Crushing Dissent: Zionist groups target Harvard students for criticising Israel

A chilling threat to student free speech has emerged across US campuses, rights groups warn, as pro-Israel donors seek to crush pro-Palestine activism through intimidation and threats.

Students now face destroyed careers for criticising Israel’s conduct, after law firms rescinded job offers over their views. Victims include three Ivy League students who are said to have been dropped by elite firm, Davis Polk & Wardwell, and a New York University law student rejected by Winston & Strawn.

At the University of North Carolina, a Palestinian-American student lives in fear after being “doxxed” by a pro-Israel site for quotes in a news article. His is not an isolated case – a pro-Israel group drove a billboard truck near Harvard displaying names and photos of dozens of pro-Palestine students.

Read: Harvard students form ‘anti-Zionist Jewish organisation’

This blacklisting of activists through public intimidation, known as “doxxing”, has become a major tactic to suppress pro-Palestine expression on campus, warns Palestine Legal. Students now receive death threats for their advocacy.

The backlash began after students signed a Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) letter blaming Israel for violence in Palestine. The PSC statement said that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

In response, The Wexner Foundation has punished Harvard by cutting funds for not condemning Palestinian rights advocacy harshly enough after the students’ letter. Billionaire donors like Ronald Lauder have also threatened to pull funding from the University of Pennsylvania over alleged anti-Semitism.

Ironically, Harvard’s Jewish group, Hillel, denounced the doxxing as unacceptable intimidation that is counter-productive to education and dialogue on campus.

“Harvard Hillel strongly condemns any attempts to threaten and intimidate co-signatories of the Palestine Solidarity Committee’s statement, including the bus on campus displaying the names and faces of students affiliated with the groups who have signed it,” said the Jewish group. The group went on to say that “under no circumstances” should students be subjected to public intimidation. “Such intimidation is counter-productive to the education that needs to take place on our campus at this difficult time.”

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But such voices defending free expression are being drowned out by the pro-Israel lobby seeking to quash criticism of Israel through coercive threats. As a result, exercising basic rights now carries devastating consequences for students speaking out for Palestine.

The human rights and literary organisation, PEN , condemned the “harassment of any students, regardless of their viewpoint” and called the campaign against the students “an undeniable threat to freedom of expression.”