03.07.24

Editorial Note

Prof. Oren Kroll-Zeldin, the assistant director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco, has published a new book, Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine. The book is an ethnographic study, as well as polemics. Kroll-Zeldin identifies himself as an anti-Zionist, an activist who participated in some of the campaigns he wrote about in the book. He interviewed some 70 Jewish young adults. His central thesis is that these young activists who engage in Palestine solidarity express their Jewish identity. They “understand Jewish values as demanding a deep commitment to social justice that necessitates distancing themselves from Israel and Zionism.” 

In his new book, Kroll-Zeldin identified the four main Jewish anti-Israel activist groups, “IfNotNow,” protesting against the mainstream institutions’ support for Israel; “All That’s Left” and “the Center for Jewish Non-Violence,” engaging the diaspora Jews in co-resistance actions with West Bank Palestinians; and “Jewish Voice for Peace,” an anti-Zionist organization promoting BDS against Israel. 

Kroll-Zeldin’s fifth chapter in the book is titled “Under Pressure: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions.” He discusses a student-wide referendum from December 2020 at Tufts University with the highest voter turnout in the school’s history. The student body voted to end their campus police’s partnership with Israeli law enforcement. Kroll-Zeldin explains that the student effort was part of a national campaign led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), “End the Deadly Exchange,” seeking to end programs that send U.S. law enforcement personnel on trips to Israel to train with Israeli police and military. According to Kroll-Zeldin, the referendum resulted from more than two years of organizing and coalition building led by the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a student organization advocating for Palestinian rights. The Tufts’s SJP chapter was the first U.S. student group to implement the “End the Deadly Exchange” campaign on college campuses bolstered by a diverse coalition of student organizations, such as JVP and Alt-J (Alternative Jews), as Kroll-Zeldin stated.

The Tufts campaign was part of the global BDS. As Kroll-Zeldin describes it, “This movement has grown into one of the most widespread global strategies used to combat Israeli state power and end its policies of occupation and apartheid.” Kroll-Zeldin argues that “as evidenced by the Tufts “End the Deadly Exchange” campaign, “the national BDS movement had played a central role in raising the consciousness of left-wing progressive students across the country around justice struggles in Palestine/Israel. For this movement, U.S. college campuses are among the most important sites of BDS organizing.” Kroll-Zeldin discussed in the book how “student involvement in BDS campaigns helped break the hegemonic pro-Israel consensus in Jewish communities and visibilized the Palestinian struggle both within Jewish campus organizations and in students’ home communities.”  

Most importantly, the author acknowledged that because the activists were Jewish, “they defused accusations of antisemitism from Zionist-affiliated organizations.”

Kroll-Zeldin has a long history of anti-Israel activism on campus. As the organizer of the program “Beyond Bridges” since 2010, he was quoted in a 2016 book as saying, “what is often portrayed is that Israel and Palestine are incredibly violent places, that it’s a constant war-torn area, constantly under violence, and while in some respects that is true, in Tel Aviv that is not true, but in Gaza City that is true. I think that the dominant narrative doesn’t make the necessary distinctions between Israelis, Jews, Zionists, the Israeli defense force, and it doesn’t make a distinction between Palestinian, terrorists, Muslims. I think that Orientalist tropes of Muslim as violent, as terrorist are continuously re-inscribed by the media, by scholars… by the US government, so that people continuously think that Palestinians must be violent.”

Kroll-Zeldin has written a chapter in a 2019 book arguing that Israel is an apartheid state.

In another chapter of a 2019 book, Kroll-Zeldin argues “that the situation there— namely, the near-permanent status of occupation supported by institutionalized and systemic oppression—merits the apartheid label. He contends that the widely accepted definition of apartheid, embodied in various international conventions, is an apt descriptor of the situation in the West Bank, as the occupation relies on two separate legal systems, one privileging Jewish citizen and the other oppressing Palestinian residents.”

IAM has repeatedly empathized that for three decades, Jewish or Israeli faculty were recruited by pro-Palestinians to promote an anti-Israel agenda through their teachings. Oren Kroll-Zeldin is a good example of this trend and, crucially, he openly acknowledged that Jewish students at Tufts were valuable to the other groups because they deflected from charges of antisemitism.   IAM has also made clear that the International Holocaust Remember Alliance (IHRA) Definition of Antisemitism, which has been adopted widely in the West, defines antisemitism as a set of beliefs and actions unrelated to ethnicity.  In other words, both Jews and non-Jews who embrace certain beliefs and actions could be considered antisemitic.

Kroll-Zeldin is an example of faculty indoctrinating social science students. Dr. Chaim C. Cohen, who teaches at the Hebrew University School of Social Work, recently published a fascinating article, “Faculty social-cultural Marxism is behind the campus riots.” The article explains that the faculty, not the students, are responsible for the recent campus uprisings. Social-cultural Marxism rules the academic social sciences and arts in America and actively promotes antisemitism. As Cohen describes it, social-cultural Marxist faculty seized the teaching of the social sciences and liberal arts. The article explains how the ideology of social-cultural Marxism now determines what millions of young students are taught when studying subjects such as history, sociology, psychology, literature, media, and gender studies, among others. The tenured faculty send their students out to protests and tell them what pro-Palestinian slogans to chant. The names of this current ideology include radical progressivism, critical theory, post-colonial analysis, wokism, and social-cultural Marxism. Cohen suggests that without focusing on faculty, fighting antisemitism and excessive pro-Palestinian activism on campus is not complete.

