Editor's note: Dr. Mijal Bitton is the spiritual leader of New York City's Downtown Minyan and an American Jewish sociologist. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion articles on CNN.
CNN —
Here's a secret that many of the people protesting at campus encampments and in the streets don't know: the more we demonize Israel, the more it reawakens Jewish identity and strengthens Zionism.
Courtesy of Nir Arieli Photography
Mijal Bitton
As a community leader and Jewish educator in the United States, I have lived in the shadow of the horrors of October 7th. We watched as a brutal terrorist committed the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, broadcast live on video. We witnessed a growing avalanche of anti-Semitism around the world, including the alleged gang rape of a 12-year-old Jewish girl in France last Saturday, amid religious insults. We learned that many of our allies at home refused to speak out when Israelis were murdered and American Jews who care about Israel were ostracized from polite society.
While the intensity of campus protests is waning as the school year comes to an end, the intensity of the demonstrators in front of university buildings only intensifies the fear felt by American Jews. Last week, demonstrators in Lower Manhattan targeted an exhibition commemorating the hundreds of young Israelis killed or kidnapped at the Nova music festival. They carried banners reading “Long Live October 7th” and signs declaring that Zionists are “neither Jews nor people.” A few days earlier, a crowd had chanted “Kill the Zionists Now” across from the White House in Washington.
Yet, paradoxically, with every day since October 7, I have seen the rise in anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric incite a sense of Jewish pride and solidarity with Israel among many young Jews. I have seen this as a visiting scholar in American Jewish studies at New York University, and as the spiritual leader of a downtown Manhattan minyan filled with diverse, ambitious, socially liberal young professionals thriving in New York City.
I have heard from many young Jews discovering Judaism across America. Some confess that they haven’t been to synagogue since their bar or bat mitzvah, but now want to return. Others ask me how they can acquire dozens of mezuzahs to hang next to their front doors for their friends. Many wear new jewelry that expresses both pride and pain, with dog tags attached next to prominent Magen David statues that plead, “Take them home now.” I speak regularly with dozens of Jewish leaders, rabbis, and educators, and we are all experiencing this. We are running out of chairs for programs and struggling to meet demand for Shabbat dinners.
These young Jews come from different backgrounds and political views, but they all share a deep disillusionment with their previous professional or social environments and life-changing experiences: Nearly all of the young people I know have had (former) friends who expressed sympathy for Hamas, received anti-Semitic comments on social media, or witnessed overt anti-Semitism in their neighborhoods.
Several Jewish college students told me they had endured a form of social “ostracism” for expressing sympathy for Israelis: one was expelled from her sorority for being a Zionist, another was told that others would have to self-censor and was suspended from attending events because she was a Zionist.
But they are discovering that even in their isolation, they are not alone. They are rediscovering part of a rich Jewish history that has seen them experience marginalization and displacement but whose greatest strength has been in one another. They are rediscovering millennia-old Jewish rituals and community structures that foster a sense of belonging. And they are rediscovering Zionism.
This is not surprising. Zionist dreamers of the 1800s and 1900s wanted to create a Jewish state because they found their “enlightened” European neighbors nurturing dangerous hatreds that could lead to genocide. Young Jews in America today are finding that they can be made to feel unwelcome in their own homes.
Many protesters say Zionism is a settler-colonial, Jewish supremacist movement similar to Nazism that aims to expel Palestinians, but for most of us American Jews, Zionism is the belief in the right of Jewish people to self-determination in their historic homeland.
At the heart of this Zionism is the reassurance that there is at least one place in the world that does not close its doors to displaced and oppressed Jews. This Zionism is committed to fighting for a free and democratic Israel, and it also harbors the hope for dignity, rights and freedom for the Palestinian people.
I think this vision resonates with young Jews who might not have thought of themselves as Zionists before. I've spoken to young professionals who were too progressive to visit Israel in college, but who are now convinced that Israel is the only country that will stand by them if America betrays its values. I've also spoken to dozens of Jews who are considering investing in real estate in Israel as insurance in case they have to flee their communities. This isn't just a story: Nearly everyone born Jewish today is the descendant of refugees who were lucky or resourceful enough to abandon their homelands and survive persecution.
In fact, too many protesters have only strengthened American Jewish fears that anti-Semitism is spreading across the country. Too many anti-Israel protesters wave the flags of terrorist groups like Hezbollah or Hamas that have vowed to kill Jews, or reuse medieval myths to accuse Israel of the blood libel. Too many protesters chant “There is only one solution: the Intifada Revolution,” evoking in the minds of Jews two nightmarish memories of Hitler's Final Solution and the Palestinian Intifada, in which suicide bombers killed thousands of Israeli civilians.
When Jewish student leaders at the University of California, Santa Barbara, are told that “Zionists are not welcome,” when encampments at the University of California, Los Angeles, prevent Jewish students from attending classes, and when campus leaders at Columbia University go so far as to say that “Zionists do not deserve to live,” young Jews begin to question the direction America is heading.
After all, while many protesters like to distinguish between Jews and Zionists and claim that their hostility to Israel does not imply hostility toward Jews, the reality is that an overwhelming majority of American Jews identify as Israeli. According to the most recent Pew Research Center survey of Jewish Americans, for 82 percent of American Jews, caring about Israel is an important or essential part of being Jewish. It is no wonder, therefore, that the vast majority of Jews feel threatened by crowds shouting anti-Zionist slogans.
Of course, some protesters even pretend there is no distinction. Visibly Jewish college students I spoke to were told, “Hitler should have finished the job,” or yelled, “Boo, you pig.” This open hatred fuels Zionism. Indeed, nothing justifies the legitimacy of a sovereign Jewish state more than protesters yelling, “Go back to Poland!” This mockery is a grotesque reminder of the indifference to Jewish lives, urging Jews to go back to the country where their families were killed in gas chambers while also telling them that they should not belong in America either.
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To be sure, Jewish interest in Israel can take many forms, from left to right, from support for the current Israeli government to strong opposition, but it has become all too common for Jews across the political spectrum to have conversations with their synagogues and friends looking for signs that might prompt them to emigrate to safety.
As a Jewish educator, I see this moment as a bittersweet opportunity. Anti-Semitism may be on the rise, but so is Jewish identity. Jews may have friends who disown them, but they find refuge, comfort, and strength in each other. The protests have unleashed a wave of relentless anti-Semitism in America, but they have also awakened Zionism in the hearts of American Jews, who now understand that Israel is at least one place on Earth where Jews can be truly assured that they will always be welcome.
