Multiple things can be true at once. The loss of life in Gaza and in Israel has been tragic, catastrophic, and avoidable. But the targeting of Jews on college campuses, including Yale, since Oct. 7 with the ongoing anti-Israel protests over the last few weeks is unnecessary, unwelcome, and also avoidable.
There is a sense of uneasiness, a feeling of uncomfortable fear, a whisper of historical trauma latching on to a contemporary scene. And there is, on the part of the protestors and their supporters, a willful disavowal that anything harmful toward Jewish community members is happening; a disavowal that only serves to intensify our discomfort. At a time when tens of thousands of Palestinians and Jews have lost their lives or been subjected to physical and mental trauma, one might say that discomfort is a small price; but toward what end?
We are queer Jewish faculty in the Yale School of Medicine and Public Health. In our combined decades on campus we have never felt marginalized or minoritized for our beliefs around Judaism or Israel. Until now. And we are not alone.
Students have shared that they have been taking off their kippah when on campus. Others express discomfort about being perceived as publicly supportive of Israel. In a community update shared on YouTube, Rabbi Jason Rubenstein of the Slifka Center for Jewish Life shared stories of students being shunned and excluded from campus life on the basis of their affiliation or even perceived affiliation with Israel. It is clear that these days, the mere perception of being a Zionist may damage a student’s social or academic prospects.
The Jewish community is not a monolith, and the connections that Jews on college campuses have to the state of Israel are varied and complex. The Yale community includes dozens of Israeli students, post docs and faculty members, who have the right to study and work without being targeted. Many Jews born outside of Israel hold their relationship with Israel as an important feature of their Jewish identity, a spiritual and physical homeland.
The rhetoric used on campuses against Zionists is inflammatory and damaging, reducing this complex and varied relationship to a political litmus test. Indeed, protestors at the encampment on Yale’s Cross Campus initially restricted access to this shared space, requiring those passing through to agree to their political views and prompting President Peter Salovey to send a campus-wide email calling for freedom of expression and civilized discourse.
Protestors on Cross Campus have signs that read “Globalize the Intifada.” We recognize this as a violent dog-whistle, recalling the Second Intifada of 2000-2005 in which there was enormous violence in Israel and Palestine resulting in the deaths of thousands. There have been chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” another dog-whistle calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. Some may claim that these terms are ambiguous, but that is precisely the point. They are deployed to make Jews on campus maximally uncomfortable while maintaining plausible deniability that there is nothing worrisome or anti-Semitic happening here.
One of the most painful examples of this is the casual use of the term “genocide” to delegitimize Israel. This language draws a line in the sand demarcating who is good and who is bad. The implicit message is clear: Jews who are connected with Israel are guilty of supporting genocide, and this message was recently made explicitly by Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar who divided Jews into those who are “pro-genocide or anti-genocide.”
Every day our students and colleagues hear that their identity is under attack and reduced to this line in the sand. There are good Jews, and bad Jews. No other people are subjected to this kind of blanket villainization. No other group on campus suffers attacks on their identities in this way.
The disavowal that there is antisemitism here is perverse. It is a one-sided attempt for non-Jews and some Jews to define what it means to be Jewish and what the Jewish relationship to Israel should look like. Many Jews on campus are being victimized as we are divided against ourselves without the opportunity for nuance, compassion and understanding.
When we are dehumanized in this way, classified, shunned, and ostracized, it is very scary indeed.
Jessica Bod MD and Howard Forman MD are Professors at the Yale School of Medicine.