Since 2004, IAM has reviewed countless books and articles that adopted the neo-Marxist, critical theory to paint Israel as a colonial apartheid state. This explains the scope of Israel’s international predicament.

REFERENCES:

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/392262

Faculy social-cultural Marxism is behind the campus riots

The faculty, and not the students or presidents, are responsible for the campus uprisings Social- cultural Marxism now rules the academic social sciences and arts in America, and actively promotes antisemitism

Dr. Chaim C. Cohen

Jun 28, 2024, 1:08 PM (GMT+3)

Dr. Chaim C. Cohen, whose PhD. is from Hebrew U., is a social worker and teacher at the Hebrew Univ. School of Social Work, and Efrata College. He lives in Psagot, Binyamin.

Introduction: The media hid the Real Story of the campus uprisings: Social- cultural Marxist faculty ‘formally’ completed their coup de tat -seizure of the teaching of the social sciences and liberal arts in many America’s major universities

This spring’s campus protests/riots in favor of Hamas prove beyond a doubt that the ideology of social cultural Marxism now determines what millions of young Americans are taught when studying subjects such as history, sociology, psychology, literature, media and gender studies in major universities.

This spring, a Leftist dominated faculty hid behind the student protestors, and confused, debilitated administrators. The media only reported the programmed, staged antics of ‘summer camp’ protestors, and the very confused mumbling of university presidents appearing before Congressional committees.

But the power behind the throne, behind the campus riots, was the tenured, secure Leftist faculty. They sent the students out to protests. They told them what pro-Palestinian slogans to chant, and what ideological sound bites to voice. The administrators, in turn, knowing that their faculty unequivocally supported the students, were not able to provide strong, determined leadership to prevent anti American and anti-Jewish/Israel hate speech and campus disruptions.

How do I know? The administrators may have called in the police to provide a temporary quiet, but in the end not a single student, not a single student, was permanently punished. They all got their college credits, and all graduated with diplomas. Graduation without punishment, was the reward they received for being successful co-conspirators with the faculty.

In sum, these spring protests, brought the almost unrestrained academic power of the Leftist faculty ‘ out of the closet’. It is now clear to all Americans who is really determining what millions of young Americans are being taught, and much more worrisome, what these indoctrinated students are beginning to internalize as their “American’ self-identify and political beliefs.

Jewish students, in the short run, were the main victims of this Leftist show of academic strength. But in the long run America and the liberal Western society will be the true victims of this ideological, academic seizure of power.

A brief, necessary ‘detour’: the historical development of the current Left ideology that can best be termed ‘social cultural Marxism ‘

How did this academic coup de tat, palace revolution, come about, most of it ‘under the radar, and unknown to the common American?

1.The different names of the current ideology:

The current Left ideology dominating academic education has several names: it has been termed radical progressivism, critical theory, post-colonial analysis, wokism, and social cultural Marxism. I will use the term social cultural Marxism because it shows how the ‘Marxism of the twentieth first century, evolved from the Marxism of the twentieth century.

2.The historic themes common to all Left ideologies since the French Revolution

For close to two hundred years, all Left ideologies advocate these basic themes:

a) Society is composed of two conflicting forces- one being the segment of society that controls the societal forces that Oppress, and the other being the segment of society that lacks societal resources and is Oppressed

b) The goal of the Oppressed segment is to ‘rise up’ and seize societal control from the Oppressing segment

c) With regard to the civil societal conflict between the Oppressing and Oppressed segments, one standard of civil morality applies to the Oppressing segment, and a different standard of civil morality applies to the Oppressed segment.

d) The successful seizing of control of societal resources by the previously Oppressed segment will then enable it to ‘structurally re- engineer -from above’- a more equal, and a more liberating distribution of societal resources to wider segment of the society.

Leftist ideology here contains an inherent, ‘built in’, contradiction/tension between a government engineering social change from above, and the maintenance of ‘individual freedom/autonomy’ from below.

e) Leftist ideology is ‘utopian-romantically idealistic’ in its historical vision. It believes that is historically possible, and even incumbent, to create a truly just, free basically egalitarian society. Because such a purpose is historically possible and imperative, attaining such an End justifies ‘means’ which are often not free, just or liberal.

3. The recent developmental history of social cultural Marxism

a) Traditional Marxism (beginning in the late 19th century) focused on economic class warfare. It called for the majority laboring, working class (the proletariat) to organize, unite and throw off the oppression of the minority capitalist, property owning bourgeois upper class. The majority working class would then equalize the economic conditions by nationalizing property and wealth

b)1960’s-70’s- by the mid twentieth century the above economic -class definition of societal conflict (capitalists as the Oppressor, and labor as the Oppressed) was beginning to lose credibility. Post World War Two social democratic regimes in Western Europe provided extensive social service benefits, and ongoing economic prosperity was established. The average laborer no longer felt economically insecure. He no longer saw himself as an Oppressed class. Also, the economic and social bankruptcy of the communist/socialist Soviet Union gave economic Marxism a ‘bad name’.

