A wild jumble of emotions runs through Jewish college student Keren Binyamin’s head nowadays—a mix of terror, outrage, and determination.
At the University of Maryland, she has seen what began as peaceful pro-Palestinian protests devolve into gatherings that exude seething anger.
It’s a phenomenon erupting on college campuses across the country.
Experts say what’s propelling the rage-filled pro-Palestine demonstrations isn’t just a reaction to the Israel–Hamas war. That conflict began after the terrorist group Hamas, based in Gaza, came across the border into Israel on Oct. 7 to brutally murder 1,200 civilians and carry off more than 200 hostages.
Many voicing opposition to Israel now blame it for the attack. They call Israel an “oppressor” nation.
It’s the same way Marxists view the United States.
And that’s what’s causing the sudden rise in violent rhetoric and actions, according to some experts. They blame diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology for the rapidly spreading anti-Israel sentiment.
“I think that’s what we’re seeing—the protests in support of Hamas on college campuses and against Israel—are clearly linked to DEI,” said Sherry Sylvester, a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Palestinian student groups have marched with signs calling for the end of Israeli “occupation” of Palestine’s land and accusing Jews of colonizing Gaza. Anti-Israeli protests have become increasingly aggressive.
Protestors echo the same ideology of the DEI programs, classes, and rhetoric that has infiltrated institutions of higher learning worldwide. But behind it all is Marxism, some experts have said.
The presence of DEI—an offshoot of Marxism—on campuses has created a “distorted, ugly, hateful culture,” Ms. Sylvester said.
No matter what’s fueling these emotional expressions of hate, the result is chaos and a sense that danger is increasing, students told The Epoch Times.
Ms. Binyamin recalled an intense fear that shook her when she saw about 300 fellow students chanting anti-Israel slogans and support for Palestine on campus. Angrily, they shouted for an uprising against Jews.
“I was terrified in that moment to hear the anger and the hate in their voices as they called for ‘One solution, intifada revolution,’” she told The Epoch Times.
Ms. Binyamin said she saw where Palestinian protesters scrawled in chalk on campus walkways the words “[expletive] Israel” and “Holocaust 2.0.”
It was a chilling sight for her and her peers, she said.
But Ms. Binyamin has vowed to swallow her fear and speak against the tide of anti-Semitism she’s witnessing firsthand.
She'll stand strong, she said, even as her campus newspaper writes about the Palestinian protests without mention of the violence and even as online comments are supportive of the protests.
Ms. Binyamin won’t waver when people make snarling remarks about empty chairs set out to represent hostages held by Hamas, even when Palestinian supporters say that if chairs were set out to represent the dead in Gaza, they would need many more.
The anti-Israeli, anti-American sentiment prevalent within her generation doesn’t surprise her. Classes on campus are taught through a lens of critical theory, she said.
Critical theories—which include DEI ideology—involve neo-Marxist thinking that substitutes race, gender, or identity groups for what was known as “class struggle” in traditional Marxism. It also promotes “fighting racism” with purposeful discrimination against people seen as “oppressors.”
The Democratic Socialists of America put out a statement recently in support of Hamas. Black Lives Matter (BLM) did, too.
“BLM posted something like ‘We support our Palestinian brothers and sisters,’” Ms. Binyamin said. “And the image they chose to use was someone paragliding, like how Hamas came into Israel.”
She attended a Jewish rally in Washington on Nov. 14. With about 250,000 participants, it was a human sea of unity, she said. American flags flew beside Israeli flags. Christians attended in support of Jews.
But when Ms. Binyamin sees the pro-Palestinian protests, American flags are absent, she said, unless they’re being burned.
“They’re like the Bolsheviks of 1917,” she said of her generation.
They think they’re fighting for a better world with “idealistic notions” but a “loose grasp on reality and the true facts of history,” according to Ms. Binyamin.
Jewish students across the country have witnessed the bewilderingly rapid escalation in hateful rhetoric and aggressive demonstrations.
At Cornell University, a junior was arrested on Oct. 31, accused of making online threats against Jewish students. Patrick Dai, an engineering student, allegedly threatened to shoot up a dining hall that caters to Jewish students, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York.
“In another post, Mr. Dai allegedly threatened to ’stab‘ and ’slit the throat’ of any Jewish males he sees on campus, to rape and throw off a cliff any Jewish females, and to behead any Jewish babies,” the statement reads.
At The Cooper Union, a private college in New York, Jewish students were locked inside the school’s library for their safety last month. Video footage posted on YouTube shows a mob of Palestinian protestors who moved past a security checkpoint and began beating on the library doors.
The Link to DEI
With DEI being taught on most college campuses, the violence comes as no surprise, experts told The Epoch Times. DEI ideology teaches students that the United States is a racist, colonizing nation. Its allies, such as Israel, are, as well, DEI proponents say.Those promoting DEI ideology accuse Western countries of stealing land from indigenous people who are “oppressed.”
They say DEI measures are needed to right the wrongs of past generations of white Americans who discriminated against minorities. They speak of white people who wield their “white supremacy” and “white privilege” to the detriment of “marginalized groups.”
Measures that will help right such wrongs include hiring people based on skin color, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, they say.
Some on the political left say atoning for the United States’ sins should include reparations to minorities and giving back land “stolen” from Native Americans.
Ms. Sylvester considers that thinking to be like that of a cult. And it’s been exposed as such by the recent violence, she said.
“It’s really lifted the veil of the cult that’s on our campuses,” she told The Epoch Times.
Ms. Sylvester, a political communications expert, pointed to recent large protests at the University of Texas and other campuses as evidence of Marxist DEI incubators.
