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Jew Haters & Terrorist Apologists: A Campus Perspective
Like many Jews, I always took pride in identifying as a “liberal.” Over the last few years — and especially the last three months — things have changed. I have watched as my “liberal” peers champion profoundly anti-liberal ideologies, and parrot hate-laden slogans. Most emblematic of this hypocrisy is how my “liberal” peers treat Jews and Israel, the Jewish state.
On October 7, even as Hamas terrorists were still perpetrating their barbarous crimes against innocent Israelis, including rape, murder, and torture, these “liberals” wasted no time in showing the world how much they hate Jews.
Instead of condemning the rape of women, decapitation of babies, and murder of entire families, my “progressive” peers, without a moment’s hesitation, rushed to condemn the victims. Some of these “progressives” openly celebrated the murder, abuse, and abduction of Jewish women, children, and men.
For these virtue-seekers, the violence was justified because they believe Jews are “colonialist oppressors,” even though Jews are indigenous to the land, and “white oppressors,” even though half of Israelis would be considered BIPOC in the United States, and that Hamas had full control over Gaza before Oct. 7, and the Palestinian Authority runs most of the West Bank.
My “liberal” peers are not liberals. They are deeply illiberal. Their support for Hamas savagery represents an ideology rooted in hatred — an ideology that resembles Islamo-fascism and Nazism.
On my own campus, these “progressives” vandalized our Hillel, spray-painted buildings, ripped down posters of hostages, disrupted traffic, shouted genocidal slurs on loudspeakers during final exams, hung massive anti-Israel banners, slapped “Sabra Feeds Genocide” stickers on hummus containers, and staged “die-ins” while shouting bloodthirsty slogans — slogans so ugly that many participants hid behind masks.
Since 2005, when Israel unilaterally removed every single civilian from Gaza, Hamas has done nothing but wreak havoc on Arabs and Israelis alike.
Instead of building civilian infrastructure when it seized power in 2007, Hamas built underground terror tunnels; instead of building a profitable economy, Hamas made its leaders billionaires; instead of providing food to its civilians, Hamas stole it for itself; instead of protecting civilians, Hamas did everything to increase civilian deaths; instead of teaching kids to want peace, Hamas taught them to hate Jews and to idolize martyrdom.
While Israel allows tens of thousands of Gazans to work in Israel, Hamas denies opportunities. While Israel celebrates LGTBQ Pride, Hamas kills, tortures and jails gay people.
Hamas terrorists are not “freedom fighters.” They are blood-thirsty murderers. They are rapists. They are barbarians. They are the enemies of all decent people.
These facts do not get in the way of my “liberal” classmates. Jews are assumed to be prosperous, so Israelis must be the “oppressors.” Jews are considered “white,” so Israelis must be “colonial oppressors.”
If Hamas were to lay its weapons down today, and free the hostages, there could be peace. If Israel laid its weapons down today, the Jewish state would be wiped off the map.
Many progressives envy Jews, but also hate them. They have even succeeded in intimidating and brainwashing some Jews into trying to fit in with the fashionable climate of Jew-hatred. These are not new phenomena. There have always been Jews making desperate and ultimately futile attempts to gain acceptance from the very people who want to kill them by condemning their fellow Jews. Karl Marx (the descendant of rabbis on both sides) did much to inspire Communist Jew-hatred. The Hellenized Jews of Judea fought against the Maccabees. The pro-Roman faction of Jews helped Rome destroy our Temple in 70 C.E.. Today, Jewish Voice for Peace and similar groups help the Jew-haters.
Ask those who fervently condemn Israel’s self-defense efforts: why do the thousands of Arabs killed in Yemen not elicit your “advocacy” and compassion? How about the hundreds of thousands of Arabs killed in Syria under Bashar al-Assad? What about the Muslim Uyghurs in China?
Israel is a bastion of Western democracy in the Middle East. It is the only Jewish state in the world, and it is surrounded by 22 Arab Muslim countries. It is this Jewish sovereignty and independence that Jew-haters cannot accept.
If my “liberal” peers continue buttressing Hamas, if our nation’s academics perpetuate their resentment of Jews and Israel, if university leaders continue to look the other way when Jews are harassed, if the DEI bureaucracy continues to act like Jews are not the most victimized group, we are all in for a dystopian future.
This is not a war about some border dispute between Israel and Palestinians. It is a war for Western democracy, a war in which too many American “liberals” are backing the wrong side.
