Campus Pro-Palestinian Protestor: 'I wish I was more educated.'

If only there was an institution where you could borrow books for free, or some futuristic handheld device with the sum total of human knowledge at your fingertips.

“Pro-Palestinian” protestors on Harvard University’s campus (photo: Max Larkin/X)

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This is a guest essay written by Pat Johnson of Pat’s Substack.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

Share this essay using the link: https://www.futureofjewish.com/p/campus-anti-zionist-activists

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Israel’s prime minister has compared the anti-Israel protests and violence across North American campuses to 1930s antisemitic mobs.

I am of two minds on this statement: Every time this demagogue opens his mouth, I have a visceral reaction. For one thing, Bibi, don’t you have enough to do without concerning yourself about campus protests in America?

On the other hand, have you seen these mobs? Have you heard what they are saying? The signs they are holding?

One dude at Columbia — weirdly dressed as some sort of Christian clergy person with a cartoonishly giant crucifix; face inevitably covered with a balaclava as so many of these proud, courageous activists are wont to do — holds a sign with a Star of David with the words “Lie,” “Cheat,” “Steal,” and “Kill.”

There is hardly a single image that captures the essence of classical antisemitism better than this photo. In Canada, some of my compatriots declared: “October 7th proves we’re almost free.”¹ (And you thought Canadians were nice.)

photo: Cathryn J. Prince/Times of Israel

Let’s cut to the crux right away: The inevitable defense is, “Those hateful images and messages are a minority of participants in the protests!”

Are they though? Well, okay, not everyone is holding a sign. Almost all of these activists, however, are chanting the inevitable “river to the sea” mantra, which seeks to make Jews a stateless people again, with all the defenselessness that historically catastrophic reality entails.

Plus, you know damn well that most of these postsecondary savants could not name the river or the sea they are referencing or find them on a map. Nuance is not the strongest suit when everything you know about this conflict you learned from TikTok and handbills you got from a green-haired girl carrying a Soviet flag.

Following Wednesday’s New York University protest, some pro-Israel social media accounts released footage, whose source is unclear, of a protester at the institution who was unable to answer when an unidentified interviewer asked her what the divestment rally’s “main goal” was.

“I think the goal is just showing our support for Palestine and demanding that New York University stop,” said the protester, as a flag of the U.S. Marxist Party for Socialism and Liberation flutters behind her.

“I honestly don’t know all of what NYU’s doing,” she quickly added. She turned to a friend and asked: “Do you know what NYU’s doing?”

“About what?” asked the friend, whose face is hidden behind a black surgical mask.

“About Israel — why are we protesting?”

“I wish I was more educated,” replied the mask-clad protester.

There’s something you and I can both agree on, comrade. If only there were places one could go to get balanced information, like a publicly funded institution where you can borrow books for free, or even some futuristic handheld device with the sum total of human knowledge at your fingertips. If only.

Even if they are not all ignoramuses chanting hate mantras though, there is a bigger issue. If you march next to a bigot with an antisemitic sign, you endorse that antisemitic sign. Anything short of demanding that they throw that sign in the trash and leave the event is a full-throated endorsement of the message.

But I am also of two minds about the opposition to these protests. If university students cannot protest, on university campuses, against a war, against their government, against the high costs of nose piercings or whatever, how is America still America?

On the other hand, how long would such protests last if they were chanting slogans that had so toxic an impact on any minority community but Jews?

Again, a predictable rejoinder: “We’re protesting because (cue emotional catch in voice) people are dying! We can’t help it if (subtext: overly sensitive, persecution complex-bearing) Jewish people take that the wrong way!”

In every other case, involving any other people, outcome matters more than intent.

When transphobic tub-thumpers attack people, we go straight for the worst-case scenario: They are exacerbating already tragic suicide rates among transgender teens. When Jewish students and professors are prevented from attending American universities and targeted with insults and worse, well, that is a small price to pay because, you know, by any means necessary, no matter who gets hurt.

Even this, though, is to assume (relative) good will. It is to accept the idea that these people are acting in the interests of Palestinians and that most of them are not driven by antisemitic impulses (consciously or unconsciously).

