By Amy Zewe—
Unfortunately, no.
Andrew Pessin shared to the Facebook group Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS disturbing reports about universities and their faculties over the last month as communities prepare to send their students back to the classroom.
We have shared stories over the past months about antisemitism and its unbridled rise in the academic community from our K-12 classrooms to our university campuses and global associations. All under the guise of anti-Zionism and the claim that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.
UC Santa Cruz and NYU Law School will set the stage for the inaugural conference of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (ICSZ) this October.
It figures that a California school will be partnering with a New York City school in the continued endeavor to shroud antisemitism in a fog of academic elitism.
Its (the ICSZ) very mission and vision are the embodiment of erasing what might be considered a core component of Jewishness, and what connects the diverse community that makes up Jews as a people.
The Mission and vision of the institute:
The Institute aimed to “delink the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies,” presenting Zionism as a subject for critical inquiry rather than a movement for Jewish self-determination.
The bent of the founders is evident in their own words:
Emmaia Gelman, Sparkplug Foundation Trustee & Co-founder of the Institute, said in a revealing interview recently that: “Israel studies programs were deliberately created not to study Israel in a critical way, but to center pro-Zionist ideas about Israel… as if it’s possible to separate this incredibly violent… process of colonization that every Israeli is involved in every day.” She continued, “Zionist institutions – long before they were Zionist – were involved in anti-communism… in what you might think of now as orientalism, but we also just call it racism if we want.”
In her interview on a recent podcast, she goes on…
“Without minimizing how Zionism operates directly on Palestinians… we want to tie it to this much larger western supremacy and white supremacy…”. Reflecting on the roots of Zionist organizations, she commented, “Even before it was a Zionist organization… the ADL was fundamentally a white organization, a settler organization.”
Her co-founder, Professor Christine Hong contributes to the conversation…
“We understand that a critique of Zionism is part and parcel of a field that takes as its mandate a critique of all forms of imperialism.”
The presuppositions presented here are not only alarming but prove the point that these so-called academics are nothing but propagandists espousing an agenda. I think Goebbels would be so proud of these women.
And, to remind you all once again, follow the money to find the agenda. Some of the co-sponsors of this event were classic pro-BDS organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP). An additional sponsor was Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), whose Executive Director, Jonathan Kuttab titled it a terrorist organization, together with five other Palestinian non-profit organizations.
The article goes on to connect this institution and its players to various other CRT, DEI, and anti-American and anti-Western curriculum developers in CA and in the US.
However, it concludes with a warning I think Deitrich Bonhoeffer would agree with, but lament.
This appears to be the most institutionalized iteration of the recent movement to separate Jews from Zionism, representing a strategic shift in the anti-Zionist or antisemitic strategy. This institute may be a harbinger of what’s yet to come. If left unchecked, years from now, there could be an entire university “Departments of Critical Zionist Studies,” dedicated to studying “Critical Zionism Theory” in universities across the US, inculcating antisemitism into the next generation of Americans.
Please be praying about how you can combat these measures. Expose these types of engagements and endeavors when you see them. Alert your community by reposting articles that expose these trends.
Shavua Tov, have a great week.
Please read the entire Jerusalem Post article:
Please also read the Algemeiner article about the ICSZ