What’s it all about? This ethical and just war is not about territory. It’s about Zion, our soul
From a keynote address delivered on Sept. 26 at the 18th Annual Jewish Law Symposium in Whippany, NJ.
Israel is fighting a moral, ethical and just war. It is a war that Israel and the Jewish people did not want, did not seek and did not start. Similar to the battle undertaken by the Maccabees more than 2,000 years ago, Israel today is waging a war against those who seek to destroy our identity as Jews.
This is not a war over territory. … For Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the sponsor of each of these terror organizations — the Iranian revolutionary regime — this is not a political dispute that can be resolved through land swaps or a two-state solution. Their goal, as spelled out in the Houthi slogan, is, “God is the Greatest. Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.”
Iran and its terror proxies seek to eradicate Israel, the Jewish people and America.
It’s difficult to accept that there are people in this world consumed by irrational hate — and that it is not possible to eradicate that hate through negotiated political treaties. … At its core, antisemitism is a continuously shifting baseless conspiracy theory that holds Jews responsible for society’s perceived misfortunes. No matter what the century, no matter the era, the Jews are always the scapegoat.
As Douglas Murray said recently: “The Jews can never win. They’ve been hated for being rich and for being poor … for integrating and for not integrating … for being stateless … rootless cosmopolitans … [and now] for having a state.”
For the Nazis, who sought a pure Aryan race, the Jews were the ultimate race polluters. The Nazis certainly did not view the Jews as “white.” And yet, today, when many people see the world through the binary lens of the “oppressed” and “oppressors,” there are those who say that all Jews, including Jews of color, are white, colonizing oppressors.
• • •
Jews are fighting both a military war on the ground in the Middle East and a war of words and ideas around the globe. The current military battle began with Hamas’s barbaric, unprovoked attack on Oct. 7, but the battle of ideas — that seeks to demonize Jewish identity and deny Jewish history — that battle has been waging on college campuses and beyond for decades.
For years, Jewish students have been vilified and equated with evil. Einat Wilf, a former member of the Israeli Knesset, calls it the “placard strategy.” Imagine the sign, with its simple message: Star of David = Zionist = evil concept (apartheid, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, famine, genocide, etc). These concepts are not presented to discuss or even debate their accuracy. Is it apartheid? Or a genocide? No, the evil concepts are there for the equation, the idea is to equate Jews (as represented by the Star of David) and the “Zionists” with evil.
As president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, I have been speaking with students on campus on a nearly daily basis for years. And I can tell you that what is taking place at universities today, overwhelmingly, is not a good-faith political debate about Israel’s policies.
When students are barred from the encampments, no one inquires to determine whether or not they support Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or a two-state solution before blocking their access to the university library or the dining hall. Instead, anti-Israel demonstrators see a student wearing a Magen David or a kippah or speaking Hebrew, and they conclude that the student must be a “Zionist” — a Jew who defines their identity as part of a people indigenous to the land of Israel.
On college campuses today, if you believe the Jews are a people with a right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland and that, therefore, Israel has a right to exist, you are branded a Zionist and told you are not welcome. You are treated as a pariah and the equivalent of evil.
• • •
Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act requires universities that receive federal funds (which includes nearly all institutions of higher education in the US) to protect students from harassment and discrimination that is so severe it denies the student an equal educational opportunity.
Although Title VI does not include “religion” as a protected category, for the last 20 years, the statute has been interpreted by the US Department of Education to cover Jews and members of other faith-based communities when they are targeted on the basis of their actual or perceived shared ancestry and ethnicity rather than their religious practice. In other words, universities have a legal obligation to protect Jewish students when they are being bullied, shunned, marginalized, excluded or assaulted on the basis of their Jewish shared ancestry and ethnicity. If universities fail to meet their obligation, they risk losing their federal funding.
So what is the Jews’ shared ancestry and ethnicity?
Well, Jews are not only a faith, we are also a people. And what defines our peoplehood, what has kept us connected over millennia, is our shared ancestral history and heritage. What binds us together as Jews is our collective memory. We share the stories of our ancestors.
At the Passover seder, for example, we tell the story of how our ancestors were liberated from slavery in Egypt. During Sukkot, we recall how our people wandered in the desert on the way to the Promised Land.
Our Jewish history is inextricably intertwined with the Land of Israel. It is impossible to separate the two.
Some 3,000 years ago, King David designated Jerusalem, also known as Zion, as the capital of Israel. His son, King Solomon, built the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Our holidays are linked to the agricultural cycle in Israel. For centuries, Jews have not only prayed facing Jerusalem, but they have also prayed to return there.
