It is often said that good educators teach students how to think, not what to think. This is indeed a profound notion. Sadly, we have witnessed a great deal of hypocrisy in attaining this aspiration. Moreover, despite an obsessive focus on constructing “safe spaces” in many of the most prestigious universities in the world to protect America’s best and brightest from the dangers of thinking about ideas, their constitutional rights and even physical safety has often been jeopardized from their fellow students, outside agitators, and even their own government, which should be protecting their rights. There is simply no denying that following the horrific October 7 terrorist attack in Israel and the subsequent war on Gaza, there has been a palpable tension often boiling over into violence on American campuses from sea to shining sea.

I have written extensively about my experience conducting a religious-based psyop for the Israeli government. Religion was not the only institution where we sought influence. Throughout my time working at the Israeli Consulate, especially during the war on Gaza, America’s classrooms were declared the frontlines in a PR battle of a very real war.

Long before I began working at the Consulate, Israel employed an Academic Affairs Director to conduct outreach to all of the academic institutions across our region. In large part, this was done to counter narratives critical of Israel coming from student chapters of organizations like Amnesty International. Cultivation of relationships with Hillel chapters at universities was also a crucial component of this influence campaign, which again falls under the complicated identitarian linkage the Israeli government seeks to foster between American Jews and the State of Israel, often at the expense of the individuals targeted, that I have written about previously.

One example of this type of initiative getting messy was when the student organization Hillel was barred from participation in an LGBTQ event at Rice University due to their stances against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, (BDS) movement, among other things.

Whenever we did outreach or events with a Christian college or university, I would naturally tag team these efforts with the Academic Affairs Director. While partnering each year with the Holocaust Remembrance Association, a religious organization that regularly featured prayers and remarks by Jewish and Christian religious leaders at events, Israeli diplomats would deliver remarks that I wrote at schools and universities. When meeting with officials at Houston Christian University, formerly Houston Baptist University, I came to be acquainted with the organization Passages, which essentially functions as the Christian equivalent of the Jewish program Birthright. (The name of this program arguably says a lot about the ethnonationalist framework central to the Zionist project.) Unlike Christ at the Checkpoint, Passages seemed more interesting in standing in solidarity with the Israeli government than with Palestinian Christians. Passages would network with some of the same organizations that I worked with, such as The Philos Project and disgraced former pastor, Robert Morris’s Gateway Center for Israel.

I would track prominent religious academics and their comments regarding Israel and the war. One of these individuals was Dr. Omar Suleiman, who teaches at Southern Methodist university. He first came onto my radar due to his advocacy for the freedom of Aafia Siddiqui, convicted of attempted murder of American personnel. This is the same woman that the gunman who took hostages at the Beth Israel synagogue in Colleville, Texas sought to have released. Another was Dr. Craig Considine, a fellow AU alum who underwent a radical shift from being anti to pro-Israel after October 7. He became a regular attendee at Consulate events.

Campuses had long been the epicenter of the BDS movement. A speech teacher named Bahia Amawi was fired from her position with Pflugerville ISD because she refused to sign a loyalty oath to the State of Israel, a necessary condition to do contract work with the State of Texas and thirty-seven other states in the country. I was personally tasked with tracking the development and passage of these laws for states in our region. Please keep in mind that Israel is the only country in the world that has this arrangement with any state government. Americans are free to boycott any and all NATO countries and actual treaty allies of the United States, but not Israel.

However, after October 7 campus demonstrations against Israel and responses or counterdemonstrations for Israel seriously escalated and often became deranged and violent, infringing upon the freedom of speech of countless Americans. Consider the following incidents:

