A Year’s Slide into Antisemitism, Examined

by Emily Washburn | October 7, 2024 | Culture

A Pro-Hamas organization launched a series of demonstrations Monday to pressure colleges and universities into cutting funding to Israel. The so-called “Week of Rage” coincides with the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ invasion of Israel — the single deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), one for the organizations behind the pro-Hamas demonstrations that plagued colleges last semester, claims the four-day event will demonstrate students’ commitment to ending Israel’s “genocide.”

“For over 11 months now, the Zionist entity, with the backing of the U.S. and our universities, has committed a horrific assault on the nearly 2 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip,” the group writes on Instagram, continuing,

We will rise to end our universities’ complicity in this genocide, to fight for the end of the colonization of Palestine, and to fight for the complete liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.

“From the river to the sea” is a slogan calling for the extinction of Israel, which is situated between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and organizations like it do not believe in a two-state solution; their vision of Palestinian freedom necessitates Israel’s demise.

Hamas tried to extinguish Israel on October 7, 2023. Hamas militants burst into Israel from the Gaza strip at 6:29 a.m., torching neighborhoods, taking prisoners and, primarily, killing and torturing as many people as possible.

The soldiers murdered 1,200 people, including 46 Americans and citizens from more than 30 other countries. Of the 254 people kidnapped on October 7, 2023, 97 remain in Gaza. Only 64 are thought to be alive.

A post featured in SJP’s latest Instagram story showcases a newspaper praising the attack, which Hamas called “Al-Aqsa Flood.”

The picture’s caption, posted by the papers’ authors, references the paper’s first edition containing the “names of 2,600 martyrs.” They mean the names of 2,600 Hamas soldiers slain in the attack.

One year of daily exposure to antisemitism takes the shock out of even the most abhorrent slurs. But today, on all days, Americans and Christians need to ask ourselves how we got here.

Controlling for population, the deaths of 1,200 in Israel would equate to the deaths of 41,846 people in America. Photos and videos from the attack, as well as harrowing witness testimony, show Hamas took delight in butchering Israelis, tourists, foreign nationals and soldiers. News outlets including The New York Times verify Hamas’ systematic sexual abuse of innocent women on October 7, 2023 — though many published their accounts months after brutalized bodies began appearing in Israeli morgues.

But today, students on college campuses will march alongside groups memorializing and defending the attackers, not the innocent people being attacked.

Academically, the descent into antisemitism can be traced to a reductive worldview dividing people into two categories — oppressor and oppressed. The oppressor is always bad and the oppressed is always good. Under this worldview, oppression primarily involves power structures, not ideologies.

Shortly after the attack on October 7, student groups at elite American schools quickly blamed Israel for the violence, deeming it the “oppressor” and Gaza the “oppressed.” Activist and student groups made supportive graphics and chants referencing the parachutes Hamas soldier used to gun down civilians across the Israeli border. Journalists, activists and professors justified Hamas’ actions as “decolonization.”

This simplistic evaluation only takes Israel’s power relative to Gaza into account. It neglects the region’s history, which shows that Israel gained power by fighting existential wars against Islamic jihadists and other nations in the area.

Similarly, the oppressor/oppressed narrative makes no moral judgements. It morally justifies Hamas’ violence because it is “oppressed.” Any action Israel takes in self-defense will be viewed as morally bankrupt because it is “oppressor.”

This thoroughly uncritical view of the situation in the Middle East relegated the events of October 7 to the history books just days after the massacre occurred. Pro-Hamas activists no longer deign to condemn the terrorists’ actions on October 7. Most don’t mention it at all.

Please do not accept that the Israel-Hamas war is a two-sided conflict. Israel did not deserve what Hamas did on October 7, 2023. In fact, there is nothing Israel could do that would justify such an attack because the unprompted murder of innocent people is always wrong. Hamas, the instigator, further bears responsibility for the innocent Gazan civilians killed during the war.

If you find yourself struggling to combat cultural narratives about Israel and its role in the Middle East, check out the articles below.

Additional Articles and Resources

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Tragedy in Israel and the Gift of a Soft Heart

Pro-Hamas Protests Will Never Be Peaceful

Six Lies Hamas Tells You, Debunked

Three Hamas Hostages Found Dead, 100 Still Held

Double Standard? Calls for Israeli Ceasefire Could Conceal Antisemitism

Antisemitism — What It Is and Its Connection to the Israel-Hamas War

Israel is Under Attack — Here’s Why Christians Should Support Its Defense

Women’s Rights Group Silent on Hamas Sexual Violence, Analysis Shows

More Antisemitism — Legacy Media Implies Israeli Rescue Mission is War Crime