Liberal Zionism Bears Responsibility for Trump's Fascism
If you don't believe Palestinians have rights in the West Bank, what difference does it make if they're in the West Village?
Last week, I wrote about the Hands Off protests with particular interest in the Boston event. As government agents abducted Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk in neighboring Somerville, the Boston protest centered the Trump administration’s attack on the First Amendment and, by extension, Palestine.
During my research, I found an op-ed from the student group Tufts Friends of Israel (TFI) criticizing Öztürk’s detainment. The group offered the typical liberal Zionist response to Trump’s act, condemning both Trump’s secret police and Öztürk’s “antisemitic” beliefs.
“Let us be clear: We strongly oppose the content of the op-ed that Öztürk coauthored last year. We thought it was unfair, unhelpful, and inaccurate. We still believe those things. But her actions — which, as of now, appear to be limited to speech — are not grounds for detention. We will continue to counter rhetoric and actions we deem harmful. But we will fight even harder for everyone’s right to speak freely and without fear.” — The detainment of Rümeysa Öztürk is wrong. And we stand against it.1
This “both sides-ing” of Trump’s anti-Palestine illegality has become the templated response from pro-Israel Democrats and interest groups. Much like Chuck Schumer’s statement on Mahmoud Khalil,2 who is set to be deported for criticizing Israel,3 TFI slanders Öztürk as a bigot before saying the state has no right to criminalize thought. While I’m glad Öztürk’s classmates could clear a bar lower than the Titanic’s liquor cabinet, if TFI is genuinely opposed to Trump’s fascism, they should revisit their earlier statements that laid the groundwork for his heinous crimes.
In an op-ed written in November of 2023, TFI stated Tufts activists like Öztürk were inciting terrorism:
“The glorification of terrorism and violence cannot stand, particularly at a university with a penchant for respectful civic engagement. Political speech is no longer so when it veers into incitement of terror and violence.”4 — Tufts’ campus climate is unsustainable for Jewish and pro-Israel students
The essay concludes with the standard ass-covering. They state everyone at Tufts has First Amendment rights but then claim pro-Palestine students are going beyond protected speech by conducting anti-Jewish violence.
“This is not to say that pro-Palestinian groups on campus should not have a forum for expressing their views. In fact, just the opposite: We believe that pro-Palestinian students should have a place to do so — but not at the expense of Jewish and pro-Israel students’ safety and security at Tufts.”
To date, there have been no recorded instances of physical violence against Jewish or Zionist students at Tufts University, which means TFI’s claim that anti-genocide protestors threatened the “safety and security” of Jewish students was a lie.5 The only notable event at Tufts I could find was a heated student senate meeting last March, but the only attempted violence was against the Palestinian students.6
Tufts Friends of Israel was not alone in depicting the Somerville, MA, college as a pogrom-in-waiting. Jewish New Syndicate published the below article in November with a headline image of the school’s library, implying it was the site of “unrelenting attacks on Jewish students.”7 However, the article’s only mention of Tufts is how the school suspended its Jewish Voice for Peace chapter. That’s certainly an attack on Jewish students. But because Zionists consider anti-Zionist Jews “fake Jews,” it doesn’t count. This is to fight antisemitism, of course.
Here’s my question for Tufts Friends of Israel and also the thousands of other liberal Zionist politicians, groups, and individuals who also slandered Palestine supporters as terrorists: what did you think was going to happen? You’ve spent eighteen months claiming anyone who waves the Palestinian flag is calling for a second Holocaust. Because factual criticism of Israel challenges your worldview, you equated speech with violence and human rights with terrorism. And now that Donald Trump, who pledged to silence these alleged “Hamas agents,” is making good on his promise, you pretend to be against it? What did you think would happen?
This is why liberal Zionists like Tufts Friends of Israel have no right to pretend to oppose Trump’s suppression of pro-Palestine speech without first apologizing for their own behavior. It was an intentional choice to frame campus protests not as ideological opponents, but as a source of violence. Since October 2023, article after article and politician after politician have condemned protestors as infringing upon the “safety” of Zionists. President Biden called last year’s college encampments “antisemitic,”8 “violent,” and “causing chaos.”9 As Israel was escalating its bombing of Gaza in November of 2023, Jake Tapper interviewed the president of the MIT-Israel Alliance, who said:
“Since October 7th, at universities around the country, the conflict overseas has come to our home turf.”10
Unable to refute the very-obvious claims that Israel is an apartheid state conducting genocide, Zionists of every age chose to portray Israel’s critics as extension of the armed Palestinian resistance. Americans have rights to free speech, due process, and equal treatment under the law. But “terrorists” don’t. With that label applied, Zionists no longer had to argue against their pro-Palestine adversaries, but could sit back and wait for them to be silenced by the police, their college, or the government.
