A Field Guide to Guaranteed, Certified, Definitely-Not-Antisemitic, We-Are-Hamas Global-Intifada Free-Range Encampments

Five Lessons on the Nature of Pro-Hamas Students, Professors, and Administrators

Image from Wikimedia Commons, dating from 1869—10 years before Jew-Hatred” was rebranded as “Antisemitism”

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As American campuses boil over with hatred for Israel and for Jews in general, it’s helpful to know what we’re dealing with. Below are five brief lessons:

1. Michael Moore channels 19th century German racists to prove that protestors calling for the mass murder of Jews are not antisemitic.

2. Professor David Bernstein notes that, like today’s campus protestors, most antisemites of the past were quite fond of Jews—as long as said Jews were sufficiently contemptuous of other Jews.

3. Israeli grad student Iddo Gefen discovers disturbing antisemitism at Columbia and then veers toward futile left-of-center virtue-signaling.

4. Karol Markowicz argues that threats to American Jews reside primarily in blue states and leftward political groupings.

5. I reiterate my recent argument that my alma mater, Columbia University, should be eviscerated—both for its own misdeeds and as a warning to like-minded institutions.

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JUDEN-HASS WAL-SCHEISSE

Every few years, Michael Moore washes up on some beach and spouts noxious, ill-informed diatribes till the tides carry him back to the briny deep. This month, the littoral is odoriferous with Mr. Moore’s contention that campus protestors chanting “We are Hamas!” “Global Intifada!” “From the River to the Sea!” and “Zionists Deserve to Die” cannot possibly be antisemitic:

“98% of [the protesters] are not saying anything that’s antisemitic because they don’t believe in antisemitism, in part, because the Palestinian people are Semites.”

Normally, you’d have to hire a bathyscaphe to witness intelligence that far below sea level—but Michael Moore brings the insights of the abyss up to terra firma. Contra Mr. Moore’s perception, the term “Semitic” was invented in 1781 by a German orientalist to describe a set of languages. The notion of “Semites” or “Semitic peoples” was a 19th century construct of German race theorists. It is not entirely coincidence that the development of this classification coincided chronologically and geographically with the rise of phrenology.

Germans were honest enough in that time to speak of “Judenhass” (“Jew-hatred”), but in 1879, Wilhelm Marr thought Judenhass would sell better if rebranded with a “scientific-sounding” term; he settled on “antisemitismus.” Soon after popularizing the term, Marr founded the Antisemiten-Liga (League of Antisemites), whose followers made clear from the start that “antisemitism” referred only to Jews and not to other peoples whom the German racialists defined as “Semitic.” The whole notion of “Semitic peoples” was dismissed as nonsense by the 1930s—perhaps because Hitler was in the process of forming a close alliance with the “Semitic” Palestinian Arabs and helping to found the organization that would eventually become Hamas.

In sum, Michael Moore’s Weltanschauung rests on a taxonomy devised by 19th century German racists and discredited for nearly a century—but he apparently never bothered to read what those racists actually said about their taxonomy. By Michael Moore’s reasoning, Adolf Hitler would not qualify as antisemitic.

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SOME OF THEIR BEST FRIENDS ARE JEWS

In a longer version of that interview, Michael Moore finds further proof of the pro-Hamas protestors’ good intent in the fact that:

“large numbers of these students are Jewish students who are with the Palestinian students—who together are forming these encampments … I saw this one instance where the Palestinian students inviting the Jewish students into the encampment and then the next day … the Palestinian students decided to do a Jewish folk dance for their fellow protestors who are Jewish.”

This is equivalent to arguing that Ku Klux Klansmen weren’t racists because some of them liked minstrel shows and sang “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah.” Moore’s argument requires a staggering ignorance of history. With the exception of the Nazis, most antisemites throughout history welcomed the presence of Jews who were willing to renounce Judaism and denounce Jewish people. This history was summarized recently by George Mason University Law Professor David Bernstein:

“I once again need to point out that the vast majority of antisemitism historically was not eliminationist, Nazi antisemitism, where the antisemites would murder you solely for your Jewish ancestry, regardless of anything else. In the USSR, you could generally get by with Jewish origins if you renounced Judaism, Zionism, etc, and took the party line. In Spain, the Inquisition only applied to Jews who practiced Judaism in secret. If you became a sincere Catholic, you were generally left alone. In other words, if you adopted the ideology the Jew-haters wanted you to adopt, they gave you a pass. In some cases, it was even an advantage, eg, the Church or State might put you in charge of persecuting other Jews. Why am I mentioning this? Because of the fools like the below who are saying that the fact that the Hamasniks on campus are ok with radical leftist individuals of Jewish descent shows that they aren't antisemitic. No, it shows that they aren't Nazis. You don't have to be a Nazi to be antisemitic. For that matter, if you are of Jewish descent and can prove that you sincerely want to join Hamas, it may very well take you. Again, they aren't Nazis, just a different variety of antisemite.”

