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.

Even if the agreement with Hamas to secure the release of some, and possibly all, of the remaining hostages—and the bodies of those no longer alive—is a prudent decision for Israel, it comes at a very high price: potentially leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the release of vast numbers of Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands. Nadav Shragai reminds us of the history of such agreements:

We cannot forget that the terrorists released in the Jibril deal during the summer of 1985 became the backbone of the first intifada, resulting in the murder of 165 Israelis. Approximately half of the terrorists released following the Oslo Accords joined Palestinian terror groups, with many participating in the second intifada that claimed 1,178 Israeli lives. Those freed in [exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011] constructed Gaza, the world’s largest terror city, and brought about the October 7 massacre. We must ask ourselves: where will those released in the 2025 hostage deal lead us?

Taking these painful concessions into account Michael Oren argues that they might nonetheless be necessary:

From day one—October 7, 2023—Israel’s twin goals in Gaza were fundamentally irreconcilable. Israel could not, as its leaders pledged, simultaneously destroy Hamas and secure all of the hostages’ release. The terrorists who regarded the hostages as the key to their survival would hardly give them up for less than an Israeli commitment to end—and therefore lose—the war. Israelis, for their part, were torn between those who felt that they could not send their children to the army so long as hostages remained in captivity and those who held that, if Hamas wins, Israel will not have an army at all.

While 33 hostages will be released in the first stage, dozens—alive and dead—will remain in Gaza, prolonging their families’ suffering. The relatives of those killed by the Palestinian terrorists now going free will also be shattered. So, too, will the Israelis who still see soldiers dying in Gaza almost daily while Hamas rocket fire continues. What were all of Israel’s sacrifices for, they will ask. . . .

Perhaps this outcome was unavoidable from the beginning. Perhaps the deal is the only way of reconciling Israel’s mutually exclusive goals of annihilating Hamas and repatriating the hostages. Perhaps, despite Israel’s subsequent military triumph, this is the price for the failures of October 7.