My “liberal” peers have been converted to a Marxist, antisemitic, anti-Western, morally bankrupt, fact-averse, backward ideology. These armies of “progressives” will seek leadership of our nation. The future of the Western world demands that decent people–the silent majority — stand up and speak out.
For Jews who hope for continued happiness and success in the United States, this is a war worth fighting. No more complacency. Make your voice heard. Hold your elected officials accountable. Stand up for yourselves. No one will respect us unless we respect ourselves.
Alex Wecht is a senior at Boston University, where he serves as the Vice President and Editor of BU’s student-led philosophy journal, Arché, as co-president of the Pre-Law Society, and as a Hillel Jewish Student Leader.
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How the Left and Right Converge to Form a Horseshoe of Antisemitism
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) speaks at a press conference with activists calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in front of the Capitol in Washington, DC, Dec. 14, 2023. Photo: Annabelle Gordon / CNP/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
“One of the things that antisemitism does is, it creates coalitions,” Rabbi David Wolpe recently observed.
How ironic that he made this comment on the show of Theo Von, a right-wing podcaster who interviewed Trump during the 2024 election campaign. Some months later, upon his return from a trip to Qatar, Von suddenly felt the need to talk about the alleged “genocide” in Gaza, only to be quoted favorably in the hard-left music magazine Rolling Stone.
The far-right and the far-left have been coming together over antisemitism at least since 1961, when 10 members of the American Nazi Party attended a Nation of Islam (NOI) rally. Members of the NOI escorted the Nazis to front-row seats for a speech by Malcolm X, who was filling in for the originally scheduled speaker, Elijah Muhammad.
More recently, in 2019, former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke called Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) “the most important member of the US Congress” for her “Defiance to Z.O.G. [Zionist Occupied Government].”
That same year, the shooter at the Chabad synagogue in Poway, California, left behind a manifesto that both embraced white supremacist ideology and incorporated tropes promoted by the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan and the anti-Israel BDS movement, such as the false claims that Jews had a “large role in every slave trade for the past two thousand years” or that Jews persecute “Christians of modern day Syria and Palestine.” In 2021, left-wing academics adopted the language of David Duke and of the Nazis when they accused Israel of “Jewish supremacy.”
So it shouldn’t really have been a huge surprise to see this marriage of convenience beginning to make its way into today’s free-for-all media landscape. Rolling Stone, whose political slant generally is hard left and whose coverage of Israel, as CAMERA has documented at length, is egregiously biased, gushed over Von:
On Tuesday [May 19], comedian and podcaster Theo Von — who promoted the president during his 2024 campaign and accompanied him on a trip to Qatar last week — said the U.S. was “complicit” in creating the horrors that were taking place in Gaza.
“It feels to me like it’s a genocide that’s happening while we’re alive here … in front of our lives. And I feel like I should say something,” Von said on this week’s episode of the This Past Weekend podcast….
Pope Leo and Von couldn’t be more different, but frustration with the lack of progress toward a sustained cease-fire in Gaza, and the looming threat of more devastation to the region, reflect sentiments both in the U.S. and abroad.
There was a similar love-fest between Dave Smith, the conservative libertarian comedian best known for spouting nonsense on The Joe Rogan Experience, and Krystal Ball, the hard-left host of the online political news show Breaking Point, on Monday. Once again, Dave Smith let loose a dizzying blitz of false information, including making the claim that Iran was in compliance with non-proliferation agreements.
Smith said, “we’re left in the position where you’re supposed to sit here and justify a sneak aggressive, preemptive attack, like somehow you’re supposed to feel like you’re the good guys in an absolute war of choice, against a country that does not have nuclear weapons … Iran is a member of the non-proliferation treaty….”
But despite Iran’s (partial) ratification of the NPT, there have long been concerns about its enrichment capabilities, its building of new nuclear facilities, and its lack of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, leading up to the June 12 declaration by the IAEA that Iran was out of compliance with its NPT obligations, just a day before Israel’s attack. After that report, Iran threatened to leave the NPT altogether (although it’s clear it was not complying with the treaty).
And yet, instead of pointing any of this out, Ball responded, “and they’re [Israel] a rogue nation attacking like six of their neighbors as we speak and are not part of the non-proliferation [treaty] and we’re supposed to be cool with that” — while Smith nodded in agreement. Later in the show, in what may have been the only accurate claim made on that program, Ball remarked, “that’s the Israel horseshoe, between you and me, Dave.”
The October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel functioned as a siren call to antisemites everywhere: “It’s open season on the Jews.” Not only has this signal been heeded by certain individuals from both the far-left and the far-right, but a media environment that has no guardrails provides ample opportunities for these two nefarious groups to come together over their ignorance-fueled bigotry.
