Anti-Israel activism is not anti-Semitism

I want to make something very clear. There is a real difference between anti-Israel activism and anti-Semitism. Although I strongly disagree with the Palestinian Solidarity Movement’s platform—especially the conference’s support for the right of return and refusal to condemn the murder of innocent civilians—I never witnessed any anti-Semitic acts nor heard any anti-Semitic rhetoric from and of the conference’s organizers on campus.

Philip Kurian, on the other hand, included centuries old Jewish stereotypes in his highly anti-Semitic column “The Jews.” His references to the “Holocaust Enterprise,” “shocking overrepresentation” and “well-funded Jewish establishment” are not knocks against the state of Israel but anti-Jewish conspiracy theories that have plagued Jewish people across the globe for years.

It is hardly surprising—and must be pointed out again—that not a single Jewish group on campus objected to President Richard Brodhead’s decision to hold the PSM at Duke. Yet understandably so, Jewish groups and students on campus have objected to Kurian’s detrimental propaganda and David-Duke-like hate speech.

Brodhead, Chronicle columnists, and student activists must stop conflating the two issues and constantly referencing the PSM when addressing Kurian’s column.

In order for any productive dialogue to occur on this campus—something that I along with many other student leaders are currently working on—it is absolutely essential for activists, writers and the greater Duke community to make this extremely important distinction once and for all.

Adam Yoffie

Trinity ’06