![Some see the slogan "From the River to the Sea" as a call for the destruction of Israel. While others see it is as a call for equal rights for Palestinians and Jews.[1]- Wikipedia](https://isranet.org/storage/s-2024-08-18T105748.028.png "Some see the slogan \"From the River to the Sea\" as a call for the destruction of Israel. While others see it is as a call for equal rights for Palestinians and Jews.[1]- Wikipedia")
Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS, Apr. 11, 2025
“… the liberal leadership of the organized Jewish world at places like ADL and AJC, as well as thought leaders like Lipstadt and Summers, feel that siding with Trump against antisemites is a bridge too far for them.”
Is there such a thing as being too opposed to antisemitism? Can fighting those who call for the genocide of Jews be somehow bad for the Jews? Is it better to let bigotry flourish in secular institutions rather than suffer the indignity of supporting someone whose policies one opposes on other issues? Is the loyalty one feels to those institutions and to political allies who have abandoned the Jews in a moment of peril more important than the solidarity one ought to feel with fellow Jews, especially those under attack?
Those are the questions being raised by the conduct of leading Jewish groups and leaders in the last week. That they did so on the eve of Passover points to a troubling trend among those to whom American Jews look for leadership. This is a basic question of Jewish rights, in which they clearly view partisan loyalties as having a higher priority than standing up for their people at a time of an unprecedented surge in antisemitism in America, coupled with the war being waged by Iran and its terrorist proxies on the existence of the State of Israel.
Groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, along with former Biden administration antisemitism special envoy and historian Deborah Lipstadt, former Harvard president and economist Lawrence Summers, Wesleyan University president Michael Roth and, most outrageously, Hillel CEO Adam Lehman were just some of those who chose to join the “resistance” against President Donald Trump’s efforts to rid higher education of woke antisemitic ideologies and to deport foreign students who advocate for Jewish genocide and Hamas terrorism.
Their comments were not uniform. They all said they oppose campus antisemitism, as well as the way schools have tolerated and even encouraged left-wing ideologues and pro-Hamas activists who have created a hostile environment for Jewish students in which they have been targeted for shunning, intimidation and even violence. But all opposed or called into question the only meaningful way to combat the Jew-haters and to rid higher education of the toxic influence of radical ideas that have normalized antisemitism. Indeed, they are prepared to stand by—and do little or nothing about—something that is turning prejudice against Jews into behavior that is considered both fashionable and laudable among the credentialed elites who populate American universities and other entities that have traditionally run the nation….SOURCE