• A Cornell professor publicly said he was exhilarated by watching footage of Hamas terrorists murder innocent Israeli civilians. He was far from the only one to demonstrate support for the attacks.
• A Jewish schoolteacher in Georgia threatened to decapitate a thirteen-year old Muslim American student because she told him she found it offensive that he flew an Israeli flag in class.
• Near Tulane University at least three students were injured in clashes between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel demonstrators.
• Jewish students were targeted for being Jewish by an anti-Israel mob and had to flee and barricade themselves in the library to avoid being assaulted.
• Students protesting Israel at Columbia University were sprayed with stink spray by an Israeli exchange student to the point that several had to seek medical attention. The assailant was not deported or even expelled and was actually awarded nearly $400,000 in a legal settlement. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Khalil, an exchange student at Columbia University who had written critical articles against Israel was arrested under dubious circumstances, transferred to Louisiana, imprisoned for weeks, and missed the birth of his child before he was finally released.
• Students and outsiders against Israel trespassed and violently took over a campus facility at Columbia and had to be forcibly removed by law enforcement.
• Students demonstrating against Israel’s war conduct at UCLA were assaulted by a violent mob that even weaponized fireworks, as the police sat by and watched for several hours.
• A Jewish woman in her sixties, who teaches Jewish studies at Dartmouth and was protesting Israel was violently tackled by law enforcement who were on campus ostensibly to protect Jews from antisemitic threats.
• Four Muslim-American Students were savagely beaten and hospitalized by their fellow students at a public school in Houston.
• A Jewish UC Berkeley professor was accosted by a student at his home.
• The valedictorian at USC was not permitted to deliver her speech at university because of her views on the conflict.
• There were tensions involving a professor at the University of North Texas. The Consulate did an interview with him.
• An Israel-themed banner was removed from an on-campus event at the University of Houston organized by my colleague, the Academic Affairs Director.

These episodes were compiled off the top of my head and are sadly far from exhaustive. At one point during a staff meeting at the Consulate I suggested we issue a blanket statement condemning all acts of violence in the United States stemming from people’s feelings regarding the conflict. The diplomats were less than enthusiastic regarding this proposition.

One on-campus event that I was leading was to be at the University St. Thomas in Houston celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel, a repeat of an event I had organized five years earlier while the Archdiocese was embroiled in a scandal for covering up child sexual abuse. We were ultimately forced to cancel this event after the October 7 attacks. Both the University and the Archdiocese were very gracious and supportive during this time. There was a great deal of contrast between local Catholic support versus tension between Israel and Pope Francis. The Pope labeled Israel’s war efforts as terrorism in 2023 and went on to argue that Israel should be investigated for genocide. Things became extremely awkward when Pope Francis died because the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a routine condolences statement and then deleted it.

Conservative activist and pastor, Richard Vega, a close associate of Charlie Kirk who spoke at his memorial service, solicited me several times to have the Consulate offer an official endorsement of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s Christian-infused curriculum. I’m happy to say that at least this was deemed a bridge too far for Israeli diplomats, but I think this was because of the Christian aspect of the education. We were always eager to get any government or organization to adopt the IHRA definition or antisemitism, conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, and providing a pathway to legally silence any criticism of Israel.

Texas passed robust Holocaust education laws, requiring public schools to provide instruction during an annual Remembrance Week, and Governor Abbott has taken a hardline stance against anti-Israel protests on campus during the Gaza War that he views as inherently antisemitic (divergent to his approach on education with America’s past with slavery and CRT education). This contrasts sharply with the state’s prior handling of white nationalist speakers, where free speech principles often led to their appearance without intervention from the government. In 2016, Texas A&M allowed Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who has called Israel a model ethnostate, to speak on-campus, despite widespread condemnation, citing First Amendment commitments.

Nationally, similar tensions and hypocrisy exist in conservative circles. President Donald Trump’s 2022 dinner with Holocaust denier and white nationalist Nick Fuentes did not at all sink his 2024 election chances. Yet there was a much more intense and visceral reaction when former Fox News host Tucker Carlson met with Fuentes. One wonders if it might be due to Carlson’s critiques of Israeli policy and pro-Israel lobbying efforts in the United States. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) will lose his mind against Tucker but grovel at the feet of Trump when both are guilty of the same infraction.

For the record, Fuentes stated on Piers Morgan Uncensored that he modeled his ethnonationalist politics on the Israeli right. These contrasting reactions underscore the complex and sometimes contradictory intersection of domestic white nationalism, pro-Israel advocacy, and free speech interpretations in American politics.

When one considers this extreme hypocrisy of American officials on this matter and the way so often those punished for protesting Israel were themselves Jewish, one should come to the logical conclusion that for the American political and religious elite, it was never about antisemitism, it was always about Israel. Rights will be eroded, foundational principles will be cast aside, and supposedly chosen people abandoned in the name of standing with this so-called ally. American campuses become ground zero in this charade. Class dismissed.