On Nov. 12, student groups helped organize a massive pro-Palestinian protest in Austin, Texas, according to the University of Texas student newspaper.
Some 10,000 pro-Palestinian protesters marched on the state Capitol on Nov. 12 and railed against both Republicans and Democrats for helping Israel in its war against Hamas.
The Epoch Times asked the office of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, about the demonstration.
Stopping the Spread
The best way to stop DEI’s negative effects on campuses is for donors and state legislators to pull funding from universities that continue to promote DEI, according to Ms. Sylvester. The red states of Texas and Florida have passed anti-DEI legislation that doesn’t allow it in institutions of higher learning.But a national effort is needed, she said.
“There’s always been a huge anti-Semitic strain running through Marxism ... because of the suspicion of hard work, entrepreneurial success,” Ms. Sylvester said.
Israel is seen as an outpost of the Western civilization that cultural Marxists oppose, she said.
Those now protesting against Israel are some of the same groups that have been protesting in the name of social justice related to race and LGBT issues, according to Ms. Sylvester.
A guest on the comedian’s show, journalist James Kirchick, followed up with, “Did you hear [about] their sister organization, Blacks for the KKK?”
Joining Forces With Marxists
William Jacobson, a clinical professor at Cornell Law School, called on the Cornell Board of Trustees to reevaluate the university’s DEI initiatives after fellow professor Russell Rickford said he was “exhilarated” by the Hamas attack.Mr. Rickford later apologized for his choice of words and took a leave of absence amid demands for his dismissal.
When asked whether the university intends to reexamine DEI measures on campus, a spokeswoman referred The Epoch Times to a statement by university President Martha Pollack. It states that the school’s DEI programming needed to be enhanced to fight anti-Semitism.
The school missed the point, Mr. Jacobson told The Epoch Times.
“The whole DEI structure is the problem,” he said. “You can’t cure that structure by throwing a bone to the Jewish community.”
Mr. Jacobson said he has been sounding the alarm against DEI and CRT for years.
“We started an entire website, CriticalRace.org, to document the deep penetration of critical race theory in its various incarnations, including diversity, equity, and inclusion,” he said.
The idea is to racialize the conflict between Hamas and Israel by putting Israelis into the “white” category, Mr. Jacobson said.
Using race as a divisive force was successful in 2020 after the death of George Floyd, a black man who died while in the custody of white officers.
The social justice group BLM, founded by self-described “trained Marxists,” was affiliated with Palestinian groups from the start, Mr. Jacobson said. Its rise in prominence began after a white police officer fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.
During the protests that followed the shooting, Palestinian groups educated BLM members on how to deal with tear gas, according to Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who’s affiliated with BLM.
Mike Gonzalez, a fellow with The Heritage Foundation who writes about identity politics, agreed that pro-Palestinian factions have ties to BLM in the United States.
Mr. Gonzalez told The Epoch Times that, oddly, Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is painted as the oppressor of Hamas, a terrorist group that murders civilians.
Karl Marx, who first outlined his philosophies in 1848 in “The Communist Manifesto,” believed in the total obliteration of one class by another.
“And that is what this is about,” Mr. Gonzalez said. “It’s just pure, unadulterated Marx.”
‘Indictment’ of US Schools
David Closson, director of the Center for Biblical Worldview at the Family Research Council, said he sees the anti-Israel rhetoric on college campuses as an indictment of the U.S. educational system.Teachers have encouraged a generation of social justice warriors, steeping classroom instruction with ideas linked to cultural Marxism instead of foundational knowledge. Now, the country is reaping the effects, Mr. Closson said.
“Spending all of our classroom time on drag queen story hours and gender queer theory and feminist theory [has] supplanted reading, writing, arithmetic, and history,” he told The Epoch Times.
So now, many college students appear to be “historically illiterate” about Israel, which became the country it is now in 1948 after a United Nations vote, according to Mr. Closson.
“Guess who’s had a continuous presence [in Israel] for 3,000 years—well, it’s the Jews,” he said.
Jews occupied the land where Israel sits, as did many different peoples through the millennia, including Arabs, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and the British, Mr. Closson said.
Universities Begin to Act
College chapters of the National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) have come under increased scrutiny at universities because of their support for Hamas.In response to anti-Semitism, big donors to some institutions have publicly announced that they'll stop contributing. And companies have revoked job offers they had made to students identified as pro-Hamas protestors.
Intimidation targeting Jewish students at Columbia University prompted the school to suspend SJP and the Jewish Voice for Peace, pro-Palestinian student groups.
The groups violated campus policies, according to a university announcement on Nov. 10. The statement said the groups held an unauthorized event that “proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.”
“Lifting the suspension will be contingent on the two groups demonstrating a commitment to compliance with University policies and engaging in consultations at a group leadership level with University officials,” the statement reads.
Similar demonstrations were held on campuses nationwide that same day.
At the University of Maryland, that’s when Palestinian students apparently scrawled “Holocaust 2.0” on a walkway. The university, which has a sizable Jewish student population, condemned the anti-Semitic sentiments expressed at the demonstration organized by SJP.
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis called for SJP to be shut down in the state for supporting Hamas. In Massachusetts, Brandeis University, a private, nonsectarian Jewish university, banned SJP.
Mr. Jacobson said he has monitored the actions of SJP for a decade. Until now, colleges have ignored its agenda and tactics, he said.
“Some colleges are finally taking the step of recognizing what Students for Justice in Palestine is,” he said.
Rarely, if ever, are Israeli students the aggressors in the college protests, according to Mr. Jacobson.
“You just don’t see the vitriol toward Palestinians that you see toward Israel.”
