The Dangers of Weaponizing Antisemitism in the U.S.

For 21 months of the catastrophic attack of Israel in Gaza, there was a parallel conflict in the United States – one with severe consequences for the future of America as well as Israelis and Palestinians.

The battle of the United States is around the scope of freedom of expression, which is the column of the country’s identity and the constitutional order. In particular, it comes to the fact that the types of criticism of Israel that will be tolerated and are considered legitimate in the media, in the university campus, and in public life in general.

For 21 months of the catastrophic attack of Israel in Gaza, there was a parallel conflict in the United States – one with severe consequences for the future of America as well as Israelis and Palestinians.

The battle of the United States is around the scope of freedom of expression, which is the column of the country’s identity and the constitutional order. In particular, it comes to the fact that the types of criticism of Israel that will be tolerated and are considered legitimate in the media, in the university campus, and in public life in general.

This conflict occurs against the backdrop of two disturbing demands: The first is that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which was launched in revenge against Hamas due to its deadly attack on October 7, 2023, has led to genocide; The second is that the United States is in the grip of a serious crisis of high anti -Semitism.

The first claim appeared recently, but it is not in any way new. Voices in the international human rights community, many of them Jews, began to decipher Israel’s attack as a collective genocide in the first months of the conflict. I do not deliberately call it a war, as many do, because the vast majority of losses included unarmed Palestinian civilians, not fighters.

In recent weeks, the genocide has taken more urgency because day after day it carries new reports about the killing of Israeli forces – including the air strike – from the desperate Palestinians who line up to obtain small foods or water. Moreover, it came to cover the increasing hunger among children after months of Israel, strongly restricting the food supplies in Gaza as well as attacks against international agencies such as the World Health Organization.

The second claim to anti -Semitism has climbed American society since Donald Trump’s return to the presidency. Just as the genocide is a matter of varying explanations on a large scale, claims about the expansion or depth of anti -Semitism in the United States are subject to conflict. To clarify this, this column does not doubt its sincerity and denounces the ethnic, ethnic or religious hatred of any kind.

However, there are serious risks to politicizing the government for the accusation of anti -Semitism. The Trump administration has controlled anti -Semitism as a basis for a set of modern measures, including the intrusive efforts to control the policies of American universities, governance and admission; Restricting immigration and canceling student visas; More importantly, narrowing the scope of freedom of expression to restrict Israel’s criticism.

In recent months, the Israeli attack in Gaza and the campaign against anti -Semitism entered a kind of collision as general reasons. To address the latter, many universities – including the University of Colombia, where I study – are planning increasingly restricted rules that control the discourse around Israel. Protest, which is in itself a form of speech with esteemed historical connections with student life, has been tightly organized. Where this was done, universities’ departments have acquired the safety and comfort of Jewish and Israeli students.

The importance of guaranteeing students’ safety is not thinking. No group of students on any American campus should be subjected to threats of violence or harm based on their identity. There is no room for ambiguity here: These procedures must be prevented and strictly punished.

The comfort, though, is more subjective, and puts priority in society on a slippery slope. If it is interpreted either on a large scale or in favor of an electoral circle over another, the freedoms that have been proud of for a long time as basic values in American life, such as freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, can be in danger.

This is what is currently happening with regard to Israel. Trump’s definition and his allies are approaching anti -Semitism from saying that any criticism of Zionism – a political movement that takes Israel as a legitimate homeland of the Jewish people – is heading to anti -Semitism.

However, many people, like me, who strongly support Israel’s right to exist, were very anxious about the idea that life in the country is organized in very unequal ways for Jews and the number of large Arab minorities. For the largest part, this topic was largely avoided in the last major American press coverage. Now, the crisis in Gaza has multiplied this problem significantly. Can support to Israel’s right to exist to the extent of justifying the genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and ignoring the growing Palestinians in the West Bank?

I can’t believe it. But this is a deep moral question, which deserves a more open and honest public discussion. Unfortunately, amid the Trump administration campaign to use anti -Semitism allegations to deny federal funding for universities and intrude on its long -term academic freedoms, the possibility of explicit discussion about difficult questions has become less likely.

In their passion for satisfying Washington and not losing the tremendous flow of federal scholarships that make us excellence in higher education, universities reduce freedom of expression with their own initiative. Watch, for example, Harvard University’s recent decision to cancel a already written and liberated copy of a magazine dedicated to “Education and Palestine”. Many other universities have quietly made similar efforts that reduce the vision of topics related to Palestinian rights or the canceled programs and activities that are totally related to them.

These decisions have traces not only on the future of Israel and the two hinders, but also in the United States. When topics are banned or marginalized for reasons related to political sensitivity, the academic investigation – and its side, is freedom of expression. There is no reason to believe that if the speech related to Palestine or the genocide in the Middle East today can be strangling, then dear issues on other electoral districts will be safe from blame or punishment tomorrow. To allow this to happen is to back down from the meaning of being American.

The efforts made to keep the speech line around Israel and Palestine are not limited to the campus of American universities. As a long -standing restricted in New York City, I watched with alert and anger because the media has witnessed a language about this crisis among local political candidates.

The sudden leader of the city’s ongoing municipal campaign, and the Democratic Party candidate Zahran Mamdani, faced almost press questions about his refusal to condemn the pro -Palestinian slogan “the globalization of the uprising”, as if his only interpretation could be an incitement to violence against Israel. (Mamdani recently said that he would be inhibited the use of the logo.)

While many Jews mix the slogan with calls for violence, many Palestinians insist on this The uprising It is a peaceful call to resistance. The word, which comes from the Arab root that translates into “getting rid of”, can indicate a struggle against persecution. Mamdani, on the one hand, explains the term as “a desperate desire for equality and equality in rights to defend Palestinian human rights.”

Today, the Palestinians in Gaza cannot even line up for water without a threat of slaughter, and every possibility has been rejected to resist mass violence and a potential forced transfer from their homeland. Under this reality, the “globalization of the uprising” may include measures such as the general protest to demand that the United States and other governments put more pressure on Israel to raise restrictions on the distribution of food immediately in Gaza, end the random killings of civilians there, and demand justice in the event of war crimes.

In fact, with the voices of hope in Gaza and the Palestinians now unable to protest on their behalf, there is a global commitment to call for the end of the continuous military actions of Israel against the Palestinians. Americans and people around the world must insist that the choice is not wrong between the extermination of Palestinians or Israelis, but rather safety, security and human fitness for both.