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GUEST COMMENTARY - Some of the most vocal opponents of Israeli genocide in Gaza are American Jews, especially Jewish students. They are members of Jewish Voice for Peace, Not in our Name, Bend the Arc, other organizations, and individuals.
This is important since the Trump administration is continuing Biden’s efforts to portray groups and actions opposing Israeli government genocide in Gaza as anti-Semitic (.i.e., hatred of Jews). Despite Presidential advisor Elon Musk’s Nazi salute, these efforts are escalating, with the Federal Department of Education investigating 60 universities for anti-Semitism, including UCLA and USC.
The most notable Trump administration action is against Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student. He has a Green Card, not a student visa, and lived with his eight month pregnant wife in student housing. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested him on Monday, March 10, 2025, and sequestered him at a prison in Louisiana. The charge against him was that last year he supported a terrorist organization, Hamas, when he led Columbia University students and faculty demonstrations opposing the Biden Administration’s support for Israeli military actions against Palestinians in Gaza.
No argument that American universities, like Columbia, have a well-documented history of anti-Jewish discrimination, but it has nothing to do with opposition to Israeli genocide in Gaza. In contrast, this previous anti-Semitism included:
- Glass ceilings that prevented Jewish academics from becoming university administrators, department chairs, and full professors.
- Fraternities and sororities that would not accept Jewish students as members.
- Admission practices that limited the number of Jewish students, especially at elite universities.
These anti-Semitic practices were common until the 1960s, when they finally ended:
- Discrimination against minority (including Jews) home-buyers, often included in property deeds as “restrictive covenants.”
- Employment discrimination against Jews, especially in the private sector.
- Private clubs that would not accept Jews as members. As a result many parallel institutions emerged, such as Jewish summer camps and golf clubs.
In short, as actual anti-Semitic discrimination ended in American society, including in American colleges and universities, it was replaced by labelling critics of Israeli treatment of Palestinians as anti-Semites. These accusations of anti-Semitism grew as the Israeli government’s attacks on Gaza accelerated, beginning on October 7, 2023, when Hamas’s military wing, joined by 10 other groups in Gaza, broke out of the Gaza Ghetto.
But accusations that Hamas was motivated by hatred of Jews, together with other opponents of the Israeli government’s policy in Gaza, relied on claims of anti-Semitism, not opposition to genocide.
While this strategy resulted in crackdowns on demonstrators by local authorities, public opinion has not followed suit. According to a Pew Research public opinion poll in late 2024:
- “Slightly more Americans now think Israel’s military operation against Hamas is going too far than thought so in December 2023.
- More Americans now want the United States to diplomatically resolve the war . . .”
According to the Middle Eye East, Israel's Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating anti-Semitism found that 36.7 percent of American-Jewish teens either "agreed" or "strongly agreed" with the statement, “I sympathize with Hamas.” In addition, 41 percent of the surveyed teens thought Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, and 66 percent sympathized with the Palestinian people.
These shifts in public opinion, including among American Jews, have not been reflected in the Biden and Trump’s administrations’ strong support for the Israeli government, expressed as cash bailouts and continuing massive shipments of offensive US weapons.
The debate among scholars and other experts focuses on two disagreements:
First, the claim that opposition to the Israeli government’s attacks on non-combatants in Gaza is based on hatred of Jews, not on opposition to ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Second, explanations for this top-down US support for the Israeli government actions in Gaza fall into two camps. Some experts, such as University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, argue that US foreign policy results from the Israel lobby’s control of US policy in the Middle East. The contrasting view, articulated by retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkinson, is that the Israel lobby is successful because it aligns with the US government’s need for a strong military proxy – Israel -- in the Middle East. If or when Israel no longer performs this proxy role, US support will evaporate, as is happening in the Ukraine.
(Victor Rothman is a California-based policy analyst and contributor to CityWatchLA.com.)
