The media, universities, the Democratic Party and liberals, by embracing the fiction of “rampant antisemitism,” laid the groundwork for their own demise. Columbia and Princeton, where I have taught, and Harvard, which I attended, are not incubators of hatred towards Jews. The New York Times, where I worked for fifteen years and which Trump calls “an enemy of the people,” is slavishly subservient to the Zionist narrative. What these institutions have in common is not antisemitism, but liberalism. And liberalism, with its creed of pluralism and inclusiveness, is slated by our authoritarian regime for obliteration.

The conflation of outrage over the genocide with antisemitism is a sleazy tactic to silence protest and placate Zionist donors, the billionaire class and advertisers. These liberal institutions, weaponizing antisemitism, aggressively silenced and expelled critics, banned student groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, allowed police to make hundreds of arrests of peaceful protests on campuses, purged professors and groveled before Congress. Use the words ‘apartheid’ and ‘genocide’ and you are fired or excoriated.

Zionist Jews, in this fictional narrative, are the oppressed. Jews who protestthe genocide are slandered as Hamas stooges and punished. Good Jews. Bad Jews. One group deserves protection. The other deserves to be thrown to the wolves. This odious bifurcation exposes the charade.

In April 2024, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, along with two board members and a law professor, testified before the House of Representative education committee. They accepted the premise that antisemitism was a significant problem at Columbia and other higher education institutions.

When Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University David Greenwald and others told the committee that they believed “from the river to the sea” and “long live the intifada” were antisemitic statements, Shafik agreed. She threw students and faculty under the bus, including long-time professor Joseph Massad.

The day after the hearings, Shafik suspended all the students at the Columbia protests and called in the New York City Police Department (NYPD), who arrested at least 108 students.

“I have determined that the encampment and related disruptions pose a clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the University,” Shafik wrote in her letter to the police.

NYPD Chief John Chell, however, told the press, “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”

“What disciplinary action has been taken against that professor?” Representative Elise Stefanik asked in the hearing about Columbia law Professor Katherine Franke.

Shafik volunteered that Franke, who is Jewish and whose position at the law school where she had taught for 25 years was terminated, and other professors, were being investigated. In an apparent reference to visiting Columbia Professor Mohamed Abdou, she claimed he was “terminated” and promised he “will never teach at Columbia again.” Professor Abdou is suingColumbia for defamation, discrimination, harassment and financial and professional loss.

The Center for Constitutional Rights wrote of the betrayal of Franke:

In an egregious attack on both academic freedom and Palestinian rights advocacy, Columbia University has entered into an “agreement” with Katherine Franke to leave her teaching position........

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