And the New Left of the sixties (with which I partially identified), in both America and Europe, dropped economic Marxism and began to define ‘Oppression’ in non-economic terms, such as ending an imperialistic war in Vietnam, ending racist discrimination, and redefining the social role of woman-feminism.

Thus was born the first ‘seeds’ of a social cultural definition of Marxism.

My New Left, 1960’s radical friends, after losing the political battle for societal change, then made a strategic decision to become professors in the social sciences and arts, and from their academic posts to continue their battle for radical societal change.

c) Important footnote : Already in post-World War One, the German Frankfurt School social philosophy began to define the ideology of social cultural Marxism. They saw that during World War One the laboring class defined their self-identity not in economic Marxist terms (as a proletariat) but in nationalistic terms

They retained the basic Marxist paradigm of Oppressor versus Oppressed, but redefined the identity of Oppression. They argued that the main forms of oppression in a capitalist society were the forces of a ‘capitalist encouraged and imposed false consumerism’ and ‘sexual repression’.

d) 1970’s-80’s, ‘The Truth is that there is no Truth: The academic Left radicals of the 60’s, now holding significant academic posts, made the principle of moral relativism the corner stone of their developing social cultural Marxism. Basing themselves on trendy French philosophers they argued that all claims to ‘ objective, absolute truth’ are simply ideological projections of one’s specific social position in society’s institutional power social structure. This ‘philosophical’ claim would allow them in the next generation to legitimize all ‘fringe’ social movements, easily delegitimize traditional, orthodox morality, and two generations later claim that Hamas terror is the moral equivalent of Israel’s military battle for self-survival.

e)1990’s -2010 – The second generation of radical, Left academic social cultural Marxists now acted to ‘update’ their canonized division of their ‘Oppressing’ and “Oppressed’ social classifications, particularly focusing on self-identities in the context of ‘institutional racism’, ‘a more radical definition of feminism’ and homosexuality.

We can generalize that claims to being part of an ‘Oppressed ‘ social entity now had very little to do with economic status, and everything to do with ‘defining one’s social self-identity’, often in rejection of traditional, normative social self-identities.

f) 2010 till the present: Third generation radical Left academics now more formally organized the ideological framework of the social cultural Marxism, and continued to expand and ‘canonize’ additional minority social self identities as ‘Oppressed’ social entities, including all forms of ‘fluid gender identities and gender transformation’ and to include ALL non-White, second and third World entities (basically all non-Europeans). This was based on adopting a ‘post -colonial ‘social analysis.

For example, ‘To be ‘queer’ – to live outside almost all traditional social norms – has now attained an almost a super legitimate, ‘prophetic’ social status. Also, they have developed the theory of ‘intersectionality’ which means that people of ‘radical sexual social identities’ are now allies in ‘overthrowing social oppression’ with third world Islamic movements who daily ostracize and punish all forms of sexual deviations. (I am sure one hundred years from now historians will laugh at this ideology of intersectionality).

g) Summary of the development of social cultural Marxism . So ‘the results are now in’. According he latest acts of ‘canonization’, if you are White (that also means Jewish), of European origin, and base your social cultural identity on the traditional two parent (male and female) family, traditional organized religion, traditional community organizations, and strongly identify with national patriotism You Are The Oppressors. (I hate to say this). This means you have become the Enemy of all ‘Oppressed ‘ social entities (as the ones defined above) in the world.

Operationally, this means that social cultural Marxism demands that we socially engineer society, in a semi totalitarian manner from above, to transfer ‘societal privileges and resources from the Oppressing class to the Oppressed classes. This program of ‘social engineering from above’ is entitled DEI, meaning the goal is to Diversify, Equitize, and Include the above canonized Oppressed groups in a transfer/redistribution of societal statuses, privileges and resources.

This means to ‘Take from the above Oppressing classes (Whites, two parent families, traditional religious’) and ‘Give to the above canonized Oppressed social groups, mentioned above” and thus detour around the democratic expectation that all societal groups should have basic access to society’s resources, and then compete -without active governmental intervention- to build the life to which they aspire.

This essay’s basic message:

I ‘apologize’ to my readers for the above somewhat ‘heavy’ philosophical detour. But it was the only way that I can demonstrate to my readers what a very serious and very powerful force social cultural Marxism has become; and what We, the defenders of Israel, of the traditional family and sexual morality, and of traditional religion, are ‘up against’.

A three generation, academic Leftist revolution has put the study of the social sciences and the arts in the hands of academics now ruling with an iron fist of a basically undemocratic, non-liberal, non-tolerant social Marxist ideology.

We holders of traditional social values are the real ‘underdog’. And I am not optimistic. It will take more than a generation to free the academic studies from their reign and regime. A social conservative on campus today has to feel like he is fighting, with a bow and arrow, against a well-disciplined army, with advanced intellectual weapons.

