Guilty by Association: The “Progressive” Mask of Antisemitism

In my senior year of high school, I served as the student body President of my student government. On October 7th, 2023, I stayed up for what felt like an eternity into the darkest hours of the morning, watching the news with my mom. The next day, rather than seeing coverage of the attack in Israel, I watched protests across the nation and at universities erupt against the Jewish state and its people.

Nearly a year later, during my freshman year at UCSB, while interviewing to be an On-Campus Senator, I was asked publicly about my Jewish identity. I answered honestly, but for the first time ever, I was afraid of being openly Jewish. I hesitantly shared that “I go to Hillel, but really just for free dinner on Friday nights!” To all but one of the students on the other end of the interview, that answer disqualified me as a candidate.

After weeks of anxiously awaiting the outcome, one of the Senators on the committee, who has since become one of my best friends, called me privately. He was at a loss for words and, to lessen the impact on me, said I did not get the seat due to “ideological differences.”

I have since learned that he was the only Senator who voted for me. Yet, out of five open seats and six applicants, I was the only one rejected because the other students on the committee believed I was unfit, as I had claimed a connection to Hillel, a Jewish nonprofit organization they perceived as “Zionist.” The result was so clear early on that one of the Senators even joked, “Well, do we even have to calculate the votes?”

In short: “You did not get the position because you are Jewish.”

I had been thrown into a war and a history far larger than myself, not because of my politics, but because of my identity. Because I was born into the traditions of dipping apples into honey, of singing half-broken Hebrew at thirteen during Bar Mitzvah. From that moment on, I understood how antisemitism often disguises itself as the “progressive” anti-Zionism.

I had always believed merit, good character, and honest effort would protect me from discrimination. I learned the painful reality that Jews are often cast as villains in narratives that demand simple enemies. While I empathize with the frustrations of the loss of innocent life in Gaza, some of the college students on the committee, who claimed to stand for the oppressed, chose to practice exclusion where they wielded power. In the name of social justice, they had become discriminators.

The war in Gaza and its humanitarian toll are devastating and impossible to ignore. I consider myself a critic not only of Israel’s but of all governments. However, I am able to differentiate between an administration and its people, a distinction that seems to grow ever rarer in mainstream and student narratives.

But many who claim to champion human rights forget that criticism must come with responsibility. Pro-Palestinian protestors routinely collapse Jews and Israelis into a single political entity, including Israelis who oppose the war, those who protest the Netanyahu government, and Jewish students who simply want to improve their college campuses.

Now, as the elected leader of the student Senate since winning my race last Spring, I often think about that day as a freshman. How one answer I gave about my identity has now changed the trajectory of my life.

Contrary to the anti-Israel protest signs around campus, anti-Zionism is often a form of antisemitism. By cloaking itself in the language of “moral superiority,” the word anti-Zionist is too often used as a modern mask for antisemitism, all without guilt. Though it may seem controversial, for me, it comes back to simply asking myself: if the students on the other side of the computer screen were not antisemitic, why did they assume they knew my political leanings, my beliefs on the war, and my morals? The answer is that they did not care about my politics — they only cared about my DNA. If only they had asked, and not reached a conclusion based on my identity, they would have realized that many Jews, students like me, have a lot more in common than we think.

Evan Sussman is a sophomore at UCSB studying political science and history and serves as the First President Pro Tempore of the ASUCSB Senate.