Murdering Jews or attempting to murder Jews because they are Jews as happened in recent attacks in Washington DC and Boulder, Colorado is antisemitic and must be denounced. Challenging Israel’s actions in Gaza is not. Being horrified when Israeli troops open fire on starving Palestinians desperate for food at a relief station in Gaza, wounding over one hundred and killing at between 20 and 30 people, is not antisemitic.
Donald Trump is making war on Harvard and Columbia Universities accusing them of tolerating antisemitism because they did not silence student protests against Israeli’s war on Gaza. Congress is again considering a bill, the Antisemitism Awareness Act, that would make the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism the official definition in the United States. This definition brands anti-Israeli protestors as antisemitic if they hold Israel to a “higher standard” than other democratic nations, something that would be decided by pro-Israel groups and stifle free speech.
Despite Trump using claims of antisemitism as a weapon to force his agenda on universities, Trump himself seems to be growing impatient with Israeli prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the war. Up until now, Trump consistently stated that his administration and the Netanyahu government were on the same page over Israeli’s strategy of unrestricted and unending war until Hamas was completely eliminated. However, he recently told reporters, “Israel, we’ve been talking to them, and we want to see if we can stop that whole situation as quickly as possible.”
While Israel’s savage war on Gaza has attracted the most international and media attention, over 900 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank by the Israeli military and settler gangs since the war in Gaza started in October 2023. In April 6, a 14-year-old Palestinian American boy who was born in New Jersey and was a U.S. citizen was murdered by Israeli soldiers who claimed he was throwing rocks. New Jersey Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker are demanding an American-led investigation into his death, but the Trump administration has refused to put pressure on its Israeli allies.
While Americans are accused of antisemitism for challenging the Israeli war on Gaza and actions against Palestinians on the West Bank, thousands of Israelis march in protest against government policies and a number of prominent Israeli’s condemn the Netanyahu regime.
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that “This war should have ended by early 2024. It continued without justification, without any clear goal and with no political vision for the future of Gaza and the Middle East in general. . . What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy – knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”
Amit Halevi, a member of Netanyahu’s staunchly pro-war Likud Party believes the government has seriously blundered in its conduct of the war. Because of his views, Halevi was removed from the Israeli parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committees. Halevi now argues “This war is a deception. They lied to us about its achievements.” Israel has “been fighting a war for 20 months with failed plans” and it “is not succeeding in destroying Hamas.”
Former General Yair Golan, the leader of Israel’s liberal alliance stated in an interview with Israel Radio: “Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don’t return to acting like a sane country. A sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not set itself the aim of expelling populations.”
According to Amos Harel, the military analyst for Haaretz, “Many bombing runs are actually assassination attempts against Hamas leaders, often when they’re with their families . . . Even when the army declares multiple steps of caution, these attacks result in massive killing.”
Avrum Burg, a former speaker of the Israeli parliament states that the ultra-Orthodox and religious-settler-nationalist community in Israel sees Gaza as a religious war. “You tell them Israel could have peace with Saudi Arabia and they will shrug and tell you that they are waiting for the Messiah.” According to Burg, “Bibi is actually their pawn, not the real player.”
Moshe Yalon, formerly a former top Israeli general who served as defense minister in a previous Netanyahu cabinet, charges the current far-right government is determined to “occupy, to annex, to ethnically cleanse” the Palestinian population of Gaza and the West Bank. “(They) are actually cleaning the territory of Arabs.”
Almost 1,000 active duty and retired Israeli air force reservists, signed a letter accuses the Netanyahu government of continuing a war that “serves mainly political and personal interests, not security interests . . . The continuation of the war does not contribute to any of its declared goals and will lead to the deaths of the hostages, Israeli soldiers and innocent civilians, and to the attrition of the IDF reserve forces.”
More than 1,200 Israeli academics, members of the Black Flag Action Group, signed an open letter calling on the leaders of Israel’s colleges and universities to demand a stop the war on Gaza.
“Since Israel violated the ceasefire on March 18, almost 3,000 people have been killed in Gaza. The vast majority of them were civilians. Since the start of the war, at least 53,000 people have been killed in Gaza, including at least 15,000 children and at least 41 Israeli hostages. At the same time, many international bodies are warning of acute starvation – the result of intentional and openly declared Israeli government policy – as well as of the rendering of Gaza into an area unfit for human habitation. Israel continues to bomb hospitals, schools, and other institutions. Among the war’s declared goals, as defined in the orders for the current military operation ‘Gideon’s Chariots,’ is the ‘concentration and displacement of the population.’ This is a horrifying litany of war crimes and even crimes against humanity, all of our own doing.
As academics, we recognize our own role in these crimes. It is human societies, not governments, that commit crimes against humanity. Some do so by means of direct violence. Others do so by sanctioning the crimes and justifying them, before and after the fact, and by keeping quiet and silencing voices in the halls of learning. It is this bond of silence that allows clearly evident crimes to continue unabated without penetrating the barriers of recognition.
We cannot claim that we did not know. We have been silent for too long. For the sake of the lives of innocents and the safety of all the people of this land, Palestinians and Jews; for the sake of the return of the hostages; if we do not call to halt the war immediately, history will not forgive us. We will not forgive ourselves. It is our duty to act to stop the slaughter; it is our duty to save lives. It is our duty to save what can still be saved of this land’s future. The institutions of higher education in Israel must raise their voices, address their students and the public at large, look at reality directly and call things what they are – unspeakable actions being done in our name, with our own hands, that will ultimately result in destroying higher education in Israel and the entire society from within.”
By: Alan Singer
Source: Daily Kos