But after this ‘philosophical detour’ the reader should now better understand my original point that ‘these campus pro Hamas ‘uprisings’ ‘ were meticulously choreographed from ‘above’ by the social cultural Marxist faculty rulers of the universities.

How bad is this social cultural Marxist academic regime for the Jews? Very bad!

When confronted with complicated questions of social policy and change we Jews somewhat jokingly like to ask to asking “Is it good for the Jews?’ I would answer as following:

First, social cultural Marxism is bad for the Jews because it has made academic studies in the arts and social sciences a very unfriendly, even hostile, cultural-academic environment for Jews who feel proud, and want their Jewish heritage to be an important part of their self-identity. (Radical left wing social activism is a part of our Jewish cultural past, but only a fringe minority)

Jews and academic life and success are like ‘fish and water, bees and honey’. Most Jews probably see academic success as the key to their extraordinary social success of assimilating into American life, and key positions in American society, in less than three generations. I am sorry to write that most Jews will probably choose to achieve academic achievement in a culturally hostile social- even anti-semitic- environments, rather than learn in in what they see as a more culturally friendly, but ‘second rate’ academic institutions. I worry what four years in an unfriendly academic environment will do to their Jewish self-identity. I believe that some will find their Jewish identity strengthened, but the Jewish identity of most will be weakened.

Second, and more important, social cultural Marxism has seriously destabilized American society , thus creating a fertile ground for antisemitism.

Social cultural Marxism has been a very major force in polarizing and destabilizing America, destroying the traditional social norms of the majority of moderate Americans, and destroying America’s sense of national self-confidence. The result is growing sense that American society has become ‘dysfunctional’. Society has to become destabilized when you argue that America was born in the ‘sin of racism’, and the majority White population is inherently the Oppressing Bad Guy who must be condemned to walk around with a sign of Cain on his forehead. (Admittedly the social cultural Marxism now dominating academic life is not the only cause of America’s polarization and destabilizing. The white supremacy and Chistian nationalism of rural Trump America also contribute. But social cultural Marxism is the chosen topic of this article)

And for three thousand years, (be it a declining Rome, a Russia of the Czars, or the German Weimar Republic) a society that has become destabilized, and a sense of polarization and dysfunction pervades it, has always become an extremely fertile ground for the emergence and spread of the cancer of antisemitism.

And this what is happening now. American Jews had a ‘golden age’ when American society believed in its own goodness, and perceived itself as being open, pluralistic and liberal. When American society, and all societies in history, begin to feel polarized and dysfunctional, both the Right and the Left always first point the finger, and blame, the Jews. Jews are always the first to get the blame for society’s sense of failure. This has been our historical destiny.

In brief, academic social cultural Marxism is wood and tinder of the current bonfire of campus antisemitism. The Hamas massacre of Oct. 7th is only the match that lite this raging bonfire

Summary-social cultural Marxism is destroying American academic life, and has become the major source of galloping antisemitism

First, Radical Left academics, over the last three generations, have developed a systematic ideology of social cultural Marxism until it is now the most powerful social philosophy dominating the study of the social sciences and the arts.

Second, social cultural Marxism is an inherently divisive, polarizing political ideology as it divides society into Oppressing and Oppressed social entities, and wants to reengineer America’s socials structure from above. “Privileged Whites, and particularly Jews’ have been labeled as the Bad Guys Oppressing class.

Third, the recent campus uprisings are the direct result of academic social cultural Marxist choreographing their students to take their ideology out of the classroom and into the street. This means teaching that Israel is a colonial settler state that deserves to be extinguished ‘From the river to the sea’. Israel’s post Oct. seventh war of survival provided them with a ‘not to be missed’ opportunity to teach their anti-semitic ideology in the street.

Four The domination of social cultural Marxism on campus has thus become an inevitable, inherent, very potent force promoting antisemitism, and anti Israelism in American society today.

Conservative, pro-Israel, Jewish forces will have to work very hard, and for a very long time, in order to disarm social cultural Marxism and repair the horrible damage it has done to Jewish and American society.

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https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.18574/nyu/9781479821440.003.0008/html160

5

Under Pressure: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions

In a student-wide referendum that took place in December 2020, one with the highest voter turnout in school history, the student body at Tufts University voted to end their campus police’s partnership with Israeli law enforcement. The student effort was part of a national campaign led by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) called End the Deadly Exchange, which seeks to end programs that send U.S. law enforcement personnel on trips to Israel to train with Israeli police and military. The referendum was the culmination of more than two years of campus organizing and coalition building led by the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a student organization that advocates for Palestinian rights. The Tufts chapter of SJP was the first U.S. student group to implement the End the Deadly Exchange campaign on a college campus. They were bolstered by a diverse coalition of student on-campus organizations, such as JVP and Alt-J (Alternative Jews), two Jewish-identified groups that operate independently of the university’s Hillel chapter. The success of the campaign hinged on the broad-based coalition of supporters, which enabled them to convince people of its importance and validity. The Jewish campus organizations, in addition to the Jewish student members of SJP, were integral to this coalition, as, among other things, they defused accusations of antisemitism from Zionist-affiliated organizations. The Tufts campaign was part of the global movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel, more commonly referred to as BDS. This movement has grown into one of the most widespread global strategies used to combat Israeli state power and end its policies of occupation and apartheid. As evidenced by the Tufts End the Deadly Exchange campaign, the national BDS movement had played a central role in raising the consciousness of left-wing progressive students across the country around justice struggles in Palestine/Israel. For this movement, U.S. college campuses are among the most important sites of BDS organizing. As I discuss in greater detail below, student involvement in BDS campaigns helped break the hegemonic pro- Israel consensus in Jewish communities and visibilized the Palestinian struggle both within Jewish campus organizations and in students’ home communities. This chapter examines the central role that BDS activism plays among young Jewish American Palestine solidarity activists.

