Those young Jews who have begun their first year of college, or who are preparing their applications for the fall of 2022, might be wondering how best to respond to the sort of anti-Israel invective that has become all too common on university campuses. To them, Howard Jacobson offers some counsel:
Ready yourself for the Holy Land cropping up frequently in campus conversation, demonstrations, social-science seminars, and even lectures, and take it as read that you will be suspected, should you take issue with anything you hear, of being in the pay of the Israeli state. Accusing Jews of being fifth columnists is, after all, no more controversial than accusing them of being rich. . . . [Y]ou are going to find it strange that a university of all places should foster the idea that there is only one truth; but take heart from the fact that it isn’t everybody who is not allowed to express an alternative view, only you.
But if there is one position, above all, that I entreat you not to adopt, it is that of a supine, conciliatory Jew who believes he can remain outside the fray. Here is what not to say: “Why are you picking on me when your actual argument is with Israel? I am just a Jew standing on the other side of the street. I have no part of this.”
This implicitly concedes the case against Israel and, more than that, demeans you.
“We are not Israel,” declared the Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman. Well, funnily enough, Sarah, we are. If you feel you are unfairly taking the flak for Israel, don’t forget that Israel unfairly takes the flak for you. Whatever the truth of the charges made against it—that it is a racist, apartheid state, that it practices ethnic cleansing, that its true and only aim is genocide, etc., etc.—Israel would not be judged anything like so immoderately were it not a Jewish state with every past vilification of Jews burnt into its flesh.
Read more on Sapir: https://sapirjournal.org/continuity/2021/11/advice-to-a-jewish-freshman/