There is a double standard at this college. I have seen Arab speakers and leaders in support of Palestine sequestered to a side room, asked to omit certain points from their talks and, on one occasion known to me, disinvited. Not only that, but outrage from those who angrily refuse to tolerate differing worldviews on campus has swayed decisions around who gets to feel seen and heard and who has to take it up with an administrative email. Several close friends of mine, at school and home, are Jewish and anti-zionist, and a few are more openly anti-Israel, too. But as I have seen and heard on this campus, there is no space for them here. When human rights get called into question, students and faculty alike can opt out of hearing it. This reinforces a blurred line between opinion and objective fact on rights violations, historical subjugation and current day hate, violence and discrimination. 

After receiving a flyer for a talk to be given by Alyza Lewin, I was confused. The poster was fairly misleading in terms of what the talk was about, unclear as to whether it was speaking to or about a specific group. I knew the speaker’s name, though. Lewin was, supposedly, the lawyer of “human rights” who worked the Supreme Court case to permit Israel to be named as a place of birth on a U.S. passport. For those who are confused – no, Israel is not a U.S. territory (by law. By fiscal and ideological brotherhood? Kind of!). She also supported the Israeli distributor of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in his lawsuit against Ben and Jerry when they engaged with the human rights-oriented Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement by ending sales in Israel. Avi Zinger, the distributor, won. Many of Lewin’s more ideological writings are based around her common argument that being Jewish is inextricable from being Zionist.

This is where I draw the line. I draw the line at the Anti-Defamation League being a main primary source of hers. I draw the line at her talking to the Knesset as if she represents Jewish Americans, and doing so in the name of combating International Holocaust Rememberence Alliance-defined antisemitism – the definition that has been heavily criticised by academics and legal scholars (though not Lewin) as it weaponizes antisemitism to suppress free speech regarding criticism of Israeli policies and actions. When the meaning of hatred is lumped into advocacy networks that refuse to acknowledge a state founded on displacement, occupation and ethnic cleansing, then the victims of antisemitism lose their voices to false and reckless charges – which in turn fuel the Western upholding of an erasive nation state over the ability to adhere to previously defined charters on apartheid, genocide, unlawful imprisonment, war crimes and the limits to an occupation. 

When Jewish South African judge Richard Goldstone confirmed Israeli war crimes in Gaza, Elie Wiesel, author of a profoundly moving account of atrocities faced by his father in the Shoa, called this “a crime against the Jewish people”. This was simply an immoral use of past atrocities as a moral justification for present brutalities and oppression. Alyza Lewin allows us to forget where and how human rights are founded for the sake of protecting her own definition of human. I hope for more spaces where people on a spectrum of ideological leanings in their community can come together to recognize a bottom line of justice and learning, and to do away with isolation and fear.