Mandel mentions Qatari funding as one possible reason for the predominance of anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses. Gary Wexler, drawing on his own experience, identifies another piece of the puzzle. In the 1990s, when the peace process spurred hopes of Jews and Palestinians beating their swords into plowshares, the Ford Foundation—one of the world’s wealthiest private charities, founded by the notorious anti-Semite Henry Ford and his son Edsel—began doling out money to various Israeli and Palestinian organizations, and hired Wexler to help these groups with marketing. He describes what he saw:

When we interviewed the Jewish organizations, the atmosphere was almost giddy with hope, possibility, and belief in Shimon Peres’s new Middle East. . . . But when we interviewed the Arab organizations, the word “peace” never passed their lips. They spoke of independence, dignity, self-rule, a state. One person even told me she would never use the word du-kiyum (co-existence). “There is no such thing as co-existence,” she stressed. “We are just the tenants living on the property that the Jews now own. That’s not a balanced co-existence.”

Wexler began asking tougher questions of his Arab interlocutors, and didn’t get answers, but was referred time and again to one Ameer Makhoul, who ran a Haifa-based civil-rights organization. Makhoul, well informed about Wexler by previous interviewees, bullied him and then told him the following:

Just like you were a Zionist campus activist, we will create, over the next years, Palestinian campus activists in America and all over the world. Bigger and better than any Zionist activists. Just like you spent your summers on the kibbutz, we will bring college students to spend their summers in refugee camps and work with our people. Just like you have been part of creating global pro-Israel organizations, we will create global pro-Palestinian organizations. Just like you today help create PR campaigns and events for Israel, so will we, but we will get more coverage than you ever have.

Funding for the project, Makhoul explained, would come from Arab countries and the EU. Makhoul then called the Ford Foundation to complain, mendaciously, about Wexler’s behavior. Not long thereafter, Ford ended its relationship with Wexler. Israeli officials arrested Makhoul several years later for spying for Syria. To Wexler, the enormous success of the anti-Israel movement in capturing the minds of young Americans is the fruit of Makhoul’s efforts, which indeed have been amply funded by the EU. So too the campaign in 2000 to paint the IDF as the brutal killers of a Palestinian child named Muhammad al-Dura—a story that turned out to be a hoax.

As for the Ford Foundation, it stopped all activity in Israel in 2011, but continues to be a major donor to the obsessively anti-Israel Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, as well as to the Tides Foundation, which in turn supports If Not Now and Jewish Voice Peace, both dedicated to stirring up hatred of the Jewish state. Tablet has provided a brief overview here.

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.