Wellesley News’ Dangerously Slanted Editorial Will Spark Antisemitism

The Wellesley News one-sided, incendiary and misleading call for “the liberation of Palestine” and pledge of support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, a force the U.S. State Department has labeled “a manifestation of antisemitism” is more than misguided or misleading, it is flat out disgraceful and dangerous.

BDS’ policy of “anti-normalization,” as the ADL notes, “forbids people-to-people exchanges, dialogue opportunities for Israelis and Palestinians or even interactions between ‘pro-Israel’ and ‘pro-Palestine’ groups and advocates unless the parties involved first recognize Israelis as ‘oppressors’ and ‘colonizers.’” It utterly rejects a two-state solution or any sort of peaceful resolution, and it extends that rejection to Jewish individuals and students who support the peaceful existence of one Jewish state alongside the 22 Arab countries in the Middle East.  Just as BDS boils down the entire Middle East conflict into this one-sided and dangerous understanding, so does the Wellesley News.  It dangerously furthers the othering of Jews and takes a stance that will encourage antisemitism.

The editorial board never states how much of historic “Palestine” – which, as the name of a British colony or “Mandate” from 1920-48, included all of modern-day Israel – they would “liberate” from the Jewish state. However, the article’s usage appears to indicate that they consider the entire country “occupied” territory – the position of BDS, which the article explicitly endorses. It also misleadingly calls for “granting Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes” – but since the refugees from the 1948 Partition of Palestine are the only group considered “refugees” over multiple generations, this is coded language for demographically overwhelming, and ultimately eliminating, the Jewish state. Nor does it mention that most Israelis are descendants of Middle Eastern Jews who were expelled from Muslim-majority countries during and immediately after the 1948 conflict.  In addition, it fails to even acknowledge the number of times Israel has offered land for peace or the challenges Israel faces in protecting its citizens from terrorism.

The article suggests that “Palestinian students on campus, especially international students… may hesitate to speak out for fear of retribution.” The authors do not appear to understand that this is what is currently happening to Jewish students, who again and again are being asked to suppress part of their identity to be welcome in certain spaces, and are being shamed and demonized if they don’t. To prove that point, the editorial board strongly and unequivocally condemns Wellesley’s policy “to encourage more Jewish college students to visit Israel” on Birthright trips. In fact, in September of 2021, a survey of “college students who claim a strong sense of Jewish identity and connection to Israel” by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law found that 50% felt the need to hide their Jewish identity.

Very dangerously, the editorial board advocates support for the Mapping Project, a map that tracks the Jewish institutions of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and labels them “highly militarized forces that share resources and information to enforce the intersecting systems of white supremacy and capitalism.” The “highly militarized forces” whose information the map publicizes include teen- and youth-focused organizations like the Hillel Council of New England, the Jewish Teen Foundation of Greater Boston, and even a Jewish high school, Gann Academy, as well as the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts, the Jewish Arts Collaborative, the Jewish Journal – and many more. This is happening as pro-BDS radicals call Jewish community organizations “Zionist organizations hiding behind Judaism. So every single organization on that list is a legitimate target…” and publicly state: “We need to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues. They are your enemies.” As I warned on June 15, “[w]hat the Mapping Project has built is a plan for a pogrom.”

The editorial board concludes by comparing “Israel’s settler-colonial regime” to “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine [and] the fall of Roe v. Wade…” in a further attempt to demonize the Jewish state, and, in turn, Jewish students. The comparisons are wildly inept. Israel, like Ukraine, has been in a struggle for survival for its entire existence against much larger neighbors; it’s no wonder that Ukraine’s President Zelensky has said that he wants his country to become“a ‘‘big Israel’ with its own face[,]” a security-focused democratic state. In Israel, about 98% of those who apply for an abortion receive one, and the government further liberalized an already robust pro-choice policy after Roe was struck down by allowing women “to undergo abortions at their local health centers, rather than at hospitals or surgical clinics.” The column also repeats the widely inaccurate comparison of Israel and South Africa, calling Israel “apartheid” no fewer than four times in a single article. In fact, Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East, with Arab representation at its highest levels of government, the home of Asia’s largest Pride celebrating the LGBTQ+ community, and has a Jewish population whose majority is from outside Europe, including 160,000 Africans rescued from Ethiopia.  It also completely ignores the idea that Israel celebrates Jewish self-determination and provides a safe haven for Jews who have been discriminated against, persecuted and even annihilated for thousands of years.

Wesley College President Paula A. Johnson strongly condemned the editorial board’s endorsement of BDS and the Mapping Project and should be commended for forcibly speaking out against this dangerous endorsement. While President Johnson understands the danger of the BDS campaign against Israel, the editors of the Wellesley News have been sold a bill of goods by the antisemitic BDS campaign. As I wrote on June 1 after the Harvard Crimson endorsed BDS, “[t]he fact that budding journalists at one of the country’s most selective colleges would spread such a lie is shocking but not surprising… scores of students and faculty have been convinced they are supporting a nonviolent, peaceful movement for Palestinian independence, without understanding what they are truly backing.”

As the AMCHA Initiative’s researchers have found, “[s]chools that are promoting BDS or other kinds of anti-Zionist rhetoric…are three to eight times more likely to have incidents that target Jewish students for harm,” including physical assault, harassment, the suppression of speech, and destruction of property. Perhaps some on the editorial board meant well, but at a time when antisemitism is soaring in the United States – the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found an all-time high of antisemitic campus incidents in the 2020-21 school year, with 43 percent of Jewish college students personally experiencing or witnessing antisemitic activity – it’s important to present the full picture and not one that is likely to alienate Jewish students, breed anti-Jewish bigotry and ignite a campus firestorm.

Jacob Baime is Chief Executive Officer of the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC), a leading organization in the fight against anti-Israel activity and antisemitism in the United States. He was also the Area Director of AIPAC’s New England Region and served as Campus Coalition Director for Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey.