Andrew Pessin, a professor of philosophy, and Doron Ben-Atar, a professor of American Studies, don’t share a discipline or research interests, but they share the experience of being Jewish faculty members targeted and harassed by anti-Zionists at their respective universities. Together, they have edited a volume of essays titled Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS. In his review, Jarrod Tanny comments on one of the themes that emerge from the book: the highly porous line between hatred for the Jewish state and hatred for Jews.

Much as 19th-century anti-Semites saw the Jews as the chief perpetrators and beneficiaries of the widespread misery unleashed by political modernization and industrialization, today’s anti-Zionists have centered the Jewish state—a tiny entity that allegedly wields a disproportionate amount of power through its covert machinations—in their cosmology of global oppressions. Social justice and liberation entail the liquidation of Jewish power. . . .

“If the Palestinians stand . . . as symbolic of all the victims of ‘the West’ or ‘imperialism,’” writes [the British scholar of anti-Semitism] David Hirsh, “then Israel is thrust into the center of the world as being symbolic of oppression everywhere.” In this sense, the Palestinian is the universal victim, the 21st-century incarnation of the Marxist’s proletariat whose liberation would lead to the liberation of all. All that stands in the way is the Jewish state and the diasporic communities who advocate for its existence. Social justice and freedom will come only when Jewish self-determination is undone and Israel is forced to vanish into history.

But it is primarily the Jews of the diaspora, not Israel, who are paying the price for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement because its goal, write Pessin and Ben-Atar, is “to change the conversation about Israel and Zionism” in America, not to help the Palestinians. In fact, they go on, “they have changed the conversation quite significantly. It is now permissible to say things about Israelis and Jews . . . that not long ago were impermissible.”

While roughly a third of Saudis are willing to cooperate with the Jewish state in matters of technology and commerce, far fewer are willing to allow Israeli teams to compete within the kingdom—let alone support diplomatic normalization. These are just a few results of a recent, detailed, and professional opinion survey—a rarity in Saudi Arabia—that has much bearing on current negotiations involving Washington, Jerusalem, and Riyadh. David Pollock notes some others:

When asked about possible factors “in considering whether or not Saudi Arabia should establish official relations with Israel,” the Saudi public opts first for an Islamic—rather than a specifically Saudi—agenda: almost half (46 percent) say it would be “important” to obtain “new Israeli guarantees of Muslim rights at al-Aqsa Mosque and al-Haram al-Sharif [i.e., the Temple Mount] in Jerusalem.” Prioritizing this issue is significantly more popular than any other option offered. . . .

This popular focus on religion is in line with responses to other controversial questions in the survey. Exactly the same percentage, for example, feel “strongly” that “our country should cut off all relations with any other country where anybody hurts the Quran.”

By comparison, Palestinian aspirations come in second place in Saudi popular perceptions of a deal with Israel. Thirty-six percent of the Saudi public say it would be “important” to obtain “new steps toward political rights and better economic opportunities for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.” Far behind these drivers in popular attitudes, surprisingly, are hypothetical American contributions to a Saudi-Israel deal—even though these have reportedly been under heavy discussion at the official level in recent months.

Therefore, based on this analysis of these new survey findings, all three governments involved in a possible trilateral U.S.-Saudi-Israel deal would be well advised to pay at least as much attention to its religious dimension as to its political, security, and economic ones.