Whenever we hear terms like “insurrection,” we assume it comes from oppressed Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression.
On U.S. college campuses, however, the oppressed victims are not Palestinians but Jewish faculty and students, and the oppressors are not Jews but the overwhelming majority of faculty who sympathize with Palestinians and indoctrinate students to hate Israel.
This became clear to me when I saw the latest initiative from AMCHA to combat faculty antisemitism. To give you a sense of how widespread the oppression is against Jews, AMCHA’s first target will be the Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), a network of 170 faculty chapters established after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 that murdered 1200 Israelis.
Think about that: Israelis are massacred in Israel, and a movement begins in America on 170 college campuses whose sole purpose is to target Israel.
“The primary mission of FJP,” AMCHA said in its announcement, “is to exploit their academic positions and departmental resources to actively promote the academic boycott of Israel (academic BDS) by engaging in actions to rid their campuses of Zionism and Zionists, shut down educational opportunities and stifle free speech.”
The growing power of FJP and other anti-Israel groups is not a coincidence. It can be traced directly to a huge influx of overseas money into these universities. According to a 2022 study, for example, Qatar contributed $4.7 billion to dozens of academic institutions across the United States between 2001 and 2021.
In an ongoing research project started in 2012 titled “Follow the Money,” ISGAP examined “illicit funding of United States universities by foreign governments, foundations and corporations that adhere to and promote anti-democratic and antisemitic ideologies, with connections to terrorism and terror financing.”
The research revealed “the existence of substantial Middle Eastern funding (primarily from Qatar) to US universities that had not been reported to the Department of Education (DoED), as required by law.”
The point is this: The movement to oppress Jews and undermine Israel on college campuses is big, widespread and mainstream. Against such a juggernaut, groups like AMCHA are not just activists but feisty insurrectionists, a term I first heard from my friend UCLA Professor Judea Pearl.
Indeed another activist faculty group is The Jewish Faculty Resilience Group (JFrg) at UCLA, which bills itself as “a community of faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and staff, both Jewish and non-Jewish, dedicated to supporting the Jewish community on campus.”
Given what they’re up against, these groups and many others will be punching way above their weight.
FJP, with its 170 chapters and growing, has plenty of support. According to AMCHA, it is “linked to the U.S. affiliate of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which has ties to terrorist organizations, including Hamas.”
It’s easy to see all these names, acronyms and figures and forget the daily impact on Jewish students and faculty. AMCHA’s research has revealed that FJP’s presence on campuses “significantly heightens risks for Jewish students, increasing the likelihood of physical assaults sevenfold and the likelihood of threats of violence threefold.”
FJP also contributed to the duration of encampment protests, “which were likely to last over four and half times longer on campuses where FJP faculty were free to influence and provide logistic and material support to students. And academic boycott calls were nearly 11 times more likely in student demands on campuses with FJP chapters, indicating academic BDS campaigns are faculty-driven.”
In short, the widespread oppression of Jewish students and faculty across college campuses is coming from powerful and mainstream centers of authority, fueled by overseas money.
Against such overwhelming force, Jews need a revolutionary spirit.
The first crucial step is to expose the breadth and depth of the oppression. For example, according to AMCHA, “FJP’s academic boycott extends beyond Israeli institutions, targeting pro-Israel students and faculty on U.S. campuses for exclusion, shutting down educational and research opportunities, refusing dialogue with Jewish organizations and bullying students and faculty who support Israel.”
Influential Jewish groups and activists must support this brave and fledgling “insurrection” by exposing the alarming network of institutional forces arrayed against Jewish students and faculty. I know that groups like StandWithUs, Students Supporting Israel and the Israel on Campus Coalition, among many others, are fighting the good fight. They understand that there must be consequences for discriminating against Jewish students and faculty, not to mention the bullying and intimidation of anyone who expresses support for Israel.
Just as every tiny action of Israel is put under the microscope, we must do the same with this pervasive movement, a movement that is not only normalizing Jew-hatred but also undermining the ideals of higher learning by replacing education with indoctrination. The world must see how far this calumny has gone and how corrosive it has become.
Modern-day Jews are not used to being insurrectionists and revolutionaries. We’re used to being the influential ones, the ones with wealthy donors and powerful lobbyists, part of the “privileged” class.
On college campuses, however, Jews facing oppression are anything but privileged. They are the new rebels on campus, and they’re up against an army of hate. They need our help.
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