Silence of the Jews: How Antizionist Mobs on College Campuses Are Assaulting the Freedom of Jewish Students to Disagree with Them

Historical comparisons have become too commonplace when describing the toxicity of the antizionist movement in higher education. Student activists intimidate peers suspected of “Zionism” like the fascist Blackshirts and Brownshirts, while professors and their young sycophantic followers recycle long discredited Czarist and Stalinist conspiracies about sinister Jewish power. I’ve made such analogies myself. Yet these warnings seem to continue falling on deaf ears. Reminding people of modern and ancient Jewish history to generate empathy also seems to produce the opposite effect. 

But when everyone invokes history to justify their actions, how do you reach people who seem to have vaccinated themselves against any historical truths that complicate their own? More importantly, what happens when the very act of Jews voicing disagreement is treated as reason enough to be disregarded?

I want to try a slightly different approach.

Recently, I started listening to Liu Cixin’s “The Three-Body Problem,” an epic, multigenerational Chinese science fiction tale exploring how civilizations survive or perish through the breadth and quality of their scientific knowledge. It also served as my introduction to post-WWII Marxist China, where the story opens with physics professor, Ye Zhetai, facing a public struggle session in Beijing during the early days of Mao’s oppressive Cultural Revolution.

Students and even his wife, herself a physicist, condemn him for teaching theories that fail to conform to Marxist revolutionary doctrine. At one point, his wife denounces him for teaching Einstein’s theory of relativity and the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, dismissing them as “reactionary idealism.” He responds that they are the explanations most consistent with experimental results, then challenges the premise of the interrogation: “Should philosophy guide experiments, or should experiments guide philosophy?”

“Of course, it should be the Correct philosophy of Marxism that guides scientific experiments!” a student declares.

“That’s equivalent to saying that the ‘correct philosophy’ falls out of the sky,” the professor responds.  “This is against the idea that the truth emerges from experience. It’s counter to the principles of how Marxism seeks to understand nature.”

Frustrated and unable to answer him, one of the students strikes him with her belt, and others join in. The older Red Guard students initially stand by, afraid that intervening would make them appear insufficiently loyal to the cause. One quietly pleads with the professor to submit, who refuses, and is subsequently beaten to death in front of his daughter as the crowd of academics shouts slogans and cheers. 

His murderers consider themselves moral agents of progress, entitled by the righteousness of their cause to punish the reasoning that their understanding of the world cannot accommodate. This is how brittle and intellectually insecure ideologies maintain power: by making disagreement dangerous.

I thought about that scene while considering what happened to two Israeli veterans who came to speak to students at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, last month. The Mustangs United for Israel (MUFI) student group and the local Chabad organized a CAMERA/ZOA co-sponsored event with Belev Echad to discuss coping with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Gaza war. 

Ariel Saat developed PTSD after fighting Hamas terrorists near Kibbutz Kfar Aza and rescuing his wounded commander. Eliyahu Green suffered injuries when shrapnel entered his ear and skull while serving in Gaza. 

They weren’t there to deliver political arguments, but that distinction didn’t interest the antizionist protesters affiliated with the Muslim Student Association (MSA) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). These Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated clubs made clear their demand was for all Israelis and Zionists to be kicked off campus. 

Nine masked student activists arrived with an Israeli flag covered in red paint and filled the room with easy-to-remember chants about genocide.

The organizers had, of course, anticipated a disruption and arranged for police to be present, because episodes like this have become so commonplace that CAMERA trains all of our students on how to organize security and coordinate with law enforcement.

Thankfully, police removed them quickly, the event continued, and the school’s administrators supported the MUFI students. Cal Poly deserves credit, because there are still plenty of schools making less-than-friendly choices.  

Near the end of the event, some protesters returned to ask questions; “97% of the schools in Gaza have been completely obliterated. What about the kids? Don’t the kids deserve an education?” The speakers reminded them that Hamas uses those buildings for military purposes, often building tunnels directly underneath, storing and firing rockets within and even holding hostages captive, and that nobody should blindly rely on data provided by the U.N. because it has repeatedly promoted fraudulent reports produced by Hamas. Such facts didn’t penetrate. The slogan shouting restarted immediately after the speakers had had enough. 

While asking questions is preferable to shouting down the speakers, the act alone does not necessarily signal a willingness to honestly consider its answer. 

A few days later, those two activists were interviewed in an unapologetically sympathetic student news report complaining that while they were able to get the Jews there to acknowledge atrocities and children being killed, they remained “stuck in the weeds” over facts, figures and the number harmed. In other words, the Jews will continue to be harassed and threatened until they adopt the “correct” philosophy of antizionism regardless of any inconvenient observable data.

But those “weeds” are where disagreement actually happens. Facts, definitions, competing evidence and questions of causation are not distractions from a moral argument. They are what allow us to determine whether the accusation is justified in the first place. Once the conclusion becomes morally compulsory, asking for evidence can itself be treated as evidence of guilt. A student is no longer merely wrong for rejecting the accusation; the refusal to agree becomes proof that something is wrong with them which then makes it easier to justify inflicting harm.

