It's late August. For those of us in higher education, this means getting ready for a new academic year. Sadly, it seems that for Jewish students and professors, the fall semester brings with it one more daunting challenge: the return of the Tentifada, the onslaught of anti-Semitic pro-Palestinian protests that erupted on campuses nationwide last year.

Proof points abound.

For one thing, the tents are back. Earlier this summer, as Columbia University, having barely recovered from having to cancel its main commencement ceremony because of concerns that the festivities would be disrupted, once again saw its lawn taken over by a self-described "autonomous group of Palestinian students."

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On American campuses since October 7th of 2023 Jewish students have been targeted with unprecedented levels of harassment and intimidation. Calls to "globalize the intifada" inside and outside classrooms, encampments where Zionists are barred by thug minders, countless demonstrations where Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi flags are waved to cries of "from the river to the sea.... " Jews and others have learned that a substantial portion of the student body and faculty, particularly at elite institutions, wishes for their extinction.

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Being academics or ex-academics, we have quite a few friends who were there in Chicago in 1968, protesting the war in Vietnam in front of the Democratic National Convention. We've heard stories of Jerry Rubin, the famed Yippie mischief-maker, attempting to nominate a pig ("Pigasus") as president, and of the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg leading a mass march amid chants of "peace now." Though we don't share our friends' political convictions, we are enamored of such stories of youthful activism and conviction—of dedicated men and women taking risks to rescue their country from what they believed was a disastrous course of action.

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The American Friends Service Committee has been at the forefront of the Israel boycott movement for decades. Nothing, including the terrible Hamas massacre of October 7, has changed their stance.

In a recent interview, the current head of the AFSC, Joyce Ajlouny, gave a long diatribe about her recent visit to the region and to share her post-October 7 narrative. Prior to becoming the committee's director, she served for 13 years as director of the Ramallah Friends School, a hotbed of Arab nationalism and opposition to Zionism. The Ramallah School has also become a feeder to Quaker schools in the US, especially in Pennsylvania.

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The Hamas massacre of October 7 shattered many myths and conceptions. One of them is the liberal progressive dream of Zionism being rooted in a shared sense of social justice.

However, instead of waking up to the falsehoods they have been telling themselves, that their liberal allies would stand with them because of a common devotion to liberalism, these Jewish progressives were shocked to learn that "death to Jews" means all Jews, on and off campus.

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