In the aforementioned interview, Michael Moore was asked about a (now-expelled) student leader of the Columbia encampment who declared that:

“Zionists don’t deserve to live … I feel very comfortable, very comfortable, calling for those people to die. … Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

Moore responded by calling the student a “knucklehead” who has “apologized.” Good to know that Moore has the fortitude to meet murderous threats with such strong language.

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FEEDING THE CROCODILE

Meanwhile, Iddo Gefen, an Israeli Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University, makes no mention of happy Jewish folk dances in his article in The Atlantic, “What ‘Intifada Revolution’ Looks Like” (subtitled, “Some Columbia students are embracing extreme rhetoric”). For the most part, Mr. Gefen’s account is moving and poignant, though several passages suggest to me that he is a left-of-center naïf who has not yet grasped the fundamental nature of the protestors or the fact that his politics will not insulate him from their visceral hatred of Jews. Gefen writes:

“Last month, a pro-Palestinian activist stood in front of me on Columbia University’s campus with a sign that read By Any Means Necessary. She smiled. She seemed like a nice person. I am an Israeli graduate student at the university, and I know holding that sign is within her rights. And yet, its message was so painful and disturbing that after that moment, I left New York for a few days. … If I’d had the courage, I would have asked that student, ‘What exactly do you mean by ‘any means necessary’?’ Holding up signs? Leading demonstrations? Or do knives also fall under that category? Guns and rifles as well? Raping and taking civilians hostage? (As of this writing, 133 hostages are still being held in Gaza.) And whom would these means be employed against? Columbia? The Israeli government? Soldiers? Civilians? Children?”

After seeing the smiling protestor, Mr. Gefen’s thoughts turned to his best friend, Sagi Golan, a gay Israeli soldier who died defending Israeli civilians as Hamas invaded Southern Israel on October 7. His friend was about to be married, and Gefen wrote, touchingly:

“The flowers that were meant for my best friend’s wedding were laid upon his grave.”

He does not mention that a gay Palestinian soldier would have been summarily executed—thrown off of a roof, perhaps—by his fellow Hamas terrorists. He does note that back at Columbia:

“Almost every day, I hear protesters chant ‘Brick by brick, wall by wall, Israel has to fall’ and ‘Intifada Revolution.’ Growing up in Israel during the early 2000s, I lived through the Second Intifada. I witnessed buses blown up by suicide bombers and mass shootings in city centers, terrorist attacks that killed many innocent civilians in the name of an ‘Intifada Revolution.’ … Recently, a video surfaced of a student leader saying, ‘Zionists don’t deserve to live’; on campus, an individual stood in front of Jewish students with a sign reading [‘]Al-Qassam’s next targets[’].”

Gefen recounts what he perceives to be a ray of hope, but which I read with trepidation:

“Toward the end of the fall semester, a professor took me aside after class. He told me that in his youth, he’d had friends who spent summers at kibbutzim in Israel, describing the people there as the nicest in the world. Neither he nor his friends were Jewish, but they were captivated by the concept of a cooperative socialist society. ‘Hearing about the attacks on those kibbutzim on October 7 was deeply painful for me,’ he said. ‘So I can’t even imagine how painful it is for you.’ … That professor is a strong critic of the Israeli government and its policies. But in that particular moment, he chose to address only my pain.”

For me, this anecdote hints at why Israel today is despised by leftists—and by leftist academics in particular. The left loved Israel when the Jewish State was shackled by its founders’ socialist ideology and mired in poverty. Once the country became capitalist and stunningly successful, the left’s sentiments turned to visceral hatred.

At this point, Gefen engages in an all-too-familiar political Tourettism, exhibited by left-of-center Israelis and Diaspora Jews alike—the reflexive Two Minutes Hate for Prime Minister Emmanuel Goldstein Benjamin Netanyahu. Gefen writes:

“I also believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will go down as one of the worst leaders in the history of the Jewish people. His willingness to grant political power and public legitimacy to racist and fascist ideologues is a moral stain on the history of the nation, and I am alarmed by the possibility that Netanyahu would reject a hostage deal and a cease-fire to preserve his own power.”

It’s not hard to argue that Netanyahu is, in some respects, a problematic figure—a topic for another day. But I believe that leftward-leaning Jews insert an anti-Netanyahu passage in every article and every conversation for the same reason that older German Jews wore their World War I medals in the 1930s—in hopes that antisemites would see them as the “good Jews.” It does not work. In 2000, collaborating with Bill Clinton, the most non-Netanyahu prime minister of all, Ehud Barak, offered the Palestinians near-immediate independence, including all of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank (save for a few slivers next to the border, to be traded for equivalent slivers of Israel). Yasar Arafat, Nobel Peace Prize in hand, responded with the Second Intifada noted by Mr. Gefen—mass murders in pizza parlors, train stations, buses, and so forth.