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‘Unsettled’: Meet the young activist Jews standing up for Palestine in USF professor’s new book

‘Unsettled’: Meet the young activist Jews standing up for Palestine in USF professor’s new book

BY SUE FISHKOFF | JUNE 27, 2024

Oren Kroll-Zeldin has been studying and writing about Israel/Palestine for his entire academic career. Now he has written his first book about it. “Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine,” published this month, delves into the subject through interviews with young American Jews active in the Palestine solidarity movement.

Kroll-Zeldin, 43, is the assistant director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco, where he is also an assistant professor of theology and religious studies. He identifies as anti-Zionist, as do many of the 70 or so young adult Jews he interviewed.

His book is an ethnographic study, but it’s also a polemic, as Kroll-Zeldin is himself an activist who took part in some of the same campaigns as his interview subjects.

His thesis is that these young activists, ages roughly 18 to 40, engage in Palestine solidarity work to express their Jewish identity; they understand Jewish values as demanding a deep commitment to social justice that necessitates distancing themselves from Israel and Zionism. They are active in four main groups: IfNotNow, which protests mainstream Jewish institutions’ support for Israel; All That’s Left and the Center for Jewish Non-Violence, which try to engage diaspora Jews in co-resistance actions with West Bank Palestinians; and Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist organization that promotes the boycott, sanctions and divestment movement against Israel. This book may not be a comfortable read for older generations of American Jews — but it describes a phenomenon that is real and happening right now.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

J.: Why did you write this book?

Oren Kroll-Zeldin: I had always been interested in the generational shifts in American Jewish connections to and support for the State of Israel and for Zionism, and I had personal experiences interacting with the groups that I focused on. I knew that this was a project that was politically important, that was personally meaningful, and that academically was worthy of  inquiry.

You interviewed young American Jews active in four main groups.  Despite their political differences on whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state, they all seem to have found a space to “be Jewish” in their activism. How does this work?

A lot of the young activists that I worked with and then interviewed for this project expressed a hesitation in connecting with their Jewishness, at least in mainstream Jewish spaces, because they saw those spaces as upholding certain values that they didn’t agree with vis-a-vis Zionism and the State of Israel. Some removed themselves from Jewish life altogether. Others found Jewish life in places where they could feel connected politically to others based on their anti-Zionism or their anti-occupation political stance.

For many of them, participating in these direct actions on the ground alongside Palestinians, leveraging their privilege as American Jews, was a really important way for them of performing a Jewish identity rooted in the values that they were taught in the Jewish educational spaces they grew up in.

They very intentionally engage with their activism, and they articulate it in Jewish language. They’re engaging in Jewish rituals, having Passover seders at the encampments on campus, reciting Kaddish at protests, as a way of saying we are doing this to perform our Jewish identities.

But there’s another really important part of this. They’re saying we don’t want to end synagogue life or ruin institutionalized Jewish life in the United States. No, we want it to be better, because being Jewish is important to us, and here’s how we think it can be better. You — our Jewish day school, our summer camp, our youth group, our synagogue Hebrew school — you taught us about certain values of peace, of freedom, of equality, of justice. We are enacting these very things that you taught us because we think it is important to apply these values to everyone — not only to Jews, to everyone, and that includes Palestinians. 

You often mention the need to “disentangle Judaism from Zionism.” What does that mean?

These activists learned Zionism as a Jewish value in their Jewish upbringings, that being Jewish means, in part, believing in the importance of a Jewish state and a Jewish homeland. What they were not taught is the impacts that that political ideology has had on Palestinians. And in a process of what I call in the book “unlearning Zionism,” which I borrow from other scholars and activists, they went through this very deep process of learning about Palestinian narratives, about Palestinian experiences that were largely hidden from them in their Jewish educations.

A lot of people growing up as Jews in the United States would plant trees in honor of someone through the Jewish National Fund and were never taught that the trees that they were planting were, for the most part, being planted over the remains of destroyed and depopulated Palestinian villages. So liberating Judaism from Zionism is a way of disentangling the Israeli state violence done in the name of Judaism, in the name of Jews, and saying: Our Jewish identities are not intertwined with nationalism, with an ethnonational project.

American Jews have stood up for Palestinian rights for decades, but it’s different with this generation. You write about the importance of lived experience in creating that difference. What are the defining moments for those you interviewed? 

