Some students at my university, Northwestern, have beensloganeeringAnd rejected the condition that they seetraining videoAbout anti-Semitism. He says it is biased in favor of Israel. But those who don’t see it can’t register, and so they put their jobs, visas, stipends and health insurance at risk.
Sixteen students have thus been affected, although it is unclear how many of them are among the protesters. Recently a federal judge refuse Blocking their discipline.
This regrettable episode involves demonstrative virtue signaling from both sides. Students putting themselves in harm’s way doesn’t help any Palestinians, but the students have a point. The video is controversial and biased. This is a wasted opportunity for education in an area where ignorance is rampant.
The standard technique these days for dealing with bias in school and the workplace is a training video. Such training as Northwestern’s recent presidentacceptedusuallyUseless, or worse,
When the Trump administration presents anti-Semitism as a pretext for attacks on universities, the pressure of such empty gestures is understandable. Gestures should at least not cause any harm. By providing people with truthful information without telling them what they should think, they can also be redesigned to do something good.
Northwestern’s anti-Semitic video, produced by the Jewish United Fund, says Jews are a small minority, making up about one-fifth of one percent of the world’s people. It points out that Jews have often been persecuted and are the most frequent victims of religion-based hate crimes, and it reviews some hateful stereotypes. Everything is true.
But it also raises the thorny issue of Zionism in hectoring and ill-informed ways. It defines Zionism precisely as “the belief in the right of the Jews to self-governance or self-determination in some part of their ancestral homeland” and notes: “It does not set forth specific policies or boundaries.”
The video explains that Zionism takes many forms, with vastly different political implications – ranging from the peaceful two-state solution to the Israel conflict (which most Jews regard with abhorrence) to the ethnic cleansing contemplated by some factions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
Instead, the video declares that “most” forms of anti-Semitism (unhelpful unless you specify which ones) “are anti-Semitic because they operate against Jewish human rights.”
“Although there are Jews who do not identify as Zionists, the majority of Jewish people do. Remember that is what Zionism is, and it is a core part of most people’s Judaism. …Comments that denigrate Israel or Zionists are anti-Semitic.”
It combines quotes from unnamed “anti-Israel activists” with quotes from Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, noting that “the fact that you can’t tell the difference is appalling.”
Here’s one of those “activist” quotes: “First and foremost, I condemn the mixing of Zionism, a political identity, and Judaism, a religious identity. The State of Israel has attempted to conflate the two in order to garner support for its apartheid policy.”
But the video already notes that not all Jews are Zionists, and “criticizing the policies, practices, or members of the Israeli government is not anti-Semitism.” That government has been accused of “apartheid policies” (with which many Jewish Israelis agree).
Netanyahu regularly invokes anti-Semitism to justify his actions. Some people who say things like this are actually anti-Semites. But getting to know someone takes more than just words.
Some opponents of Zionism hope for a one-state solution, in which the entire territory now controlled by Israel would become a unitary, binational state with no special political status for Jews.
This makes intuitive sense to many Americans, including some American Jews. America has had centuries of terrible experience with ethnicity- and religion-based politics, so it is easy to see Zionism as a type of racism. But this is ignorant and naive.
One-state Palestine would be a disaster. If (a big deal) there were elections, Jews would become a persecuted minority in a fundamentalist Islamic state. It would probably end in mass murder. All anti-Semitism is stupid, but not all stupidity is anti-Semitism.
At the same time, much anti-Zionist speech trades in vile stereotypes and apologetics for Hamas, an organization whose purpose is to maximize Palestinian deaths (because they turn world opinion against Israel) and Jewish deaths (because they just love killing Jews).
These complexities are difficult to capture. but education must beginsomewhereA training video could present an outline of the conflict, which is deeply connected to the situation of Jews in America. It may end with suggestionsto read further,
College students are extremely ignorant of Israel’s history. Most of the pro-Palestinian protesters who chanted “From the river to the sea”Didn’t even know which river and which seaAs teachers, we take ignorance for granted. Our job is to solve it. We must do our work.
Andrew KoppelmanJohn Paul Stevens, professor of law at Northwestern University, is the author of “Burning the House: How liberal philosophy became corrupted by delusion and greed,
