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 and help create a surge of antisemitism. 

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. The veteran scholar of the Middle East said she was shocked not merely at 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, that is, than wanting Israel to disappear, though even there 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 Palestinian employed “extreme violence” and rape on Oct. 7, only to see their supporters deny these crimes happened, despite abundant evidence for them provided by the perpetrators.

Most important, is how the Palestinians and their supporters have worked to demonize the 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 says that the willingness of opponents of Israel to delegitimize the Jewish state’s actions when they are no different from those of other countries leads to the inevitable conclusion antisemitism is the explanation for these double standards.

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