This generation of Jews is very far removed from the Holocaust, and that is very significant. This is one of the foundational narratives of the State of Israel, and this is not a lived experience for them. Likewise, the 1967 Arab-Israeli war is not something that young American Jews today can relate to. They only really have experiences seeing news clips and consuming social media, where Israel is the aggressor, where Israel is an occupier, where Israel has all of the power, a country that is supported by the United States government. They don’t see Israel as the underdog; they see the Palestinians as the underdog. 

Also, older generations were less likely to encounter Palestinians on campuses or in their communities. Now, it’s very likely for Jewish students to encounter Palestinians on their campuses, for them to become friends, for them to meet each other’s families and to know each other quite well. People are able to travel to Israel and to the Palestinian territories much more easily than previous generations. They can consume alternative news sites like +972 Magazine or Mondoweiss or Al Jazeera and see things that they wouldn’t have seen before. All of this helps to expose people to different narratives than previous generations. 

Now there’s a couple of really key mobilizing moments, cataclysmic episodes that transformed this generation of American Jews. The 2014 Gaza war really is the biggest one in the last 10 years [until Oct. 7 and the subsequent war]. That is what led to the founding of IfNotNow and the dramatic rise of membership in groups like Jewish Voice for Peace.

The Trump electoral victory in 2016 forced a lot of young American Jews to rethink their priorities and to mobilize them into activists. The Gaza war in May 2021 was another really significant factor, and again today, what we have seen over the last nine months, since Oct. 7, has really shook the foundation of American Jewish life and has catalyzed a lot of young American Jews to participate.

You finished writing this book before Oct. 7. Would you write the same book today? 

Everything has changed since then, and nothing has changed at all. Everything remains the same, only more so. The destruction of Palestinian life is more intense. The violence in Gaza and the West Bank is more intense. The power of the right in Israel and the settler movement are only more intense now. The divisions in the American Jewish community were always there. They’re only more intense today. So I don’t think that I would write anything different.

“Unsettled: American Jews and ‎the Movement for Justice in Palestine” by Oren Kroll-Zeldin (NYU Press, 280 pages)

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Author Oren Kroll-Zeldin on Israel, Palestine, social justice—and the next generation of Jewish Americans

Author Oren Kroll-Zeldin on Israel, Palestine, social justice—and the next generation of Jewish Americans

USF professor talks about new book ‘Unsettled,’ and the concept of co-resistance for a shared future.

ByTIM REDMOND

JUNE 11, 2024

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As protests over Israel’s invasion of Gaza roil college campuses, Oren Kroll-Zeldin has a unique perspective.

Kroll-Zeldin, an assistant professor of Jewish Studies at the University of San Francisco, has spent years talking with young American Jews and researching their attitudes toward Israel, Palestine, and social justice.

He argues that growing numbers of young Jewish people in the US don’t see themselves as closely connected to Israel as their parents and grandparents were, and many are rejecting the idea that Zionism is part of the American Jewish identity.

Kroll-Zeldin, who is also the assistant director of USF’s Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice, teaches a semester-long class on the conflict in the Middle East. He’s the director of the Beyond Bridges: Israel-Palestine program with the Center for Global Education at USF. It’s an understatement to say he’s an expert on the region.

His new book, Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine, (NYU Press) explores this generational change and its impacts for politics in the United States.

We spoke with him about his research, his conclusions, how “unlearning Zionism” personally changed his life and his studies—and how this change may impact the future of the Middle East.

48HILLS Shortly after the invasion of Gaza, you did a talk at USF that I went to that I thought was really, really good. And one of the things you said was when you talk about the birth of Israel, multiple narratives can be true at the same time. And I’m wondering if you could start off by talking a little bit about that.

OREN KROLL-ZELDIN: There can be multiple truths at the same time. The birth of Israel, for some Jews around the world, was understood as an absolutely incredible moment in history, a really important moment for Jews rising out of the ashes of the Holocaust. Zionism itself was understood as a national liberation movement.

At the same time, the founding of Israel led to the Nakba, the catastrophe for Palestinians, the ethnic cleansing and dispossession of Palestine, and the creation of a massive refugee problem.

Both of those things are factually accurate, and different people hold different truths about those foundational narratives.

48HILLS One of the things you mentioned in your book is that for a lot of American Jews, the idea of Zionism and support for the state of Israel, almost no matter what it does, was kind of embedded in Judaism for generations, including yours. Can you talk a little bit about that?

OREN KROLL-ZELDIN  Yeah, there was a concerted effort by certain American Jewish establishment institutions in conjunction with the government of the State of Israel to ensure this very, very clear link between American Judaism and Israel and Zionism and support for the state of Israel. And really there is a very long history of American Jewish institutions silencing dissent and critique of that connection.

After the Arab Israeli war of 1967, Zionism became deeply interwoven into both American political life, but also, and more importantly for this conversation, Jewish American life in such a way that Zionism almost became a new American Jewish religion. When you would go to a synagogue, there would be an American flag and an Israeli flag on the pulpit. If you went to Hebrew School or Jewish day school or Jewish overnight summer camps, or almost really any Jewish educational institutional space, there were people teaching about Israel, unquestionably teaching about Israel, not telling anything about this other narrative that we started with, that narrative of ethnic cleansing, of dispossession, of the catastrophe of Nakba.

