Campus Protests: Societal Silence in the Face of Radical Extremism and Rising Antisemitism

The near-weekly demonstrations against the Hamas-Israel war on the streets of London and the protests currently roiling America’s campuses are not pro-peace but anti-Israel. And many bear the undeniable stain of gross antisemitism.

Indeed, barely 24 hours after Hamas launched its systematic campaign of rape, murder, torture and kidnapping on 7 October, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in Manchester to protest against Israel. Moreover, it took only two days for the first protests to occur outside the Israeli Embassy in London – from both the platform and the marchers themselves there was precious little sympathy for the victims, let alone condemnation of their killers.

Nor should we forget the joy with which some “pro-Palestinian” groups greeted this “historic win for the Palestinian resistance”. “Decolonisation is far from a metaphor confined to the classroom,” declared one campus chapter of the US group Students for Justice in Palestine, while the president of Manchester Friends of Palestine proclaimed: “We’re really full of joy, full of pride at what has happened.”

Of course, some of those who have subsequently joined the anti-Israel protests are motivated by a genuine desire to see an end to the loss of innocent civilian lives in Gaza.  We all share that desire. But few seem willing to acknowledge the central role Hamas’ deliberate and calculated use of “human shields” plays in Palestinian suffering. Few seem willing to call for Hamas to lay down its arms or release the hostages. And few seem willing to raise their voices in support of Hamas accepting what the US administration has termed Israel’s “extraordinarily generous” proposals for a truce. Thus, in the demonstrators’ eyes, Hamas’ billionaire leaders – sequestered in their plush Qatari mansions and hotels – appear to have no agency.

But, on both sides of the Atlantic, the anti-Israel protests are shining a light on some long-term trends with which we will have to wrestle after the guns fall silent. Those issues, moreover, may be centred on, but they are not confined to, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

First, the demonstrations are underlining the radicalisation of both discourse and behaviour when it comes to Israel, a process which stretches back at least two decades.

In London, the demonstrations have been rife with calls for a global intifada, the glorification of Hamas, comparisons between Israel and the Nazis, and support for Houthi attacks on British shipping in the Gulf.

Nor is it the case that the protests have become angrier as the months have passed. Hate, vitriol and antisemitism were embedded in the protests right from the beginning. As the journalist Nicole Lampert wrote of demonstrations in the UK which took place seven days after the Hamas attacks: “I’m sad that so many people seemed so joyous about Jewish deaths.”

Many of the campus protests in the US show a similar pattern of extreme, violent and intimidatory rhetoric. Amid the furore surrounding the student demonstrations at Columbia University, for instance, a video emerged of Khymani James, a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and a self-identified spokesperson for the student encampment, proclaiming: “The same way we’re very comfortable accepting that Nazis don’t deserve to live, fascists don’t deserve to live, racists don’t deserve to live, Zionists, they shouldn’t live in this world.” (He subsequently expressed regret and was suspended by the university). Reports suggest demonstrators told Jewish students to “go back to Poland” and chanted “There is only one solution, Intifada revolution”, and “Burn Tel Aviv to the ground. Go Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets too.”

Unsurprisingly, a university rabbi advised Jewish students that, “in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy”, they should “return home as soon as possible”.

The US campus protests have spread far beyond New York, including to UCLA and Yale. Albeit on a smaller scale, they now appear to be springing up in UK universities, including Newcastle, Manchester and Leeds.

As with the demonstrations in London, the noxious tone of the US campus protests was very present from the beginning. As Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, wrote on 29 October last year: “I am a 70-year-old Jewish man, but never in my life have I seen or felt the antisemitism of the last few weeks.” Chemerinsky’s ordeal has continued. Last month, a student who had been invited to attend a dinner for graduating law students at the professor’s home attempted to deliver a pro-Palestinian speech.

Second, the protests beg a series of deeply unsettling questions: where does all this hateful energy go when the marches stop and what does it mean for campuses, community cohesion and Israel when these students leave education and become the next generation of political, cultural and business leaders?

It is clear that the protesting students don’t speak solely for themselves: many are representative of what the Campaign for Antisemitism (CAA) has labelled “Generation Hate”. Polling it released earlier this year found “particularly frightening” rates of anti-Jewish prejudice among 18-24 year-olds. Young people were, for instance, more likely than the population as a whole to believe that Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews; to reject the notion that Israel has a right to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people, and to believe that Jews have too much power in the media and talk about the Holocaust just to further their political agenda.

Recent polling by the ADL in the US reveals a similar trend. Its studies of antisemitic attitudes over the past 60 years have consistently found anti-Jewish prejudice was greater among older Americans. But that pattern has now been reversed. “Millennials now led the way, harbouring the most antisemitic views,” the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt has argued.

Third, these trends are being exacerbated by a lack of leadership across society. While both President Biden and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak have spoken out clearly against the extremism and antisemitism evident in the demonstrations, many others – including not-a-few self-proclaimed anti-racists – have remained silent or, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Democratic party’s student organisation, backed the protesters.

As Chemerinsky noted in October, few college leaders spoke out publicly about the prevalence of antisemitism. Most notoriously, in December the heads of three of American’s most prestigious universities – Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania – refused to confirm in congressional testimony whether students who called for the genocide of Jews would be punished.

This failure of leadership has also been evident in the policing of London’s marches. Too often, frontline officers appear to have been told by their superiors that keeping order – not enforcing the law – should be prioritised. The result of this attitude is all too evident. During a crucial parliamentary vote about a ceasefire in February, for instance, police stood by as protesters beamed the words “From the river to the sea” on Big Ben, thus, as one antisemitism campaigner put it, turning the icon of British democracy into an “antisemitic billboard”.

Likewise, when police have been questioned about chants calling for jihad or the presence of swastikas on placards, they have responded by suggesting that the “context” of these incitements to hatred would determine their response.

Fourth, these responses reveal a seeming indifference to the fears of Jews – fears which are very real. The 7 October attacks sparked what the Community Security Trust has called an “explosion in hatred against our community”. Both online and on the streets, instances of anti-Jewish hatred have reached unprecedented levels in the UK. Damage to and desecration of Jewish property; antisemitism directed towards Jewish schoolchildren; and anti-Jewish hate related to places of higher education have all hit record levels.

As a result, nearly 70 percent of British Jews say that they are now less likely to show visible signs of their Judaism and nine in 10 say they avoid travelling into city centres when large anti-Israel demonstrations are taking place.

Too often, however, these fears are summarily dismissed. When the government’s counter-extremism adviser said he feared the protests had turned London “into a no-go zone for Jews every weekend”, the veteran left-wing MP Diane Abbott branded this “nonsense” and argued “complainers don’t like the cause”.

Finally, the permissive attitude towards anti-Jewish hatred has been coupled with a failure to tackle the harassment and intimidation of those parliamentarians unwilling to parrot the demonstrators’ demands. They have been subjected to “vile abuse”; their offices have been vandalised; and homes targeted. In neither America nor Britain do the demonstrators represent a broad swathe of public opinion: in the former, the latest surveys show 80 percent back Israel in its war with Hamas, while pollsters in Britain suggest voters’ key priority is protecting both Palestinian and Israeli civilian lives.

The demonstrators are thus attempting to impose the will of a vocal minority. If they succeed, others will be emboldened – and democracy will be the loser.