illustrated now by Whoopi Goldberg’s experience, is something that Norman Finkelstein calls “intellectual terrorism” (2000: 47).
He’s right.
We must begin with the simple fact that, despite Israel’s eagerness to obscure this part of the story, Jews were not the only victims of the Holocaust. This fact cannot be forgotten, no matter how hard the Zionist lobby tries to make us forget.
The Nazi extermination campaign began with the nation-wide euthanizing of the mentally handicapped and physically deformed. These “unfit” German victims were the first to warm up Hitler’s ovens.
Then they eliminated the communists, socialists, and all other anti-Nazi dissidents, many of whom were Christians.
Then there were the Gypsies, the Roma. As a ratio of total population size, the Nazi extermination of at least half-million Gypsies was roughly equal to the Jewish genocide (Finkelstein 2000: 76; Sand 58). European Gypsies, who remain persecuted to this day, ought not be forgotten.
(Read Finkelstein for the details of how Jewish representatives fought to exclude any mention of the Gypsies from the US Holocaust Museum. Or read Sand for his story about attending a Holocaust conference where Jewish representatives demanded that a Gypsy attendee be excluded).
Then there were the homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses, together with two and a half million Poles. The Nazis exterminated five million Poles, half of them were Jews. The other half were Roman Catholics.
So, in this crucial sense then, Whoopi Goldberg is absolutely correct. The Holocaust was not fundamentally about the Jewish race. The outrage unleashed against her is cruel testimony to the effectiveness of fifty years of Zionist-Israeli propaganda with its shaming, cajoling, ridiculing, and guilty-tripping the rest of the western world.
It is, indeed, intellectual terrorism.
However, recalling the great diversity represented among the Nazi’s many victims, we are also reminded that Ms. Goldberg is not entirely correct. We cannot forget that this disparate collection of Nazi victims were all captured in the net of Hitler’s primary racial concern – his obsession with a (fictitious) purified Aryan race.
Only from this perspective can the Holocaust be seen as exclusively about race, although I doubt if Whoopi had this consideration in mind. I am certain that Jonathan Greenblatt and his pro-Israel co-conspirators do not.
The guiding principle directing Hitler’s bloodlust was the protection of Aryan racial purity. His designs to conquer Europe were an attempt to garner an enlarged “homeland” (Lebensraum, living space, it was called) spacious enough to accommodate the perfected Aryan population he intended to produce.
The fact that Hitler hated the Jews was contingent on his own Aryan, racial priorities. He was serving his vision of “the master race.”
The fact that European leaders in the political Zionist movement were also searching for a new homeland large enough to provide for an exclusively Jewish population should not be forgotten. The parallels between National Socialism and political Zionism are no coincidence. Both movements were drinking from the same stream of blood-and-soil, ethnic-nationalism swirling throughout Europe at the time.
So, Ms. Goldberg is both partly right and partly wrong, but not the way that either her detractors or belated defenders imagine.
As far as I am concerned, the important lesson to be learned from this recent tempest is the depressing effectiveness it reveals about Israel’s pro-Zionist propaganda machine. Once again, it has managed to squelch legitimate historical debate by intimidating the hearty few courageous enough to raise a hand and say, “Uh, excuse me, but the Jews were not the only ones who suffered. In this sense, the Holocaust was not about race.”
The Rev. Dr. Stephen Sizer is an acquaintance of mine (I would call him a friend, yet we have only chatted on Facebook) who has written two very fine books about the dangers of Christian Zionism and the many injustices that Zionist Israel inflicts on the Palestinian people.
After receiving his MA in theology from Oxford University he became a long-time vicar in the Church of England at Christ Church, Virginia Water, in Surrey, England. He retired from parish ministry in 2017.
He is now the director of the charitable organization Peacemaker Trust.
Both books arise from Dr. Sizer’s doctoral research into the histories of dispensational theology (to which Christian Zionism has always been a favored handmaiden), the emergence of political Zionism in
Europe and Israel, and the relationships between the them.
I am very happy (and somewhat proud) of the fact that the publisher of my forthcoming book on Christian Zionism is also the publisher now reissuing both of Dr. Sizer’s important works.
Let me say again that I highly recommend them both!
Zion’s Christian Soldiers? is available for order HERE from the Wipf & Stock publications website. The second book, Christian Zionism Road-map to Armageddon?, will also become available from Wipf & Stock in the near future. So, keep your eyes open.
So why are Dr. Sizer’s books being reissued?
Both books were originally published by Inter-Varsity Press in the UK. Dr. Sizer quickly became public enemy #1 for the Israel Lobby and other pro-Israel, pro-Zionist apologists who immediately set their sites on him as their next target.
Consequently, he has been viciously slandered and attacked by people who care less about facts than they do about winning.
I suspect that the publisher, IVP-UK, came under great pressure to withdraw these books from their catalogue. I know that Dr. Sizer endured a tremendously savage campaign of pro-Zionist opposition, including all manner of slander and false accusations.
