In a rare bit of good news from the academy, New York University (NYU) and the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) both decided not to allow the newly formed Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (ICSZ) to hold its inaugural conference on their campuses. This organization, as Cary Nelson and his colleagues explain, went to new lengths of anti-Israel fanaticism, even as it championed itself as defending academic freedom from the supposed threat posed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism:

Politically one-sided academic conferences are not uncommon. But the organizers initially went one step further. They demanded a pledge of allegiance to anti-Zionism: “We ask that all who attend confirm their agreement with the points of unity before registering.” All those who would enter were required to pass a political litmus test, swearing to what amounts to an anti-Zionist loyalty oath.

Faced with rapid public denunciation, along with some likely internal blowback at UCSC and NYU, the organizers deleted the loyalty-oath demand. At the same time, however, they closed the event to additional presentations. The move represented strategic cynicism, since all the accepted presenters would have already dutifully signed the pledge.

And then there is the ICSZ’s website, which stresses the vastness of the evils that the critical study of Zionism aims to uncover. “Behind the clotted academic jargon,” Nelson et al. observe, “is the allegation of a vast Zionist conspiracy.” This includes “linkages” and “ties” between Zionism and “homonationalism,” “the destruction of Indigenous agriculture in Guatemala,” and American North Korea policy, as well as “Zionist surveillance technology deployed at the U.S.-Mexico border.”

Israel’s power and influence, [in the institute’s view], extend everywhere. We are in the presence here of the insidious, anti-Semitic trope of the worldwide conspiratorial Jewish octopus so often depicted by the Nazis. Part of what is insidious about the ICSZ’s conspiratorial menu is that it mounts a project based on guilt by association. . . . Certainly, the suggestion that Israel’s hostile relations with North Korea are responsible for Western condemnations of North Korea’s human-rights violations belongs in the latter category. Christine Hong of UCSC, one of the ICSZ’s founders, has been condemning human-rights complaints against North Korea for at least a decade.

ICSZ is . . . founded on the rock of anti-Zionist animus. It has no other mission or reason for existence. Its formal recognition by UCSC or NYU could well lead a few other institutions to create departments or programs of anti-Zionism. But for many Jewish students and faculty they would in fact function as departments of anti-Semitism.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.