Karen Bekker is the Assistant Director in the Media Response Team at CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, and frequently writes about antisemitism in the media.
The post How the Left and Right Converge to Form a Horseshoe of Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Anti-Israel Activists Damage Planes at UK Military Base
An activist from Palestine Action sprays a military aircraft engine with red paint at RAF Brize Norton, to damage it, in Carterton, Britain, June 20, 2025, in this still image obtained from handout video. The group’s action was in protest of British military assistance to Israel, claiming that they, “interrupted Britain’s direct participation in the commission of genocide and war crimes across the Middle East”, stating on their website. Photo: Palestine Action/Handout via REUTERS
Anti-Israel activists broke into a Royal Air Force base in central England on Friday, damaging and spraying red paint over two planes used for refueling and transport.
Palestine Action said two members had entered the Brize Norton base in Oxfordshire, putting paint into the engines of the Voyager aircraft and further damaging them with crowbars.
“Despite publicly condemning the Israeli government, Britain continues to send military cargo, fly spy planes over Gaza and refuel US/Israeli fighter jets,” the group said in a statement, posting a video of the incident on X.
“Britain isn’t just complicit, it’s an active participant in the Gaza genocide and war crimes across the Middle East.”
Prime Minister Keir Starmer condemned the “vandalism” as “disgraceful” in a post on X.
Britain’s defense ministry and police were investigating.
“It is our responsibility to support those who defend us,” the defense ministry said.
A spokesperson for Starmer said the government was reviewing security across all British defense sites.
Palestine Action is among groups that have regularly targeted defense firms and other companies in Britain linked to Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza.
The group said it had also sprayed paint on the runway and left a Palestine flag there.
The Gaza war was triggered when Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists attacked Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages.
US ally Israel subsequently launched a military campaign in Gaza aimed at dismantling Hamas and freeing the hostages.
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US Supreme Court Upholds Law on Suing Palestinian Authorities Over Terror Attacks
The US Supreme Court building is seen the morning before justices are expected to issue opinions in pending cases, in Washington, DC, June 14, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
The US Supreme Court upheld on Friday a statute passed by Congress to facilitate lawsuits against Palestinian authorities by Americans killed or injured in terrorist attacks abroad as plaintiffs pursue monetary damages for violence years ago in Israel and the West Bank.
The 9-0 ruling overturned a lower court’s decision that the 2019 law, the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, violated the rights of the Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization to due process under the US Constitution.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored the ruling, said the 2019 jurisdictional law comported with due process rights enshrined in the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment.
“It is permissible for the federal government to craft a narrow jurisdictional provision that ensures, as part of a broader foreign policy agenda, that Americans injured or killed by acts of terror have an adequate forum in which to vindicate their right” to compensation under a federal law known as the Antiterrorism Act of 1990, Roberts wrote.
The US government and a group of American victims and their families had appealed the lower court’s decision that struck down a provision of the law.
Among the plaintiffs are families who in 2015 won a $655 million judgment in a civil case alleging that the Palestinian organizations were responsible for a series of shootings and bombings around Jerusalem from 2002 to 2004. They also include relatives of Israeli-American Ari Fuld, who was fatally stabbed by a Palestinian in 2018.
“The plaintiffs, US families who had loved ones maimed or murdered in PLO-sponsored terror attacks, have been waiting for justice for many years,” said Kent Yalowitz, a lawyer for the plaintiffs.
“I am very hopeful that the case will soon be resolved without subjecting these families to further protracted and unnecessary litigation,” Yalowitz added.
The ongoing violence involving Israel and the Palestinians served as a backdrop to the case.
US courts for years have grappled over whether they have jurisdiction in cases involving the Palestinian Authority and PLO for actions taken abroad.
Under the language at issue in the 2019 law, the PLO and Palestinian Authority automatically “consent” to jurisdiction if they conduct certain activities in the United States or make payments to people who attack Americans.
Roberts in Friday’s ruling wrote that Congress and the president enacted the jurisdictional law based on their “considered judgment to subject the PLO and PA [Palestinian Authority] to liability in US courts as part of a comprehensive legal response to ‘halt, deter, and disrupt’ acts of international terrorism that threaten the life and limb of American citizens.”
New York-based US District Judge Jesse Furman ruled in 2022 that the law violated the due process rights of the PLO and Palestinian Authority. The New York-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling.
President Joe Biden’s administration initiated the government’s appeal, which subsequently was taken up by President Donald Trump’s administration. The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on April 1.
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