College Leftists Expand Campaign to Silence All Talk of Israel

On college campuses across the nation, progressive activists have accelerated their efforts to silence and ban any talk of Zionism. Last month, in a campaign initiated by Law Students for Justice in Palestine (LSJP) at Berkeley Law at the University of California Berkeley, nine progressive law groups amended their collective bylaws to exclude speakers that support “Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine.” The LSJP claimed it as a win for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. 

Woke ideologues have decided that campus freedom of speech is only for those who agree with them without the possibility for debate. And this particularly impacts Jews — particularly those who are Zionist. How has this happened? Like so much of left-think, this campus debate is pitting the “oppressed” vs. “oppressors.” In this case, “oppressed” Palestinians who must be advocated for and kept safe from their pro-Israel “oppressors.”

The anti-Israel rhetoric at Berkeley Law has created a hostile (and even dangerous) environment for Jews holding Zionist beliefs. Bloomberg via Getty Images

Along the way, pro-Palestinian groups like LSJP have the right to share their views, but pro-Zionist groups – not so much. And this leaves many Jewish students unable to defend themselves against increasingly hostile campus attacks.

David L. Bernstein, founder and CEO of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (JILV), and author of the new book “Woke Antisemitism: How Progressive Ideology Harms Jews” has studied the ways modern anti-Semitism has been rebranded as anti-Zionism — including on college campuses. “Oppressor v. Oppressed is always the default orientation of the woke left, whose ideologies equate power with depravity, and powerlessness with virtue,” writes Bernstein.

David L. Bernstein is the author of “Woke Antisemitism: How Progressive Ideology Harms Jews.”

This ideology “has become so pernicious and so widespread that mainstream Jewish leaders have little chance to move the needle on progressive attitudes to Jews and Israel,” Bernstein adds. 

Of course, this being the left, race has also been added into the mix. By classifying Jews as “white” oppressors, Bernstein argues, progressives seek to erase the history of discrimination and anti-Semitism Jews have endured for centuries. And this effort is clearly working. In a national poll commissioned by Bernstein’s JILV of likely voters released this week, nearly half (45%) view Israel as an “occupier/colonizer” and 47 percent believe Israel has too much power.

The exile of Zionism from campus life is hardly limited to Berkeley Law. In August, Jewish on Campus, a national pro-Jewish student-led organization along with the Brandeis Center for Human Rights, filed a civil rights complaint after Jewish students were kicked out of a rape survivor support group at SUNY New Paltz because of their Zionist beliefs.More recently, a University of Vermont teaching assistant proudly posted on social media that she would be lowering the grades of “Zionist students.” The US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has since opened an investigation. 

The removal of Jewish students from a rape-survivor