'Free Palestine' Is Just Another Sport in the College Oppression Olympics | Opinion

October unmasked rampant anti-Israel sentiment in America's most prestigious colleges. Two days after the Hamas attacks, 31 Harvard University student groups said the barbarism was Israel's fault. They wrote in a statement that the "apartheid regime is the only one to blame." A Cornell history professor publicly called Hamas's recent onslaught against Israel "exhilarating" and "energizing." A junior at the Ivy League threatened Jewish classmates with murder and rape on an online forum. Yale University's flagship newspaper over the weekend affixed a "correction" to a Jewish student's column, with fact checkers saying the author's claims that Hamas raped women and beheaded men during its invasion of Israel were "unsubstantiated." Most recently, the editor of the Harvard Law Review was caught on camera physically menacing a Jewish student.

Progressive students have participated in marches celebrating terrorism, proudly torn down signs publicizing Hamas's kidnappings, and chanted "resistance by any means necessary," justifying the massacre of over 1,400 Jews.

While these widespread displays are reprehensible, they are not surprising. Professors and administrations drum into students a hateful, oppression-obsessed worldview that treats Israel, and Jews by extension, as evil. Recent campus protests underscore the insidious spread of intersectionality in academia. Blinded by anti-Israel bias, progressive students fail to see real injustice as it stares them in the face.

Palestinians are underdogs subjugated by Israel, so the narrative says. Never mind the fact that Hamas siphons off humanitarian aid for military armaments to attack Israel rather than invest in their community. Never mind that Hamas puts its offices on the same premises as hospitals and schools, using citizens as human shields. To impressionable students eager for a cause, the facts don't matter.

The Palestinian cause is just another sport in the college oppression Olympics.

In pledging loyalty to one identity group's cause, students must pledge loyalty to all. A few years ago, many progressive students argued that riots and looting were reparative justice for police brutality. Amid the racial justice frenzy after George Floyd's murder, national SJP released a statement, co-signed by over 90 chapters including those at Ivy Leagues, pledging unequivocal support for Black Lives Matter. Now, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has taken off. In 2016, the national headquarters boasted 163 chapters. The organization's Instagram bio now claims 250 satellites across North America.

"While the struggles of Palestinians and Black people are not identical, we recognize that the same systems and structures contribute to global oppression," SJP wrote. "To envision and build a world rooted in liberation, we must and will carry forward the legacies of Black and Palestinian solidarity."

Yet intersectionality forges unholy alliances and conflates causes that are obviously in conflict. Take "Queers for Palestine." Their rallies have sprouted across the nation, exposing a tragic national ignorance about the treatment of LGBT people in Palestinian territory. Almost exactly a year ago, a 25-year-old gay Palestinian living under asylum in Israel, where he stayed in LGBT shelters, was beheaded in Hebron, West Bank for his homosexuality.

Yet a gay student group at Rice University broke ties with Jewish organization Hillel last month because it barred chapters from supporting boycotting, divesting from, and sanctioning Israel.

The same blind spots appear when students lump in the pro-Palestinian mission with feminism. "Feminism and Zionism are incompatible," an SJP Instagram post from November 2022 read. "Feminism and imperialism are incompatible. Feminism and capitalism are incompatible. Without the destruction of colonialism, we cannot liberate women from gender-based violence."

Yet in Gaza, the territory that students want to "free" from Israel, schools are gender segregated, strict "modest" dress and moral conduct codes are enforced, women have very limited financial freedom, and there is no legal protection against domestic violence targeting women.

While the pro-Palestinian lobby claims to be feminist, it has not condemned Hamas murdering, raping, and abducting scores of Israeli women. Many harrowing viral videos emerged after Hamas ambushed a music festival in southern Israel. One showed a beaten young woman with blood-soaked pants being thrown into a car. Another showed an unconscious, half-naked young woman being paraded through the street. That woman, Shani Louk, was later found beheaded, Israel's president confirmed Monday.

"We believe the struggle for a free Palestine is also the struggle for Black liberation, gender and sexual freedom, and a livable and sustainable planet," the national SJP values statement reads. "All pursuits for freedom, justice, and equality are materially connected and require us to struggle against state violence, colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism, in all of their forms."

Intersectionality says that these competing ideological commitments are intertwined. You'd think the Jewish people, given their long historical experience of genocide, diaspora, and persecution, would get a medal from progressive students. But even after an unprecedented pogrom, they're disqualified.

Caroline Downey is education reporter at National Review and a visiting fellow at the Independent Women's Forum. She was a 2022 Publius Fellow with the Claremont Institute.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.