How to Spot an Antisemite

By Haley Strack

Wednesday, November 01, 2023

 

Young activists rose up as antisemitic spokesmen following Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. “Many young leftists equate the struggle for Palestinian liberation with the fight for racial equity in the United States, under the binary, simplistic rubric of oppressor and oppressed,” Charlotte Alter explained in Time. “‘It became impossible for someone to ID as a progressive who values human rights, and go along with the idea that Palestinians can continue being treated this way,’ says Omar Badder, a Palestinian-American political analyst. ‘It’s no different than South African apartheid, no different than Jim Crow.’”

 

Indeed, many of the professors, students, and young professionals who in recent weeks tore down posters of Israeli hostages, spewed anti-Israel rhetoric, or participated in pro-Hamas rallies share social-justice-related interests. 

 

There are the teachers. Callen Zimmerman, a pink-haired educator at Stony Brook University’s Center for Inclusive Education, “explores intricacies of material culture and queer experience, as fashion freak, educator and maker,” according to a deleted bio. Jemma Decristo, an assistant professor of American studies at the University of California, Davis, threatened to kill “zionist journalists,” who she said “should fear us.” Decristo got her Ph.D. from the “History of Consciousness Program” at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ameer Hasan Loggins, a nonfaculty instructor at Stanford University, allegedly made Jewish “colonizer” students stand in a corner to demonstrate what he said Jews do to Palestinians. Loggins also reportedly said that “Hamas is a legitimate representation of the Palestinian people; they are not a terrorist group. They are freedom fighters.” 

 

There are the students. Fahima Karim, a 19-year-old student at the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in Brooklyn, participated in a walkout protest organized by disgraced New York University law student Ryna Workman (they/them). Karim held a sign that said, “Please Keep the World Clean” next to a drawing of the Star of David in a trash can. It’s not the first time Karim has gone viral: In 2021, she was filmed saying that she “really don’t give a f*** about white lives.” From her now-deleted YouTube page, Karim appears to have been a vlogger whose last video was a “Day in the life as an NYC student.” Her YouTube bio read: “slay.” Ryna Workman, president of NYU law school’s bar association, professed her “unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression toward liberation and self-determination.” Workman reportedly led her undergraduate College Democrats club.

 

Alongside their affiliations with Students for Justice in Palestine and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, anti-Israel students have a host of other interests: the anti-police movement, Black Lives Matter, reproductive justice, gender and sexuality, queer studies, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and environmental advocacy.

 

There are the artists. Wielding a tote bag and sporting a mullet, Laurel Squadron tore down posters of missing Israeli children in New York City last week. She was a part-time babysitter for Artist Babysitting. Squadron’s “sitter details” web page noted that she studied creative writing and literature in college, attended fashion-design school before deciding it wasn’t for her (she still makes her own clothes), and is now an art teacher through Scribble Art Workshop. Palestinian artist Jumana Manna (she/her) posted a photo of paragliders on Instagram with the caption, “Long live the creativity of resistance.” Her first major art-museum exhibition in the U.S. (Break, Take, Erase, Tally, free for all audiences) is on display until December 30 at the Wexner Art Center at Ohio State University; it “uses a range of narrative methods and sculptural forms to visualize the slow violence of industrial agriculture, neoliberal economic policy, and policing.” Her work “considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorisation and conservation and the unruly potential of ruination as an integral part of life and its regeneration.”

 

There are the social-media obsessed. “Terror Temptress” Kayla Goodwin said she “unequivocally support[s] the liberation movements of all oppressed people around the world by any means made necessary,” and is an OnlyFans model who describes herself as a “commie micro propagandist.” Goodwin said on LinkedIn that she is “currently looking to start [her] career, preferably in the mental health field.” Anti-Israel sentiment prevails over anti-Hamas content on TikTok, as well.

 

Before 10/7, it wasn’t obvious (to me, at least) that young activists could conduct such a violently antisemitic movement. Now, it seems foolish to have expected otherwise from activists whose moral parameters are defined by Marxism.