Separating anti-Zionists from antisemites on campus

Post Reply New Topic

Two-thirds of college students do not hold views toward Israel or Jews “likely to threaten their relationship with their Jewish peers,” a new study from Brandeis University found.

But what about the remaining third? Researchers found that group split roughly equally between those who expressed hostility toward Israel (but not Jews) and those who thought poorly of Jews (but not Israel).

It represents the second recent study to find that animosity toward Israel is not clearly linked to an embrace of antisemitic ideas — even while these hostile attitudes can alienate them from Jews on campus.

The Brandeis team polled 4,123 undergraduates at 60 schools with a significant number of Jewish students. The academics asked a battery of questions, and then using a complex process grouped respondents into one of four buckets: Those not hostile toward Israel or Jews (66% of the total); those hostile toward Israel but not Jews (15%); those hostile toward Jews but not Israel (16%) and those hostile toward both Israel and Jews (2%).

One datapoint that caught my eye is that the students who were more hostile toward Jews than Israel also were more supportive of terrorism against Israel. For example, 24% of the hostile-to-Jews group agreed that “all Israeli civilians should be considered legitimate targets for Hamas,” compared to 6% of those hostile to Israel.

Also: Among the group that agreed with statements including “Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind,” 66% said that Israel had a right to exist.

These findings track with a study I shared here in March showing that more conservative college students are more likely to support Hamas killing Israeli civilians.

What’s going on here?
So we now have two new studies showing that hardcore anti-Zionists on campus — around 15% of students nationally, according to the Brandeis study — are not especially likely to participate in “consensus antisemitism,” a term that the scholar Keith Kahn-Harris uses to describe ideas that disparage all Jews because they are Jews.

But there’s a similar share of students who do hold those sorts of views — they agree with antisemitic tropes and are more likely support Hamas terrorist attacks — who tend to be more conservative and more supportive of Israel (26% of them had a favorable view of the Israeli government, compared with 21% of the majority of students who were not hostile toward either Israel or Jews).

Some might see these findings as validation of the anti-Zionists’ refrain that their only objection is to the state of Israel, and a comfort to Jews worried that the growing animosity toward Israel will fuel a further rise in antisemitism. Among the anti-Zionists in the survey, for example, only 4% agreed that “Jews should be held accountable for Israel’s actions.”

Len Saxe, the lead researcher on the study, is skeptical. “It’s just a different way of expressing the same old hostility, the same old prejudices,” he said in an interview. “I would call it a new expression of traditional antisemitism.”

But the study may be another signal that while mainstream Jewish organizations have focused in recent years, and especially since Oct. 7, on left-wing threats, there may be an equal — or greater — threat festering among right-wing students.

Alas, the Brandeis study also confirmed a problem I highlighted in last week’s newsletter about the exclusion of “Zionists,” broadly defined, from progressive spaces: Roughly 11% of college students are effectively refusing to socialize with the vast majority of their Jewish peers over disagreements related to Israel.

That ostracism is a serious problem — but it’s more complicated than the simple story we’re often told of protesters who have turned their sights on Israel because they hate Jews, and policymakers trying to address the campus climate would do well to read the Brandeis study in full.

The way this article is written shows the prejudices of the author.

How U.S. News Media Manufactured ‘Antisemitism on Campuses’ - Al Jazeera

Yeah I'm not buying this. 99% of the kids protesting on behalf of Palestinians probably can't find Israel on a map.

Yeah I'm not buying this. 99% of the kids protesting on behalf of Palestinians probably can't find Israel on a map.

According to the joint study [PDF] — titled “What College-Aged Students Know About the World: A Survey on Global Literacy” — conducted by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and National Geographic, a mere 31 percent of respondents knew the location of Israel on a map of the Middle East.

Close to 50% were able to locate Iraq and Iran on a map, with 61% able to identify Saudi Arabia.A small number of respondents — 29% — were able to identify Indonesia and its distinction as the country with the largest majority Muslim population in the world.

CFR and National Geographic concluded that the survey “revealed significant gaps between what young people understand about today’s world and what they need to know to successfully navigate and compete in it.”

The average score of respondents “was only 55% correct,” the report said. “Just 29% of respondents earned a minimal pass — 66% correct or better. Just over one percent…earned an A, 91% or higher.”

Despite the bleak results of the survey, CFR and National Geographic wrote, the “good news is that [it] also reflects an opportunity” to capitalize on the interest of young Americans regarding world affairs and educate them on important global issues.

The survey was conducted online and is based on responses of 1,203 participants aged 18 to 26 who currently attend or have recently attended a two or four-year college or university in the US.

Whatever the case may be, I don’t think you need to know where Israel is to have an opinion on what’s going on there. Some folks have disabilities (e.g. dyslexia) which may make it difficult for them to read maps. It doesn’t mean that their view is otherwise uninformed or that they can’t stand up for what they believe is right.

Your point of dragging people with disabilities into a discussion about anti-Israel protests on campuses is a non-sequitur.

the problem is where they choose to use language that is clearly antisemitic or choose to hurt police, damage buildings or disrupt the flow of traffic or business. MLK, Malcolm X and Gandhi never asked their followers to do these things. I have a problem where a protestor says they are passionate but are they really? or do they get caught up in the moment and choose to break the law for technically an issue they aren't really informed about in the first place.

It is not a non-sequitur because it genuinely happens and should be considered if you’re going to bring the topic up..

That’s made abundantly clear by the fact that you pulled a made-up statistic out of your ass instead of providing research on this off-topic side point.

the 75% is actually based on your statistic that 25% of American campus kids protesting know where Israel is on a map, so I used simple arithmetic to deduct 25 from 100 to give me 75%.

It is and you know it.

Most of them aren’t doing those things although I will say that genocidal behavior seems like an understandable thing to get upset about. If I was in college, I would be engaging in peaceful protests which are occurring on many campuses.