How did supporters of Hamas and others who want Israel destroyed win over so many young people since Oct. 7? According to JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin, the answer lies in large measure in the ability of progressives to redefine words in such a way as to normalize Jew-hatred.
He’s joined in this week’s episode of “Think Twice” by scholar Donna Robinson Divine, co-editor of the new book, October 7: The Wars Over Words and Deeds, a collection of essays exploring issues relating to the war on Israel and how the Jewish state’s opponents have helped turn truth on its head to demonize Israel.
According to Divine, on college campuses across the country, “feelings replaced thinking” as many young persons who know little or nothing about the Middle East were convinced to believe that supporting a genocidal and antisemitic cause was the right thing to do. She was shocked not merely by the distorted nature of the discussion about the post-Oct. 7 war, but also because not a single head of an elite university told their students to “go and study” the subject of their protests. She says that compared to student protest movements of the past, the pro-Hamas activists don’t seem to know what they’re talking about or have a clear idea of what they want. Other than wanting Israel to disappear, they don’t seem to realize that doing so would involve Jewish genocide.
Divine points out that a study of the history of the conflict quickly reveals that the goal of the Palestinian movement isn’t about statehood; it’s the principle of not sharing any part of the land with the Jews.
Redefining terms is also important to the cause of delegitimizing Israel. Divine points out that by changing the meaning of the word genocide—coined in the aftermath of the Holocaust to mean an attempt to wipe out an entire people—to merely meaning “depriving them of agency,” the pro-Palestinians have smeared the Jewish state as guilty of genocide. Though she also notes that if the Palestinians have lost the ability to determine their own future, it’s because of their own decisions.
Just as sinister is the way Palestinians employed “extreme violence” and rape on Oct. 7, 2023, only to see their supporters deny that these crimes ever happened, despite abundant video and forensic evidence for them provided by the perpetrators.
Most importantly, it is how the Palestinians and their supporters have worked to nullify Israeli victims, both to make the terrorists appear as if their atrocities are justified and to depict the Jews as deserving of being murdered, raped or kidnapped.
Divine also notes that the willingness of opponents of Israel to censure the Jewish state’s actions when they are no different from those of other countries leads to the inevitable conclusion that antisemitism is the explanation for these double standards.
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