In his recent book Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, & the Faculty Campaign against the Jewish State, Cary Nelson—himself a retired professor—details the reality of “Israel Denial” on campus and exposes the intellectual hollowness and sheer maliciousness behind it. Daniella Greenbaum Davis, in her review, sums up Nelson’s underlying claim thus: “when Israel acts in an entirely unremarkable fashion, Jew-hatred inspires critics to react as if the Jewish state has committed unspeakable horrors.” Among much else, Nelson traces the roots of anti-Israel activists’ especially insidious strategy of trying to drive “Zionists” out of every possible campus institution, a phenomenon Greenbaum Davis herself encountered as a student at Barnard:

No Red Tape [was a student group that] billed itself as a resource and advocate for students at Columbia and Barnard who had been sexually assaulted or raped. This advertising turned out to be false. The group was interested in aiding all victims of sexual abuse, it turned out, except Zionists.

At first, this point was made subtly. No Red Tape would ally itself with anti-Israel groups and sign on to anti-Israel statements. Eventually it was made explicit: being pro-Israel and anti-rape were, in its view, mutually exclusive. [At the time], I thought this turn of events, while gravely disappointing, was probably unique to our campus. Cary Nelson’s Israel Denial corrects my assumption. Far from being isolated events or one-off occurrences, most of the anti-Zionist activities on college campuses are part of a much broader top-down approach to activism. The grassroots façade of the anti-Israel activists is a myth, and one easily exposed by even a cursory analysis of the similarities among each campus’s pernicious incidents of anti-Semitism and Israel hatred.

Nelson details how and why things like the No Red Tape incident came to be. In 2014, the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS) partnered with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, writes Nelson, “to distribute its Guidelines for Academic and Cultural Boycotts.” This document “included a prohibition against any relationship that would have the effect of ‘normalizing’ relationships with Israeli universities and other institutions.”

This notion was then extended to an effort to convince all campus activist groups, in the words of the disgraced anti-Israel former professor Steven Salaita, to “cast out Zionists before moving forward.”

For more than a year, the Iran-backed Houthis have been launching drones and missiles at ships traversing the Red Sea, as well as at Israeli territory, in support of Hamas. This development has drastically curtailed shipping through the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, driving up trade prices. This week, the Trump administration began an extensive bombing campaign against the Houthis in an effort to reopen that crucial waterway. Burcu Ozcelik highlights another benefit of this action:

The administration has a broader geopolitical agenda—one that includes countering China’s economic leverage, particularly Beijing’s reliance on Iranian oil. By targeting the Houthis, the United States is not only safeguarding vital shipping lanes but also exerting pressure on the Iran-China energy nexus, a key component of Beijing’s strategic posture in the region.

China was the primary destination for up to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports in 2024, underscoring the deepening economic ties between Beijing and Tehran despite U.S. sanctions. By helping fill Iranian coffers, China aids Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in financing proxies like the Houthis. Since October of last year, notable U.S. Treasury announcements have revealed covert links between China and the Houthis.

Striking the Houthis could trigger broader repercussions—not least by disrupting the flow of Iranian oil to China. While difficult to confirm, it is conceivable and has been reported, that the Houthis may have received financial or other forms of compensation from China (such as Chinese-made military components) in exchange for allowing freedom of passage for China-affiliated vessels in the Red Sea.