Drawing on the accounts of two Jewish undergraduates who attended the annual Students of Color Conference at the University of California, Berkeley, Anthony Berteaux describes the successful absorption of the anti-Israel movement within the broader campus left and its amalgamation with rabid anti-Semitism. The story begins many decades ago:

[A]nti-Israel co-option of progressive causes dates as far back as 1959, when the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) was founded in Egypt. Supportive of terrorist groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, GUPS saw a need to create a unified plan and message for student activists. It released a statement calling for students to channel their activism into supporting the “armed struggle” and fighting Israel from abroad. It is in this statement that . . . [an] alliance with progressives was [first] mentioned . . . Palestinian members living abroad would be encouraged to cooperate with the progressive political forces in their host countries to counter official Zionist activities, lectures, and movie screenings.

When the GUPS established a chapter at San Francisco State University in 1973, it organized accordingly, focusing its mission on “social justice” while simultaneously supporting Palestinian liberation through armed struggle.

Decades late, the seed planted in 1959 would bear fruit of the kind on display at the Students of Color Conference. One student would recount her experience on the first day in these words:

Over the course of what was probably no longer than an hour, [the basic facts of Jewish] history were denied, the murder of my people was justified, and a movement whose sole purpose is the destruction of the Jewish state was glorified. Statements were made justifying the ruthless murder of innocent Israeli civilians, blatantly denying Jewish indigeneity in the land, and denying the Holocaust. . . . These statements, and others, were met with endless snaps and cheers.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.