Gefen also repeated a claim that Israeli President Isaac Herzog had said that “there are no innocent civilians in Gaza”—an accusation that Herzog has condemned as a “blood libel.” Herzog said he had stated:

“the widespread civilian support in Gaza for the crimes and atrocities of October 7 could not be ignored, and that Hamas operates from the heart of the civilian population everywhere, from children’s bedrooms in homes, from schools, from mosques, and hospitals

But, Herzog continued:

I added and emphasized that for the State of Israel, and of course for me personally, innocent civilians are not considered targets in any way whatsoever … There are also innocent Palestinians in Gaza. I am deeply sorry for the tragedy they are going through. From the first day of the war right until today, I have called and worked for humanitarian aid for them — and only for them.”

Gefen’s incendiary and gratuitous condemnations of Netanyahu and Herzog hands the Hamasniks all the venom they need to discredit Israel. His memory of the smiling protestor at Columbia reminded me that crocodiles also appear to smile, a thought that led in turn to Winston Churchill’s 1940 comment:

“Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear greatly that the storm will not pass. It will rage and it will roar ever more loudly, ever more widely.”

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BUT THE IVY LEAGUE ISN’T AMERICA

Back in December, I argued that antisemitism in America has become an overwhelmingly left-wing phenomenon (“Antisemitism’s Sharp Left Turn: An Open Letter to My Left-of-Center Friends”). The coast-to-coast, campus-to-campus celebration of Hamas and Intifada has added tons of steel rebar to my thesis. Recently, journalist and Soviet refugee Karol Markowicz argued similarly:

“A lot of Jewish friends, especially those who are finally awake after 10/7, say things like ‘how is this America?’ or ‘It's so scary that this Jew-hatred is happening everywhere.’ But it's very much NOT ‘America’ and it absolutely is NOT happening ‘everywhere.’ In south Florida, Jews wear the dinner plate Magen Davids and no one says one word. In rural Michigan, churches put ‘pray for Israel’ on the signs outside. I'm not naive, obviously Jew-haters can and do live anywhere. But they're only thriving, open, proud, in blue areas and I'm not going to let people ignore that. A lot of liberal Jews are trying to parse things right now. They imagine they are still of the left but just on this one tiny little thing, their right to exist, they disagree. No, my friends. It's a house of cards and you're pulling the one from the very bottom. The whole left ideology is corrupt and you're going to have to face it. You can't spread the blame around. The hatred, the rage, the violence, the dehumanization is all coming from one side: yours.”

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COLUMBIA DELENDA EST — REDUX

An eloquent reader emailed to question my recent article, “Columbia Delenda Est: Destroy One University to Salvage the Rest.”

“Is Columbia so rotten through and through that its stature and economic security should be destroyed? Is that fair to the students majoring in Ancient Greek Mythology, or Chemistry, or Computer Science, who were busy studying while others were protesting? Does it make sense to ask a professor to uproot their career and perhaps take a pay cut, move their family, and start all over in a new institution because of the actions of these agitators, who may well have been spurred on by non-Columbia actors? … Seems like you're letting your outrage get the best of you. The house can be fixed without burning it down first!”

I reiterate what I said in that article:

“As an alumnus of Columbia University (MPhil and PhD), I recommend that every peaceful, legal means available be employed to destroy the reputation of my alma mater—an institution that has chosen to make itself Ground Zero for Jew-hatred in America.”

I suggested that donors cease funding the university, that students and faculty transfer to other institutions, that other institutions take steps to welcome those academic refugees, that Congressional committees grill Columbia officials till they are crispy, that employers decline to hire Columbia grads, that violent and threatening agitators be expelled and prosecuted, and that the university and its officials be sued into oblivion. With each passing day, I grow more comfortable with that stance.

Sorry for the good people caught up in the mess, but sometimes that happens. No doubt, Enron, FTX, and Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities had some fine, honest, dedicated employees—but that would not have justified preserving irredeemably corrupt institutions. Columbia University is rotted through with abusive, antisemitic students, professors, and administrators. Laying waste to the most prominent and highly esteemed abuser of Jewish students would send a powerful signal to other institutions heading down the same road.

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Robert F. Graboyes publishes Bastiat’s Window, a Substack journal of economics, science, and culture—with an emphasis on healthcare. He is a health economist, journalist, and musician in Alexandria, Virginia, and holds five degrees, including a PhD in economics from Columbia University. In 2014, he received the Reason Foundation’s Bastiat Prize for Journalism. His music compositions are at YouTube.com/@RFGraboyes/videos.