‘Anti-Zionist’ Students Excited To Return To In-Person Instruction, Jew-Harassment

“I miss putting provocative messages on placards and challenging random people to condemn Israel or get called ethnic-cleansing apologists.”

Berkeley, June 27 – Undergraduates across the country who hide their Jew-hate behind opposition to Israel expressed anticipation and enthusiasm for a post-COVID restoration of a routine that social distancing had disrupted, with specific anxiousness to bring back experiences that Zoom had replaced during the pandemic such as physical attendance of classes and face-to-face bullying of Jews under the pretext of protesting Israeli actions.

Self-proclaimed “anti-Zionist” students here at the University of California at Berkeley and and at college campuses across the country voiced their excitement this week at the prospect of a full return to normal, which for them involves actual presence in a lecture hall and the regular harassment of Jews on- and off-campus, as they exercise their animus toward those of the Hebraic persuasion by couching it in the more socially and politically accepted idiom of opposition to the Israeli government, its alleged policies, or other libels.

“It’s been a tough year,” acknowledged Jewish Voice for Peace activist Muhammad Bakri, who attends Berkeley. “Getting together on a screen to learn, or to rail against Jewish settlers or against ethnic cleansing just doesn’t provide the same experience, or the same emotional rush as getting in the face of a Jew because I’m convinced that other Jews somewhere else have done something horrible to brown people. I can’t wait to get back to that kind of fulfilling education and activism.”

“My posters calling for BDS have been sitting in my room for months and months,” lamented Charlize Beckett, a member of both of Students for Justice in Palestine and If Not Now and a student at Ohio State University. “I miss carrying them around campus and shouting at people I think are Zionists, on my way to class. I miss putting provocative messages on placards and challenging random people to condemn Israel or get called ethnic-cleansing apologists, Nakba-deniers, or white supremacists. You can’t do that online, even on Twitter.”

Faculty members displayed similar relief at finally being able to bring their antisemitic-dressed-up-as-anti-Israel-concern-for-human-rights diatribes and conduct back to the classroom. “During the pandemic closures and distance-learning I could still schedule exams for Jewish holidays,” noted Oberlin University Professor of Sociology Cassandra Blohardt. “I could also try to single out students with Jewish-sounding names and berate them for not denouncing Israel. But on Zoom it just comes out wrong and you don’t get the same effect as in the physical presence of a room full of other students, all condoning my actions with their silence and isolating the target of my projection. I want that Jewish student to feel intimidated, judged, and alone, like Israel.”

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