Anti-semitism at Berkeley

Kenneth Marcus writes:

Nine different law student groups at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Law, my own alma mater, have begun this new academic year by amending bylaws to ensure that they will never invite any speakers that support Israel or Zionism. And these are not groups that represent only a small percentage of the student population. They include Women of Berkeley Law, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Law Students of African Descent and the Queer Caucus. Berkeley Law’s Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a progressive Zionist, has observed that he himself would be banned under this standard, as would 90% of his Jewish students.

It is worth noting that there are around 100 groups at the School of Law, so those banning are a minority.

A Zionist is simply someone that believes Israel should exist as a Jewish state. It doesn’t mean you support any particular Government of Israel or their policies. It doesn’t mean you support settlements on disputed territory or any particular borders. It just means that you support Israel existing.

Anti-Zionism is flatly antisemitic. Using “Zionist” as a euphemism for Jew is nothing more than a confidence trick. Like other forms of Judeophobia, it is an ideology of hate, treating Israel as the “collective Jew” and smearing the Jewish state with defamations similar to those used for centuries to vilify individual Jews.

Exactly.