We are a group of Jewish and Israeli students and faculty at the University of Chicago. We are watching with apprehension as our campus is transformed into another encampment, and we write to express our concern over the nature of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that are currently taking place there. We underscore that our concern is with the nature of the demonstrations and not the expressions of sympathy for the Palestinians of Gaza, which we share.

We insist that there is an essential difference between expressions of antisemitism and legitimate concern about Israel’s war in Gaza. The line between criticism of the Israeli government and unvarnished Jew-hatred begins to break down once Zionism is labeled the enemy and demonstrations reject Israel’s right to exist. 

We believe that a protest flaunting signs that enjoin students to “globalize the intifada,” recalling the wave of explicitly genocidal attacks against Israeli civilians throughout the early 2000s, is not “anti-war.” Together with the call for a “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” such chanting takes place either explicitly or implicitly under the banner of anti-Zionism, with a clear wink and a nod to antisemitism. We believe that the tokenization of Jewish students who participate in this glorification of nihilism cannot hide its core message, any more than Verband Nationaldeutscher Juden did in Germany 90 years ago. And most importantly, we believe that the core role of the University ought to remain the exploration and discussion of hard ideas and not the extirpation of discussion by slogans chanted from a megaphone.