My first experience with political intersectionality was decades ago.  I was in New York City with my then girlfriend, Cindy, who was a graduate student at NYU.  She had a second-floor apartment on the corner of Bleeker & Christopher Street – the heart of the West Village – so it was a great place to watch the annual Gay Pride Parade.  Several of Cindy’s classmates joined us for the festivities.  For those who aren’t familiar, this parade is quite a spectacle!  As a long-time supporter of LGBTQ rights, it was exciting to see the large crowd & effusive energy.  But then something changed – at least for me.

Shortly after dozens of rainbow flags passed us, I noticed several Palestinian flags hoisted high.  The crowd, including Cindy’s friends, cheered wildly. I was not only surprised, I was confused: How or why would gay rights in the United States be connected with a complex, far-away geopolitical issue?  Especially since gay rights don’t even exist in the Arab world – in fact, the only two Pride Parades in the Middle East are in Tel Aviv & Jerusalem! So I asked.

For the NYU graduate students, advocating for what they saw as a victimized underdog was definitional – being Progressive required supporting Palestine.  And not Israel – it was a zero-sum game. They may have been well-intentioned, but the students were wildly ignorant; they didn’t know the relevant history and weren’t remotely interested in learning a competing narrative. And this was the Far Left 30 years ago – incredibly, it’s gotten worse since.

Recently, I listened to an interview with Stanford University student Taryn Thomas as she recounted her experience being drawn into the anti-Israel rallies that took over her........

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