All the Darkness They Cannot See: The Tunnel Vision That Drives Faculty Antisemitism

After Oct. 7 I didn’t think I could be more shocked than by seeing American campuses explode in support rather than condemnation of that barbaric massacre. I was wrong. Now after seven months of open season on Jews both rhetorically and physically, culminating in the encampments on well over 100 campuses, I find myself struggling not to think of the disastrous years 70 C.E., 1492, and 1939, alongside America of 2024. 

Oddly, though, even though the encampments break so many campus rules and often local laws, my starting point is actually to be sympathetic to them. I think about how I would act, say, during the early 1940s, when I learned that a genocide against the Jewish people was occurring and people were not paying attention. Wouldn’t I protest, loudly? Disrupt “business as normal”? Maybe even break a few rules or laws? I hope that I would. 

The problem, then, isn’t the mayhem, per se (though it’s appropriately against the rules and must be — is long overdue for being —punished). It runs deeper, rooted in the academy itself: It’s that these people falsely believe a genocide is occurring (when it clearly isn’t), and misidentify the true genocidal agent (as we’ll see). More generally, it’s that they have adopted an entire narrative that is one-sided, oversimplified, ignorant of history, often counter to the facts, mistaken about who are the good guys and the bad, and driven, ultimately, by hatred and bigotry—and that licenses the outrageously immoral violence of Oct. 7.

A painful glimpse of all this may be found in a revealing statement recently issued by some 90 faculty and staff at Connecticut College, constituting almost half the fulltime faculty at this typical liberal arts college, in “solidarity” with the encampments. Much is objectionable in it; but we will look only at one sentence: 

“We also stand in solidarity with Israeli organizations and activists who oppose Israeli apartheid and Jewish supremacy …”

Shades of 1939 indeed, when half the professors at a college can so casually accuse the Jews of “Jewish supremacy”; Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels would be pleased to see his trope flourishing so. No number of fig leaves (by invoking some Israelis who agree with it) can conceal the fact that this is “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”-level delusional antisemitic rhetoric that professors in 2024 America are happily signing their names to. 

It is also dangerous rhetoric. A person who believes in “Jewish supremacy” will soon support drastic measures against Jews, up to and including genocide. Witness the Nazis, directly inspired by the Protocols, and Hamas, whose openly genocidal founding charter liberally quotes from the Protocols. That connection, note, is not accidental. The Muslim Brotherhood worked with the Nazis during WWII, and the infamous Mufti Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, representing the Brotherhood as the long-time leader of the Palestinian national movement, spent the war in Berlin to help the Nazis bring the Final Solution to the Middle East. Hamas is of course a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza. Contemporary progressives, including these professors, like to distinguish: “Nazism bad, Palestinianism good,” in essence. But in the context of the current war, supporting Hamas — as every measure demanded by the encampments and thus by this faculty statement does — is supporting literally the same Jewish eliminationist program as the Nazis.

In the context of the current war, supporting Hamas—as every measure demanded by the encampments and thus by this faculty statement does—is supporting literally the same Jewish- eliminationist program as the Nazis.

Right there is the heart of the problem, what these people cannot or will not see; the hyperfocus, the tunnel vision, that leads so many to casually accept “Jewish supremacy.”

Israel is surrounded by openly genocidal neighbors. Just in the current war it has been attacked by Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and of course Iran. Hamas has launched five wars against Israel since seizing Gaza in 2007, and that was after two decades of launching suicide bombers, in total murdering thousands of Israelis. And yet all these faculty members can see are Israeli offenses, only Israeli offenses, out of their context, which they see as aggressions and describe using such inflammatory language as “apartheid” and “Jewish supremacy.”

But remember Israel was founded for a reason: to be a safe haven for the widely persecuted Jews. And note that as of the 1947 U.N. partition proposal there were zero Palestinian refugees: not only did Zionism itself not displace anybody, there was significant Arab immigration into Palestine precisely because Zionism developed the country, with room enough for all. Had the Arabs accepted partition we might have been celebrating the 76th anniversary this month of the two states living next to each other in peace.

The Arabs chose war, and continued to choose war for decades; in the form of Hamas, they continue to choose war.

That is the context these professors cannot, or will not, see.

Now consider what the Israelis — the Jews — accomplished in this context, apart from managing not to be exterminated.

Despite ongoing threats and attacks faced by no other country, despite relentless terrorism, Israel built a flourishing democracy that enshrines civil and legal equality for its many minorities, including its at times hostile Arab minority. It is neither perfect nor free of discrimination and inequality; no country is. It is a Jewish country, which creates perhaps some challenges for its minorities; but every country has a majority nation or culture with similar challenges. And yet despite all that Israel still manages to be a country where its sometimes hostile Arab minority has more rights and freedoms than Arab citizens have in most Arab countries. It also manages to be a country where its own citizens, such as the Israeli fig leaves above, can freely condemn its government and its society, even labeling them as “apartheid” and “Jewish supremacy,” if that’s how they feel.

Those who believe in free speech — as the faculty statement claims it does — ought to be applauding that amazing achievement. 

Compare that to Israel’s neighbors, most of whom are its enemies. Not a democracy among them, neither freedoms nor basic human rights for their citizens, no equality for their minorities, and certainly no rights for their Jews—because they all ethnically cleansed their Jews. Compare Israel just to the Palestinian Authority, which forbids land sales to Jews, restricts Jews from accessing holy sites under P.A. jurisdiction, and has for years run its “pay to slay” program rewarding its citizens for murdering Jews. Or to Hamas, whose founding charter justifies genocide of the Jews by the same Protocols that motivated the Nazis. If you’re looking for actual apartheid — legally enforced separation — then you don’t get more of that than in the expulsion, restriction of mobility, subsidized murder, and wholesale genocide supported by most of Israel’s neighbors and enemies.

The professors can only see alleged Israeli offenses. They fail to see the in fact far greater offenses of all the surrounding entities, much less consider that much Israeli action is not aggression but reaction, reaction to being surrounded by dozens of countries and hundreds of millions of people who wish to erase this sliver from the globe and murder its seven million Jews.

And so they think “Jewish supremacy” is the problem.

The “Jewish supremacy” allegation is a vile, antisemitic lie — targeting the one actual democracy in the region that strives to maintain equal rights under security conditions faced by no other democracy. Oh, and that also happens to be a Jewish democracy.

Beneath the professors’ fancy talk of freedom and human rights, then, there is just good old-fashioned antisemitism.

Nineteen-thirty-nine indeed.

Andrew Pessin is Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College and Campus Bureau Editor of The Algemeiner.