This article argues that DEI initiatives on US university campuses in response to October 7 and its aftermath display at least four kinds of obfuscation of the issues related to Israel’s genocidal, apartheid occupation of Palestine. First, most descriptions of Islamophobia and antisemitism workshops and task forces do not mention Israel, Palestine, or Zionism, thus disconnecting the rising incidents of Islamophobia and antisemitism from their context: Israeli settler colonialism, military occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Second, the term “Islamophobia” deliberately obscures the fact that Palestinians, who are not all Muslim, are the most impacted community, not Muslims. Third, antisemitism and Islamophobia are presented as equivalent forms of discrimination, clouding the vast asymmetries in US campus and governmental support of Jewish, Muslim, and Palestinian communities. Fourth, university and government officials present antisemitism and Islamophobia as forms of hate, as if the problem could be resolved at the level of individual feelings, perceptions, and understanding, disconnecting them from US and Israeli state violence. This series of obfuscations props up and normalizes the Zionist position that is used to justify the atrocities against Palestinians being enacted in its name: that Palestinians are violent, antisemitic terrorists from whom Jewish people must protect themselves at all costs.

XREF: Relates to the author's broader argument about how institutional frameworks disconnect individual prejudice from structural state violence. Builds on: "In response to events on and since October 7."

Evelyn Alsultany, Antisemitism and Islamophob…, loc. 11