And the byproduct of that is people never knowing in American Jewish spaces what Palestinian narratives were, what Palestinian experiences were. It was only, we’re Jewish, there’s the state of Israel, it’s there for you, it is there for us, and let’s learn about it. Let’s celebrate it.

48HILLS You write in the book about “unlearning Zionism.” And you talk about your own personal experience, and maybe you can tell us a little more about the Berkeley Hillel trip you took in 2006 and how that experience as a young Jewish scholar affected you and brought you kind of on the journey to where you are today.

OREN KROLL-ZELDIN Much like the people I write about in the book, I went through a very similar process of being indoctrinated into unquestioning Zionism, which was strange because in the community that I grew up with, and at least in the home that I grew up in, we would question everything. We were taught to question everything, to champion liberal causes. The one thing we weren’t taught to question was Israel and Zionism, and it wasn’t until much later in my life that I learned to think more critically about that and for me, as for others who go through the process of unlearning Zionism, there are moments that form cracks in the foundational narratives.

I have a whole chapter in the book about Birthright critiquing. And part of the way I know so much about it is my own sort of experience.  

48HILLS Maybe we could stop for a second here and you can explain to people what the Birthright program is.

OREN KROLL-ZELDIN Birthright is a free 10-day trip to Israel for Jews from around the world between the ages of 18 and 34, who have never been on a peer trip to Israel before. More than 700,000 Jews from around the world have gone to Israel on a Birthright program. It is the single largest provider of Israel education for Jews across the world.

So I was staffing a trip in 2006, when the 2006 Israel Lebanon war broke out. We were in the north of Israel, very close to the Lebanon border. And one day on the Sabbath, we were eating lunch in our hotel, and three rockets from Lebanon fall within 100 meters of the hotel.

The whole thing shakes. We end up spending much of that day in the bomb shelter, waiting for clearance to be able to get on a bus and leave and go to the center of the country.

I had a really hard time hearing what people were saying: ‘They’re just our enemies. They hate Jews. They just want to wipe us off the face of the map. It’s only because we’re Jewish, that they’re doing this.’ And I remember hearing some deep-seated Anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia.

And I was wondering, well, what are the people on the other side of the border saying? What are people in Lebanon experiencing? And anytime I would ask people that, they would really quickly shoot me down: ‘How could you be talking about them? This is about our survival.’ And that really shook me. I was like, I know there’s more to this story.

So that sort of led me to examine and start learning more. What was happening in Lebanon. What was this war all about? How does this connect to the Palestinian issue? Who are the Palestinians? As I started learning more, I started to meet Palestinians, learn from them, and got deeply invested in the academic scholarship of Palestine studies, of Middle East studies, and connecting that to my own research in Jewish studies and  anthropology.

And I guess now there’s this book, exploring that all.

48HILLS One of the stories you also tell is about a student who was on one of these Birthright trips, who was given a map of Israel that did not include any lines around the West Bank. Can you talk a little bit about that?

OREN KROLL-ZELDIN So there’s a really common thing, the use of maps, and this is a big thing today. In these Jewish institutional spaces and on Birthright they give you maps and it’s a map of greater Israel. And there’s no demarcation of the West bank. There’s a very, very small line that points out where Gaza is. But the indication is that all of this is Israel. There’s no occupied Palestinian territories. There’s no sense that there’s any differentiation.

This really speaks to how American Jews are taught about Israel, but it also speaks to the power of the apartheid system in Israel. Jews on the entire land are citizens living with the rights of citizenship. But Palestinians, if they’re living in the West Bank or Gaza, they don’t have the same rights.

So this person on his Birthright trip was pointing out: But wait, where’s the West Bank? What’s going on here? What does that say about the program and the erasure of Palestinian life, Palestinian identity, culture, history, narratives.

You hear American Jews who are pro-Israel on campuses starting to say they feel uncomfortable when they see a protester wearing a shirt where what they would consider to be the state of Israel is with, like, maybe the checkered pattern of a keffiyeh, and is saying, well, this is all Palestine.

In a sense, both sides are using these maps to claim the whole thing belongs to me. It is all Israel, it is all Palestine. And in a sense, this sort of speaks to what we started with, the multiple truths and competing narratives.

We need to make sense of this. American Jews weren’t taught to make sense of this. And this activist on this Birthright trip was raising this as an issue. We need to reckon with what’s going on here. With what you’re putting on these maps.

48HILLS One of the things you write about is anti-Zionism as a Jewish value, and I’m hoping you can talk a little bit about that.

OREN KROLL-ZELDIN Anti-Zionism is a political ideology that is contesting the Jewish nation-state’s stronghold in Israel and its oppression of Palestinians. It’s a way of liberating Jewishness from Zionism. It’s saying there are so many different ways to be Jewish. It’s about the liberation and safety of all, the safety and security of Jews and Palestinians.

We are seeing a lot of allegations of antisemitism [in the movement for justice in Palestine], equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, which makes it harder to call out actual instances of antisemitism.