In this case, the intimidation continued online. 

An Instagram account reportedly operated by one of the anonymous activists circulated heavily edited clips to tens of thousands of followers. The predominantly Jewish student organizers and associated organizations received messages comparing them to cancer and vermin, wishing them dead and calling them “child raping demons.” One sender even threatened to find them if they brought another Israeli soldier to campus. 

The threats made clear that the consequences extended beyond the people in the room. Other students watching learn what it can cost to organize or attend the next event.

That distinction is why “free speech” does not quite describe the problem. The Cal Poly students and their speakers were allowed to continue. But the freedom to disagree requires more than the absence of official censorship. If expressing the wrong view predictably brings threats, ostracism or fears about one’s future, students may remain legally free to speak while becoming increasingly unwilling to exercise that freedom.

The freedom to disagree requires more than the absence of official censorship. If expressing the wrong view predictably brings threats, ostracism or fears about one’s future, students may remain legally free to speak while becoming increasingly unwilling to exercise that freedom. 

The danger in the Chinese professor’s persecution likewise extends beyond the fate of one academic or the study of physics. His attackers claim the authority to decide what everyone else must accept as true. 

This is why Shao Lin, Ye Zhetai’s Marxist wife in the novel, is also such a tragic character. She represents what happens when people learn to anticipate and internalize the accusation before it comes. In their final exchange, she shouts: “You covered my eyes with your reactionary view of the world and science! But now I am awake and alert. With the help of the revolutionary youths, I want to stand on the side of the revolution, the side of the people!” 

It’s never explained whether her denunciation of her husband was genuine or political theater, but by then it doesn’t really matter. “You are truly too smart,” he tells her. “Even a few years ago, you could feel the political winds shifting in academia and prepared yourself.” Yet even teaching students “that all scientific accomplishments resulted from the wisdom of the working masses, and those capitalist academic authorities only stole these fruits and put their names on them” was not enough. 

Her prominent pre-revolutionary family and famous scholar parents still left her outside the “revolutionary mainstream,” unable to prove that she truly belonged. Desperate to survive, she performs her loyalty more aggressively, only to watch helplessly as her husband is murdered in front of her and her daughter is eventually imprisoned for refusing to sign a fraudulent report. 

That is the more enduring consequence of making disagreement dangerous: eventually silence is not enough. People learn that they must demonstrate their own correctness by helping force everyone else to conform, especially when some part of their identity leaves their loyalty permanently suspect. 

We are not in Maoist China, and the differences in violence and state power are enormous. But the demand for intellectual conformity is recognizable: repeat the approved condemnation, or have your refusal treated as evidence against you.

That is why defending pro-Israel students should matter to people unmoved by appeals to Jewish and Israeli history. The accusation may concern Israel, and the immediate targets may be “Zionists,” but the permission to bully people into agreement threatens everyone. Accept it here, and you help establish a standard under which the freedom to disagree depends on the crowd’s approval.

That attack on the freedom to disagree was stated with unusual clarity during an Oxford Union debate earlier this year over Islam’s compatibility with the West. Rather than respond directly to her opponent’s assertions, the self-identified antizionist student participant repeatedly accused him of bigotry and joked that “there is a crowd outside rioting against you tonight. And without the protection and generosity of this Muslim Palestinian President and the mostly South Asian executive committee, you would be quite literally cooked.” 

Facing potential mob violence, silence can become a kind of rational, albeit disappointing, response.

The brave and hopeful continue organizing events and CAMERA fellows will continue writing articles that challenge these morally vacuous bullies. But even those determined to speak out have started to worry more about their safety and future careers. 

Courage does not make consequences disappear, and no undergraduate owes their personal safety to a political cause. 

Unfortunately, when too many make this calculation, it means antizionism’s intimidation is working. Prolonged silence allows a critical mass of enforced conformity to look like consensus, freeing whatever local Free Palestine/Globalize the Intifada brigades there are to truly start promoting their beliefs as they promise, “by any means necessary.”

Cal Poly showed what institutions should do: the university enforced its rules, and Hillel stood by its students. But these are relatively easy steps. The most impactful improvement lies with individuals. Each of us needs to lead by example and reject the assumption that the righteousness of any cause exempts its beliefs from scrutiny. Deigning to speak with “the opposition” means little if every answer that challenges our beliefs is dismissed as an evasion, made in bad faith, or outright ignored. 

If people really want Zionists to rethink our beliefs, they must be willing to rethink theirs. We all need to ask questions whose answers could change our minds, consider what evidence would make us revise an accusation, and condemn threats without demanding political agreement from those targeted. 

The next time an antizionist student confronts me, I’ll have a question of my own: If your movement teaches you to question everything except itself, how do you know you’re not a pawn in someone else’s game?

When these kinds of interactions are no longer encouraged or even taught, we might as well admit that civil discourse has become an empty ritual that has left a vacuum for something truly evil to fill. 

Seth B. Mendel is the Campus Editor for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.