In my 4 college years and 3 law school years, I never heard of any anti-Jewish activity on campus. That was from 1960 through 1967.

Something else happened in 1967. Israel defeated its neighbors in a 6 day war, and found itself in control of the East Jerusalem and the West Bank (formerly controlled by Jordan), Golan Heights (formerly part of Syria), Sinai (formerly part of Egypt), and Gaza (formerly controlled by Egypt).

If you had told anyone back then that 56 years later, Israel would still have virtual control over all that territory (aside from Sinai, returned to Egypt in 1973), and that American campuses would be wracked by antisemitism, you would been hard put to find many who agreed with you. But that is where we are today.

There are many reasons for this, including many (mainly but not exclusively Muslims) who believed from the beginning that Israel was an illegitimate country, an outpost of European colonialism, approved by a United Nations with no authority to do approve. They believe that the entirety of Israel is Muslim land, as it has largely been for about 1500 years. To them, Europe simply had no right divide up the Middle East as it did, and that – in this post colonial era – only Israel remains as a vestige of colonialism.

And in general, scholarship has been treating colonialism as an evil past practice. As a way for “developed” countries to effectively enslave indigenous populations, extracting their wealth, their potential and their self-respect. In most colonial empires, there have been colonial (i. e., white) populations who have moved into the colonized territory, creating wealthy, elite societies at the expense of native populations.

Of course, Israel is not a traditional colonial enterprise for one obvious reason – it is self governing and not an outpost of a more powerful country. In addition, Israeli citizens are in a different position from colonial ex-pat populations in that they have no citizenship other than Israeli.

But to the extent Israel is a society of immigrants, living in a land that been populated by others for centuries, one can argue that at least it may be considered quasi-colonialist, particularly that the part of the population that is not from somewhere else does not treat the more indigenous society with true equality. In fact, Israel’s Arab and Jewish societies are by and large two separate societies, living in a reality of different levels of rights and privileges.

And I am talking about Israel proper. In the lands added in1967, the situation is worse. East Jerusalem has been added to Israel proper for “historic” reasons, the Golan has been annexed for security reasons, and large parts of the West Bank have been effectively annexed to accommodate approximately 600,000 Israelis who have moved there.

For scholars and students who are steeped in the study of colonialism, the many parallels cannot be ignored. And the apprent lack of recognition of this by Israelis, who are reputed to be quite intelligent, is hard for these anti-colonialists to swallow.

When you add to this volatile mix, tens of millions of Muslims who have ingrown belief in the rightfulness of their religion and religious destiny and their collective rights to Ottoman lands lost in World War I, when you provoke them further when Israelis claim that the land was divinely given to the Jews in perpetuity, and when you see that Israeli leadership wants either to continue the status quo, or change it in ways to Arab disadvantage, the volatility is multiplied, which many scholars deem not only inevitable but appropriate.

Add to that the isolating and overcrowded situation of Gaza and the multiplication itself is subject to more multiplication.

For these reasons, many on campuses have sympathy with the Arabs who lack their conception of freedom to breathe and advance. You then have the added, and of course obvious, but not reallymentioned yet in this post that most Israelis are Jewish, that they are supported by those nations with colonial pasts, and that they are supported by Jews world wide, and the anti-Israel feels quickly and easily become anti-Jewish.

This is not to say that there wasn’t antisemitism before in Arab countries. Of course there was. But on a different level, and without the support of so many others, across the world, who now are saying Israel=Colonialism=Jews.

Untangling this will take some work. And bombing and moving troops into Gaza with apparent disregard for its population is probably not the way.