Jewish Students pen letters on role of zionism in Judism

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Jewish students at Columbia University in New York have made a plea for tolerance in a letter to the university community.

In a letter that seeks to help “repair our campus”, Jewish students said that the university “may be riddled with hateful rhetoric and simplistic binaries” but appealed to peers to “repair the fractures and begin developing meaningful relationships across political and religious divides.”

Describing their attachment to Israel, students addressed their Jewish peers who have distanced themselves from the Jewish State.

Addressing those who want to “speak in our name,” including “our Jewish peers who tokenize themselves by claiming to represent ‘real Jewish values,’ and attempt to delegitimize our lived experiences of antisemitism [...] We are here, writing to you as Jewish students at Columbia University, who are connected to our community and deeply engaged with our culture and history. We would like to speak in our name.”

“Most of us did not choose to be political activists [...] Those who demonize us under the cloak of anti-Zionism forced us into our activism and forced us to publicly defend our Jewish identities.”

It goes on to explain the link between Zionism and Judaism.

“We proudly believe in the Jewish People’s right to self-determination in our historic homeland as a fundamental tenet of our Jewish identity. Contrary to what many have tried to sell you – no, Judaism cannot be separated from Israel. Zionism is, simply put, the manifestation of that belief.”

The letter explains that “a large and vocal population of the Columbia community does not understand the meaning of Zionism, and subsequently does not understand the essence of the Jewish People.”

“We connect to Israel not only as our ancestral homeland but as the only place in the modern world where Jews can safely take ownership of their own destiny. Our experiences at Columbia in the last six months are a poignant reminder of just that.”

“The evil irony of today’s antisemitism is a twisted reversal of our Holocaust legacy; protestors on campus have dehumanized us, imposing upon us the characterization of the ‘white colonizer.’ We have been told that we are ‘the oppressors of all brown people’ and that ‘the Holocaust wasn’t special.’ Students at Columbia have chanted ‘we don’t want no Zionists here,’ alongside ‘death to the Zionist State’ and to ‘go back to Poland,’ where our relatives lie in mass graves.

“This sick distortion illuminates the nature of antisemitism: In every generation, the Jewish People are blamed and scapegoated as responsible for the societal evil of the time.

“We are targeted for our belief that Israel, our ancestral and religious homeland, has a right to exist. We are targeted by those who misuse the word Zionist as a sanitized slur for Jew, synonymous with racist, oppressive, or genocidal. We know all too well that antisemitism is shapeshifting.

The letter goes on to explain: “Our love for Israel does not necessitate blind political conformity. It’s quite the opposite. For many of us, it is our deep love for and commitment to Israel that pushes us to object when its government acts in ways we find problematic.”

“All it takes are a couple of coffee chats with us to realize that our visions for Israel differ dramatically from one another. Yet we all come from a place of love and an aspiration for a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

The letter outlines moments in the last seven months when Jewish students “sounded alarm”: “We sounded the alarm on October 12 when many protested against Israel while our friends’ and families’ dead bodies were still warm.”

The letter describes people screaming “resist by any means necessary,” and telling Jews that they were “all inbred” and “have no culture.” It describes an “activist” who held a sign telling Jewish students they were “Hamas’s next targets”.

Jewish students say they were unsurprised when an encampment leader said, “Zionists don’t deserve to live”.

We the undersigned are Jewish students on college campuses in solidarity with student encampments for Gaza. We reject the ways that these encampments have been smeared as antisemitic and we call on our institutions to take action to stop Israel’s assault on Gaza.

In the last week, we have watched the movement of student encampments for Gaza spread across the country. We have also watched as these protesters have been met with repression, arrests, violence, and false claims of antisemitism. As Jewish students, we wholeheartedly reject the claim that these encampments are antisemitic and that they are an inherent threat to Jewish student safety. We believe that safety for Jewish students can only come when all students are safe, including Palestinian students, BIPOC students, and queer and trans students.

While journalists, students, and even police have consistently reported encampments to be peaceful, school administrations and city officials have intentionally and consistently escalated through state violence. Their tactics have included arresting and brutalizing students, and denying students access to housing, medical care, and religious spaces. The majority of these acts have targeted Arab, Muslim, Black, and brown students. This violence we’ve seen this week does not make any of us safer. We wholeheartedly condemn the brutal repression of the encampments.

Since October 7th, many of us have shown up to fight for Palestinian liberation as Jews: Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, practicing, secular, and everything in between. Many of us have friends and relatives who were killed on October 7th. Many of us have faced violence, arrest, and harassment for our participation in the movement for a Free Palestine.

The narrative that the Gaza solidarity encampments are inherently antisemitic is part of a decades-long effort to blur the lines between criticism of Israel and antisemitism. It is a narrative that ignores the large populations of Jewish students participating and helping to lead the encampments as a true expression of our Jewish values. The beautiful interfaith solidarity by Jewish students observing Passover seders and Shabbat at encampments across the country show that the rich Jewish tradition of justice is on full display inside the encampments. The denial of Jewish participation in this movement is not only incorrect, but it is an insidious attempt to justify unfounded claims of antisemitism. As neo-Nazis are marching in the streets and fascist politicians are campaigning on the antisemitic Great Replacement theory, we wholeheartedly reject the lie that these student activists are targeting Jewish students in their protest.

We are deeply disturbed by the small number of individuals who have attempted to co-opt these encampments to spread violent, hateful, and antisemitic messages. However, we refuse to allow these administrations to use the safety of Jewish students as political cover for their violent reactions to peaceful protest. We commend the student organizers for keeping to their values of peaceful, powerful protest.


While the world’s focus is on students, we cannot forget that Israel is continuing its genocidal assault on Gaza. More than 34,000 Palestinians and 1,200 Israelis have been killed since October 7th. Israel has killed more than 14,000 children and destroyed schools, hospitals, and all institutions of higher learning in Gaza. The Israeli government has done nothing to return the remaining 133 hostages to their families as they continue to hold thousands of Palestinian prisoners without charge. Instead, Netanyahu’s far right-wing coalition — backed by the Biden administration — has chosen to escalate the war, destruction, and loss of life. In the West Bank, full villages are being depopulated after months of settler terrorism, backed by the state. While we protest on campuses in the U.S., more than 80% of schools in Gaza have been decimated by Israeli bombs, amounting to what scholars regard as ‘scholasticide.’ The devastation is unfathomable, and it is truly heinous to see individuals attempting to demonize student peace activists in our name as Israel continues to massacre Gazans, massacres that our educational institutions are complicit in through their investments and repression.

We as Jewish students demand divestment from Israel and an academic boycott of all Israeli educational institutions contributing to the Israeli military assault on Gaza or protection of settlers in the West Bank. We also demand amnesty for all nonviolent student protesters and an end to the brutal repression by academic institutions and law enforcement. Finally, we demand that academic and political leaders stop misrepresenting and demonizing protests and their organizers, protect the voices of student activists, and take immediate action to stop Israel’s genocidal acts before more Palestinians are killed.

Note: We recognize that every institution is being posed with a different set of divestment demands. We urge each University to listen to their students meet their demands, now.