University protesters are wrong to direct anger at Israel, Jews

There is one thing that I can always rely on when things get terrible for the Jewish people: the support of my Christian neighbors.

They stop me when I’m walking the dogs, flag me down driving on the street, send texts and emails. They want me to know that they care, and that they are appalled by what’s happening, especially on college campuses.

So am I.

I hear the chants of “from the river to the sea” and know what the chanters themselves might not realize – that it means total oblivion of Israel. The river is the Jordan, the sea is the Mediterranean and Israel lies between.

If the protesters on college campuses care about the Palestinian people, why don’t they protest for the thousands of Palestinians who have died in Syria under its repressive regime?

If they care about children, why are they not protesting for the children starving in Yemen? Human Rights Watch reports that “Yemen is one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with more than 21 million Yemenis in need of assistance and suffering from inadequate food, health care, and infrastructure.”

The uncomfortable conclusion that I have reached is this: The protesters don’t care. They don’t care about the Israelis and others who were murdered, raped, kidnapped and critically injured on Oct 7. They blame Israel for the violent attack on civilians who were going about their daily lives that day.

They feel free to attack and boycott American Jewish businesses, empowered by their hatred to target any Jew, anywhere. But today, college campuses are the worst places for Jews to be.

The anti-Israel sentiment that has sprung up so rapidly and so virulently is terrifying. Because it tells us that it was there all along, just waiting to be unleashed.

The students protesting on campuses across the country are spreading a message of intolerance, hatred and antisemitism. In their zeal to emulate the student protests of the 1960s, they have lost sight of any humanitarian goals. And Jewish students? They are rightfully terrified.

American Jews are learning how German Jews must have felt in the 1930s, incredulous that anyone could behave in this manner. The protesters are unilaterally blaming Israel, including for the attack on Oct. 7, and say that Israelis brought it on themselves. How could a reasonable person say such a thing? We have learned that no young woman is “asking for it” because of her clothing. Have we not also learned that no civilian group deserves to be raped and murdered because of their government’s decisions?

I am grateful to my neighbors for reaching out. They feel as helpless as I do, and their kindnesses to me are the best they can do. But it’s not enough. We need their churches and clergy to speak out.

We need our political leaders to stand in unity with us. We need the Black and Latino communities to step forward.

We need big, grand gestures. We need hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Americans to wear a Jewish star – not like the ones the Nazis forced us to wear, but beautiful blue and white ones.

There are too few of us, and we are under attack. We need you.