US college campuses have embraced the Palestinian cause like never before. The story began six decades ago
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was best known for its sit-ins against segregation in the Deep South. But in the summer of 1967, the civil rights group used its newsletter to weigh in on a different topic.
In an article headlined “The Palestine Problem,” the group wrote: “Do you know that Zionism, which is a world-wide nationalistic Jewish movement, organized, planned and created the ‘State of Israel’ by sending Jewish immigrants from Europe into Palestine (the heart of the Arab world) to take over land and homes belonging to the Arabs?”
It was illustrated with a dollar sign inside a Star of David. The story roiled many civil rights activists, who denounced it as antisemitic and expressed their support for Israel as a homeland for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust.
The SNCC, which had expelled white members as it shifted to a more militant Black nationalism, responded with an official statement that recognized the murder of 6 million Jews as “one of the worst crimes against humanity.” But then it argued: “We do not see how the Jewish refugees and survivors could ever use this tragedy as an excuse to imitate their Nazi oppressors.”
More than half a century later, the Palestinian cause — and hostility not only to Israeli policy but to the country’s very existence as a homeland for Jews — has shifted from the sidelines of student activism to become one of the most robust political movements on American college campuses.
Even before the between Israel and the militant group
