Berkeley Law and the Movement Against Zionism

Nine student groups at the University of California Berkeley School of Law passed a bylaw in August 2022 vowing not to invite any speakers that support “Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine.”

That basically excludes most Jews, on and off campus.

The bylaw also required the student groups to hold a “Palestine 101” seminar conducted by Students for Justice in Palestine, a virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Israel group.

The groups represent the majority of the students in the law school. 

The Berkeley vote followed a resolution passed by the City University of New York (CUNY) Law Student Government Association in December 2021 calling on CUNY to divest from companies that aid Israel, end all Israeli student exchanges and cut ties with any groups that “repress Palestinian organizing.” That resolution was unanimously supported by the CUNY Law School faculty. 

A new poll conducted by the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (JILV) and OnMessage Public Strategies found that 78 percent of self-identified “progressives” and 81 percent of those that call themselves “very liberal” believe Jewish Americans have “unfair advantages” that need to be addressed.

Close to half (47 percent) of progressives believe Israel has too much power. Forty-five percent view Israel as an “occupier/colonizer.” 

Ironically, after the creation of the State of Israel, leftist progressives, including all international communist parties and the Soviet Union, initially supported the nascent country.

“Zionism was … celebrated by the left as an organic movement of national return and a model for national liberation and decolonization movements throughout the world,” writes Alex Rychin in “Red Terror: How the Soviet Union Shaped the Modern Anti-Zionist Discourse.”

“Israel’s victory in its War of Independence and refusal to succumb to far mightier foes was positively awe-inspiring to adherents of political movements predicated on toppling structures of power,” explains Rychin.

Ironically, leftist progressives understood Zionism for what it actually is. Namely, the return of the Jewish people to their indigenous homeland.

But Soviet support for Israel quickly soured when it became clear that Israel espoused Western democratic values and supported the United States.

Pre-World War II, academics from the Frankfort School escaped Germany. Many landed at Columbia University in New York where they spawned Critical Theory.

Where Marx focused on economics -- the owners of capital versus the workers – Critical Theorists applied this power binary to culture. But the dynamic is the same: There are two classes of people, oppressors and victims.

Unlike most “theories,” which are meant to remain in the halls of academia, Critical Theory and its latest iteration, Critical Race Theory (CRT), are meant to be activist movements. Their purpose is to dismantle and overthrow society by exposing its biases.

Thus, it was no surprise that CRT began to flourish in American universities during the sixties when civil rights activism was on fire. From there, CRT spilled out to corporations, public schools and government bodies. The movement specifically targeted these bastions of the “Establishment.” 

CRT asserts that the binary dynamic in our culture is white versus black. Those that have “power” or who are successful are called white – and, by definition, racist. This holds even if they are people of color or have a history of oppression.

Palestinians looking for new packaging for their cause found a perfect fit in CRT. According to CRT, Jews are privileged. Whatever victim status they might have had through historical persecution is negated by their success.

Thus, it is not uncommon to see CRT advocates making absurd assertions on Twitter like accusing Anne Frank of having “white privilege.” The Holocaust is downgraded as “white on white” crime. Some solve the “problem” by merely denying it altogether.

Israel, by extension (and by winning wars against all odds), is powerful. This means it is white, racist, the oppressor and colonizer. (Facts that Israel has been the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people for millennium don’t seem to matter.)

Palestinians, perceived as the “underdogs,” are thus the victims.

In the binary world of CRT, every victim group has status and is afforded solidarity. Thus, progressives not only warmly welcome all victim groups under their intersectional tent, they also extend their loyalty to them.

The student groups at Berkeley Law School that supported the anti-Zionist initiative by Students for Justice in Palestine included Women of Berkeley Law, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Law Students of African Descent, Berkeley Law Muslim Student Association, Womxn of Color Collective, and the Queer Caucus.

It is a situation, as noted by Bernstein, that is clearly “not good for the Jews.”