Like what we see in the rising white nationalists, the strength of white nationalism that people are very literally being attacked in their places of worship, in their synagogues, and being killed.

And we need to take that seriously. That is very real. But the individual instances of antisemitism in the movement should not be painting the entire thing as antisemitic.

48HILLS One of the themes that comes out of the people you’ve interviewed and the people you talked to was this idea of “co-resistance.” Can you talk a little more about that?

OREN KROLL-ZELDIN: Co-resistance, I think, is one of the most important and profound ways of resisting Israeli policies of apartheid and occupation that exists today. It means that Palestinians and Jews resist collectively on the ground, in alliance and collaboration with one another.

Co-resistance emerged out of the failure of coexistence programs There was a proliferation of coexistence programs during and immediately following the Oslo chords of the 1990s. Coexistence is like, whoa, let’s have a dialogue. And we’ll get to peace through these track two dialogue programs, and we’ll realize: Look, you love movies. I love movies. You like music. I like music. You eat hummus. I eat hummus. Amazing. Let’s all be friends.

The problem with that is it didn’t really address the imbalance of the power dynamics that continued to exist in society. So when coexistence activities started to fail, and not lead to any meaningful changes, Palestinian activists turned towards a new strategy which we now call co-resistance.

Co-resistance is meaningful because it’s always led by Palestinians. They set the terms for what the actions look like, and they invite Jewish Israelis and Jews from the diaspora to participate. Sometimes, if it leads to material changes, real material wins that improve the conditions of everyday life for Palestinians in the West Bank.

But on a symbolic level, I think that co-resistance activism is very significant because, among other things, it builds strong alliances on the ground based on shared political commitments. And provides the framework for what a shared future based on equality for all might look like.

48HILLS What is that future? What’s going to happen now? I feel like there’s now a generation of Palestinians who’ve seen 40,000 of their neighbors killed, and are not going to be easily convinced to make peace with Israel. And Netanyahu has energized the Israeli right, and now you have the right in Israel that doesn’t want to make peace with the Palestinians.

The concept of a two-state solution has been so damaged by the settlements. I see so much anger on both sides, anger among Jews at the attacks of October 7 and the deaths and the hostages and anger among Palestinians over the wildly disproportionate response.

What’s the best outcome? Is there a two-state solution. How do we make this? What would you like to see happen?

OREN KROLL-ZELDIN: Yeah, we’re in a really difficult moment, that’s for sure. This book and my research is not about pointing to solutions, or offering solutions. I’m offering research that talks about the ways that young American Jews are changing the conversation in the American Jewish community, which has a tremendous amount of power over what happens in Israel and Palestine.

There is no consensus among activists over what should happen. And October 7 and the actions of the Israeli military in the months since then have changed the game completely.

The actions of October 7 I think in a day really undid a lot of the work of peace activists and justice activists that people have been working on for the last quarter of a century. In the intervening weeks after that, people who were fully in support of Palestinian liberation, all of a sudden turned very hard against that. And then the actions of the military since then has changed people back.

There are many Jewish Israeli peace and justice activists out there. They do not get the necessary attention; they don’t get the media coverage that others get. Both Israeli and Palestinian societies are struggling right now themselves, so anytime there is the advancement of these Palestinian nonviolent actors, they are either beaten by soldiers or settlers, or they are arrested and put behind bars and held in administrative detention to silence them.

Israel has basically criminalized armed resistance. They have criminalized nonviolent resistance. They, in conjunction with institutions and politicians in the United States have criminalized boycotts and divestments and sanctions campaigns.

So what is the recourse? If every action, every form of resistance has been criminalized. Where do we go from there?

I think we need to work very hard to highlight those who are engaged in co-resistance activism and to build up the profiles of these nonviolent actors, both Palestinian and Israeli Jews, and to highlight the voices of the American Jews who are participating in that work of upholding those voices.

Find out more about Unsettled here. Full disclosure: I teach at USF and run into Oren Kroll-Zeldin in the halls every now and then.

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https://www.centerfortransformativeeducation.org/beyond-bridges-israel-palestine

Beyond Bridges: Israel-Palestine (BBIP) 

History

In partnership with the Center for Global Education at the University of San Francisco (USF), the Center for Transformative Education’s Beyond Bridges: Israel-Palestine (BBIP) program was launched in summer 2010 with a pilot group of eight participants from three American schools: Swarthmore College, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of San Francisco. We ran similar programs in summers 2011 and 2012, with 16 students in each group, almost all from USF. All three of these iterations ran for three-weeks, giving participants the opportunity to meet with individuals and organizations working to end, and even transform, this decades-old conflict. We ran the program again in summer 2023.

Between 2008-12, CTE focused exclusively on two conflict transformation programs: (1) a facilitation training course offered at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and USF and (2) BBIP.

For more on the pedagogical underpinnings of these two programs see the following two academic articles:

• “Paulo Freire and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Pedagogy of a Social Justice Experiential Educational Program in Israel and Palestine,” International Journal for Education and Social Justice, 2015.
• “A Pedagogy of Social Justice Education: Social Identity Theory, Intersectionality, and Empowerment,” Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 2013.