Through a manipulative media campaign, the Israel lobby, of which liberal Zionists are a part, laid the ideological groundwork for Americans to see people like Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil not as dissenting civilians but as enemy combatants. Ever since 9/11, those deemed terrorists have been grabbed off the street, convicted without trial, and disappeared into international prisons such as Guantanamo Bay to be tortured. That’s if they’re lucky. Infamously, President Obama assassinated Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, without trial and on the mere allegation of terrorism. When Zionists paint college kids (or anyone, really) as members of Hamas or another Palestinian militant group, they are giving implicit permission for the American state to treat the accused no different than any other alleged member of a terrorist organization.
I’m sure many supporters of Israel who consider themselves liberal, anti-fascist, or progressive would reject this characterization. They’ll claim secret police abductions and unwarranted deportations are not what they had in mind when they said Sally, the keffiyeh-wearing sophomore, was a terrorist. But just like in their willingness to overlook Israel’s violation of human rights, ignorance is no excuse.
While the current liberal Zionist position of calling Rümeysa Öztürk a terrorist but requesting she not be treated like one is incoherent, it’s a natural ideological outgrowth of the absurdity with which AIPAC-funded Democrats view Israel. America is rife with politicians who support or pay lip service to domestic and international social justice leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony, and Cesar Chavez. They warn about the GOP’s transgression of civil liberties, with some members orating about it for twenty-five hours on the Senate floor. Liberals fancy themselves defenders of true freedom and oppression. With one exception: Palestine.
Not only does exempting one particular region on Earth from the belief in universal justice make one a hypocrite, but it also leads to the inevitable erosion of those beliefs at home. MLK wasn’t waxing poetic when he said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere — he was warning us.
If one believes Israel should be exempt from anti-racist and democratic beliefs — as Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Cory Booker, and Tufts Friends of Israel do — it is only a matter of time before that exemption grows to include Israel’s critics in the United States. The politicians above have no problem with Israel illegally imprisoning Palestinians. So why would they have a problem when the American government illegally imprisons a Palestinian who moved to New York, as is the case of Mahmoud Khalil? Liberal Zionists don’t believe Palestinians have a right to due process in the West Bank. What difference does it make if they’re in the West Village?
For a long time, American Zionists have convinced themselves that Israel isn’t a perpetrator but a defender. While this has been disproven for a near century, in 2025 it is undeniable. Everyone can see slaughtered Gazans on TikTok, and while American media ignores Israel’s declarations of ethnic cleansing, easily-accessible foreign outlets cover them in great detail. Rather than accept Israel for what it and apologize for perpetuating its criminality, liberal Zionists have gone batshit insane trying to explain why their delusions are reality. Chuck Schumer’s new book, Antisemitism in America, admits Israel ethnically cleansed Palestinians during its formation in 1948, an event known as the Nakba. Instead of proposing solutions to repair that harm, the Senate minority leader tells Palestinians to get over it.11
, a popular liberal Substacker, has lost his mind trying to explain that campus protestors who challenge his worldview (and elitist ego) are actually terrorists who deserve everything Trump is doing. He’s currently claiming the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine had prior knowledge of the October 7th attack, which would mean Hamas’ leadership risked leaking their plans so college kids could get a head start on their Instagram posts.
I fully agree that to stop the genocide of Palestine, it’s going to take a big tent coalition. Many of those members will be liberal Zionists, who might unite with us anti-apartheid activists, but will always claim it’s not actually apartheid. While I welcome anyone’s support in calling for an end to the bombings, displacements, and massacres, liberal Zionists must reckon with their actions. Not just to thwart Trump’s transgressions here in America, but to deny the Israeli regime the propaganda it needs to fulfill its long-stated goal of dispatched Palestinians, one way or another.
Absent that, liberal Zionists are helping. They’re just making themselves feel good about the destruction they abetted.
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In Solidarity — Joe
https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2025/04/the-detainment-of-rumeysa-ozturk-is-wrong-and-we-stand-against-it
https://x.com/SenSchumer/status/1899538362643689806
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/13/us/mahmoud-khalil-deportation-ruling-appeals/index.html
https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2023/11/op-ed-tufts-campus-climate-is-unsustainable-for-jewish-and-pro-israel-students
If you know of any such acts, please send them my way.
https://www.boston.com/news/education/2024/03/06/antisemitism-islamophobia-alleged-at-fiery-tufts-senate-meeting/
https://www.jns.org/wire/unrelenting-attacks-against-jewish-students-intensify-on-campus/
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/02/biden-condemns-campus-protest-culture-no-right-to-cause-chaos-00155710
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/02/biden-condemns-campus-protest-culture-no-right-to-cause-chaos-00155710
https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2023/11/14/the-lead-mit-student-jake-tapper-live.cnn
https://thebaffler.com/latest/schumers-warning-klion
Israel is a third rail in American politics. Criticize what they have done in Gaza and you automatically support Hamas.
Making it appear that you, in any way, have empathy for the Palestinians and you're automatically an anti-Semite.
This is the rabid, black and white, through the looking glass horse manure that is the official US government position turned into a bludgeon by Bill Maher on his HBO show.
Liberal Zionist? Is that anything like “good Nazi” or “good Oligarch” or “good Billionaire?