But the evidence is not on their side. Their intent, overwhelmingly, seems to be to terrorize Jews.

Of course, “moderate” voices will insist: “There are very fine people on both sides!”

No, there are not. By very definition, fine people do not march with other people who call for the elimination of the Jewish state; who employ antisemitic imagery and messaging; who do everything in their power to intimidate, bully, and terrorize Jews.

It is  —  or it should be  —  a litmus test of such protests that the very best of the participants are judged by the standard of the very worst. That is, marching alongside a person calling for “10,000 October 7th’s” is the same as chanting that murderous call. There is no moral difference.

But there is a bigger picture. Even if you are not aligned with people so deficient in basic humanity that they celebrate October 7th, what is it that the oblivious NYU student and others are ranting about?

Is it a “Free Palestine” that they are after? Hardly. These may be the emptiest, cheapest words in the progressive vocabulary. An independent Palestine would be one the least free places on Earth.

As I keep banging away on, activists who chant this empty slogan demonstrate not a hint of concern for the rights of Palestinian women, LGBTQ-plus people, religious or ethnic minorities (such as there may be remaining in the already-totalitarian, xenophobic dystopia of “Palestine”) or anyone else, except insofar as the interests of these Palestinians can be used as a battering ram against Israel.

Because, as I also keeping banging on about, the movement is not “pro-Palestinian” in any constructive or tangible way. It is just anti-Israel. (And even that characterization is being very generous.)

Just when you think the sanctimonious, self-congratulatory inmates of the Witless Protection Program have reached peak absurdity, along comes the self-righteous, Jew-baiting U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar to declare on the University of Minnesota campus: “I’m incredibly moved by your courage and bravery.”

You know what takes courage and bravery these days? Being a Jew on a North American campus.

There is no bravery required to surround yourself with thousands of braying, potentially violent thugs chanting hate slogans you agree with. The very idea that it takes bravery and courage to be a part of a mob is only sustainable if you believe there is some colossal, omnipotent force lined up against your cause, like, oh I dunno, The Almighty Jews.

And that is the point.

The puerile defense that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” (arguably the most unprogressive thing a “progressive” mouth could utter) is negated simply by the measure of outcome and intent.

No matter how many Jewish professors they block from campus, how many classes they shut down, how much hellacious chaos they rain down on institutes of — ahem — higher learning, these protests and protestors are having little-to-no impact on Israelis or Palestinians. They are having a hoot, no doubt, LARPing as social justice activists and making memories they can tell their grandkids about the Riots of ’24.

What they are having an impact on is the state of civil discourse in our countries. They are exacerbating the worst divisions in our societies and fanning the flames of a dangerous inferno of anti-Jewish hate. They know this. And they rejoice in it.

They chant “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” but they know that, at a minimum, that is only partly true, if at all.

They are sooo transgressive that even their grandparents’ promise of “Never Again” to the Jews of their era, and the centrality of our movements’ commitment to equality for all, cannot squelch these activists’ intrepid commitment to the Palestinian cause and its bull-in-a-china-shop, by-any-means-necessary triumph of ideology over humanity.

But, that accusation is immaterial to them. Accusations of antisemitism are, in fact, a badge of pride for them. Because by any means necessary includes abandoning everything else progressive antiracist activists stand for.

It includes rewarding and spreading antisemitism. It justifies the nullification of every tenet of human decency and civility because, somehow, the Palestinian cause eclipses everything else they believe in.

If the purity of their conviction bears striking similarities to a cult, so be it. They will demonstrate the virtue of their crusade for “Palestine” by trampling their obligations to antiracism, civility, nonviolence, decency, and inclusivity.

Instead of venerating Palestinian mass murderers (as they do), they should adopt the visage of George Orwell as the banner under which they march.

And if you dare to suggest that there is anything irrational about this, prepare for a wall of umbrage declaring “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.”

Which, increasingly, sounds like your older brother waving his hands all around your face while chanting: “I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!”

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1. “Canada’s deputy PM wouldn’t condemn pro-Hamas slogans as hate speech until she saw video of vile chants.” New York Post.