Editorial
Israel Academia Monitor, May 3, 2025
“By saying “pogrom,” one attributes to Hamas, and by extension to all other Palestinian organisations, or even Palestinians in general, an unrelenting antisemitism characterised by a vicious, irrational and murderous predilection to violence, whose only goal is to kill Jews.””
A new report on the conference at Brown University Cogut Institute for the Humanities, titled “Non-Zionist Jewish Traditions,” was published. Maya Rackoff offered her impressions. She is a student at Brown who is proud and open Jewish Zionist and also “deeply sympathetic to the plight of ordinary Palestinians.”
According to Rackoff, during a panel titled “Roundtable: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism and the Stakes of the Debate,” Beshara Doumani, a professor of Palestinian studies at Brown, remarked that “Global Israel” has become “the north star of the rise of fascism all over the world.” Maya noted that the audience responded to this proclamation “with head nods and snaps.” Doumani made another remark in agreement with Adi Ophir, visiting professor of humanities and Middle East studies, asserting that “in order to pursue a liberatory imagination of what it means to be a Jew, the first move is to become an Anti-Zionist.”
Rackoff noted that “the anti-Zionist perspective monopolized the discussions that I attended. The characterization of Zionism as inherently racist and genocidal went unchallenged, creating a hostile environment… This hostility became clear to me during a question I posed about antisemitism. During the same panel, the speakers discussed how the pro-Israel lobby suppresses anti-Zionist speech, especially at universities. While I agree that some Zionist groups mischaracterize any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, I also know that antisemitism is often part and parcel of anti-Zionist activity. In response to the panelists’ points about free speech, I asked: How should administrators engage with the real concerns on behalf of Jewish students that anti-Zionist protests are often entangled with antisemitism? When I finished my question, many in the room laughed, and one of the panelists audibly scoffed.” …SOURCE