Those who recognize this history and understand that the Jews are a people indigenous to the land of Israel are Zionists. They appreciate that, as an indigenous people, Jews have a right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland.
I do not mean to suggest that all Jews are Zionists.
•Some Jews do not define their identity this way. By the same token, not all Jews are Sabbath observers. But the fact that some Jews do not observe Shabbat does not negate the fact that Shabbat observance is, for Jews who observe Shabbat, an integral part of what it means to them to be Jewish.
•So too, the fact that some Jews may claim to be “anti-Zionist” does not negate the fact that for the overwhelming majority of Jews, Zionism — the recognition that the Jews are a people indigenous to the land of Israel — is an integral component of how they define their Jewish identity. That is why, according to a Pew study, eight in 10 Jews say caring about Israel is an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them.
Universities, thankfully, are beginning to understand this truth. Some schools like New York University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Columbia University, and the recommendation report prepared by Judge Jonathan Lippman for the City University of New York (CUNY) system, have recently explicitly acknowledged that for many Jews, Zionism is a part of Jewish identity, and therefore, harassment and discrimination of “Zionists” violates university policy when the term is being used as a substitute for “Jew.”
• • •
But the war we are fighting against those who deny Jewish identity and erase Jewish history is increasing in intensity. There is a narrative that is becoming entrenched in kindergarten to 12th-grade lesson plans and is being promoted on university campuses as scholarship.
According to this narrative, everything that happened in the land that we call Israel, since creation, is Palestinian. It acknowledges that there were Jews, Christians and Muslims living in the land. But it defines those identities as only religious identities. According to this narrative, the ethnic and cultural identity of all those people throughout history was Palestinian.
Those who promote this narrative claim to “know the difference” between “Jews” and “Zionists.” For them, “Jews” define Judaism as only a religion. The “Zionists” by contrast, are the ones they accuse of trying to “Judaize” Palestinian history and heritage by calling it Jewish. According to this narrative, Jewish identity is completely erased and hijacked. Jewish history is renamed as Palestinian and Jewish peoplehood is denied.
That, however, is still not the end of the road.
Those who seek to eradicate our Jewish identity have developed a term, they call it Anti-Palestinian Racism. According to the definition, the term applies to anyone who pushes back against the narrative I just described. So Jews who define themselves as members of a people indigenous to the Land of Israel or as Zionists are being accused of anti-Palestinian racism.
Merely expressing pride in our Jewish ancestral heritage is now being defined as somehow erasing Palestinian history. This is the modern incarnation of the United Nation’s repugnant “Zionism is Racism” resolution which was revoked in 1991. And it is at the core of the war of words and ideas being waged on university campuses.
• • •
Social media has brought the military battlefield into our living rooms and onto the palm of our hand. In this way, the military battlefield has become a tool in the war of words and ideas.
Our enemies frequently mischaracterize what takes place on the military battlefield, and weaponize it to dehumanize Israelis and Jews. We need to recognize this mischaracterization and manipulation and the threat that it poses to the Jewish people worldwide.
It’s incumbent upon us to push back forcefully against any narrative that dehumanizes Jews and seeks to erase and deny our Jewish identity, history and heritage and eradicate our homeland. Fighting these battles is moral, just and ethical. Just like the battle the Maccabees waged to preserve Jewish identity so many years ago.
• • •
I end on a note of hope. The silver lining evident today on campuses and beyond is that Jewish engagement in Hillel and Chabad is skyrocketing. On campus, Hillel directors and Chabad rabbis report that record numbers of students are participating in their programs. It is wonderful that Jews across the country are leaning in and learning more about their Jewish identity. Increased knowledge enables confident warriors. Never forget that the best antidote to bigotry and discrimination is self-confidence and pride.
Jews are the most resilient people in history. As the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks said, “Jews are the people who not only survive but thrive in adversity.” We have an uncanny ability to find inner strength in our darkest moments.
To quote Rabbi Sacks again, “Any civilization that can see the blessing within the curse, the fragment of light within the heart of darkness, has within it the capacity to endure.” We will endure, and we will thrive.
So, my prayer for the coming year is that we be blessed as a people to come through this difficult time a more united, better-educated, more empathetic, stronger, proud people who will continue to enrich and enhance our world, and serve as a light unto the nations.
Am Yisrael Chai. Shanah Tovah!
Alyza D. Lewin is the President of The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
