Jewish students in Western countries are increasingly facing forms of transnational repression from vigilante groups linked to the repressive Israeli state. These groups are allegedly using violence and intimidation on university campuses in coordinated strategies to curtail freedom of speech.
The strategy utilised by the Zionist Establishment within Jewish communities and outside these communities, particularly, in the United States, England, France, Germany and Australia is to engage in an intentional falsification of history and contemporary reality when it comes to the supposedly intractable conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Two crude slogans of the unconditional supporters of the present Gazan genocide and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank–which includes the Zionist Establishment in the above countries, and a spectrum of activists ranging from ‘left’ to far-right and fascist Zionists– is to scream “Jewish students are unsafe”, or the canard, “The protesters are antisemitic”.
This is, as noted above, a deliberate distortion of what is happening. Many of the protesters opposed to the Palestinian genocide are Jewish, and there have been no incidents of Jewish students who support the genocide of the Palestinians being intimidated or physically attacked.
In fact, the contrary is the case. Peaceful protesters have been violently set upon by far-right and fascist Zionist vigilantes, and the ruling elites in a number of countries have often sent paramilitary police units to violently attack occupying students at university encampments around the world.
This campaign of attacking protesters against the Palestinian genocide is overseen by various unelected leadership bodies–Zionist, and uncritically loyal to successive Israeli governments–within Jewish communities outside Israel with close connections to the Israeli state apparatus. The present campaign, as similar campaigns in the past, is also coordinated and closely monitored by Israeli intelligence agencies.
Apart from physically attacking opponents of the genocide on university campuses, the second tactic of the supporters of this war of annihilation against the Palestinians has been to vilify all opponents of the genocide inside and outside universities including the multitude of academics, Jewish students and activists protesting against this genocide. These opponents of the genocide have often been viciously attacked with extremely violent invective; vilified for being so-called ‘self-hating’ Jews, ‘antisemites’, ostracised and slandered in multiple ways.
As the world witnessed in the case of the destruction of the highly probable victory of Jeremy Corbyn becoming British Prime Minister, these campaigns of destroying opponents of Israeli ethnic cleansing have been extremely potent and successful.
It is, therefore, imperative that all people opposed to this war of annihilation of the Palestinian people must make sure that this current campaign which aims to destroy any opposition to the Gazan genocide is decisively defeated.
John-Janusz Ebel
John-Janusz Ebel is the son of Holocaust survivors. Soon after coming to Australia from Poland, Ebel chose to be a draft resister and activist against the Vietnam War; he also participated in Aboriginal struggles against continued oppression and genocide of Aboriginal people. Ebel has practised as a radical existentialist psychotherapist.