While I confess that I have not been privy to the details, I strongly suspect that, in the end, profit margins proved more important than principle to the publishing powers at IVP-UK.
Which now makes it all the more important that Dr. Sizer’s work is being reissued by Wipf & Stock in the USA. Hip hip hurrah!
As the voice of the Holy Spirit once said to St. Augustine, “take up and read.”
I am sure you have heard about the Israeli ruckus occurring in the wake of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream company deciding to join the international BDS
Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy
movement by no longer supplying ice cream to the illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank.
Certain US news outlets have gotten this wrong. Ben & Jerry’s is not boycotting the entire West Bank, only the Jewish settlements now housing some 700,000 Jewish colonizers occupying stolen Palestinian land.
Israeli politicians, as well as the citizens they represent, are up in arms over this latest “antisemitic” attack against the Jewish state.
There is so much propagandistic malarkey at play in this recent Israeli temper tantrum, it would be funny were it no so tragic.
Gideon Levy, columnist for the Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, gives us the necessary perspective on this latest display of Zionist insanity. His article is titled “A Tempest in an Ice Cream Tub Revealed Some Truths to Israelis.” (All emphasis is mine):
If Ben & Jerry’s keeps to its word and pulls its product from the settlements in a year and a half (and there’s good reason to doubt it will, given the pressure expected from American Jews), I will start eating its ice cream. I will be able to enjoy a product that shows a little more caring, more involvement, more conscience and, above all, more decency.
Until then, one can only laugh at the summer frenzy that has broken out and will disappear when the next storm of vanity emerges. Do Israelis now need to boycott the ice cream to protest the company’s decision? Or should we buy more in a show of support for the patriotic local franchisee, who will continue selling in the settlements until its contract is up? Meanwhile, what we have is a tempest in a tub of ice cream that teaches us more about Israel than a thousand scholarly papers.
The Ben & Jerry’s affair has made Israelis happy. There aren’t a lot of things they love more than the appearance of an external threat. It brings us together, to wallow in the bitter fate that we of all peoples must face, to create a repulsive unity and groupthink, and to launch a bombastic counterattack, with the knee-jerk accusation of antisemitism for dessert.
When the franchisee of our beloved McDonald’s, Omri Padan, decided to boycott the territories, collective Israel shrieked a lot less. Why? Because Padan is a patriot who in no conceivable way can be tarred as an antisemite. He is untouchable. With an American company, it’s a lot easier.
Ice cream succeeded where the deaths of 67 children in Gaza failed – to remind Israelis of the occupation. Still, the madness remains: The occupation is a victim, the only victim. It boggles the mind that whenever someone dares remind Israelis that something is still wrong, the issue immediately becomes how Israel is the victim. Headlines, endless talk, and the only thing no one asks is – why?
Why would any reasonable person want to boycott Israel? Well, maybe because of the pressure exerted by BDS. Only because of such pressure. Otherwise, there’s no way an ice cream company might come to the conclusion on its own that it no longer wants to sweeten the lives of the settlers. There’s no chance of there being business people with values. It’s just the consequence of pressure. The mechanisms of repression and denial that Israeli society has developed won’t drink from the cup of Chubby Hubby. It’s society’s Iron Dome – it can’t be abandoned.
Therefore, the situation demands nothing less than a real boycott of Israel, of all Israelis, everywhere – a painful, costly, destructive one. Not a boycott-lite on the ice cream sold at the Rami Levy supermarket at the Etzion Junction, but one that all of Israel will feel in its pocket. Only one that can relieve Israel of its blindness and expose the lie it has been feeding itself for so many years.
Equally amazing is all the unity and groupthink that the affair has created. Suddenly, it has become clear that we’re all settlers. The Green Line has long ceased to exist. The Ben & Jerry’s affair has revealed that there’s no difference between the radical right and the left. Everyone is for the settlements. Everyone opposes their being harmed, even if it’s minor harm to the contents of their freezers.
But is it really so sudden? Yair Lapid talks about antisemitism and Economy and Industry Minister Orna Barbivai acts if she dreams of being Miri Regev when she grows up. Meanwhile, we can ask ourselves why we deserve ridiculous politicians like these and why no one has mustered the courage to thank Ben & Jerry’s for acting in their small way.
In any case, the step the company took is artificial: It’s no longer possible to separate the settlers and the rest of Israel. The tempest in the tub proves that.
We should praise the ice cream makers from Vermont: They won’t end the occupation – that’s not their job – but on a hot summer day they revealed a few truths to Israelis. Only one question remains for all reasonable Israelis to ask themselves: What would they think of an ice cream company that boycotted South Africa?
Holocaust studies. One of his recent books is titled Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis, where he compares the Nazi holocaust with the Palestinian Nakba (the violent Israeli displacement of750,000 Palestinians in 1948).
dispensational theology (to which Christian Zionism has always been a favored handmaiden), the emergence of political Zionism in
So why are Dr. Sizer’s books being reissued?