Anti-Zionist students at UChicago urge boycott of classes on Israel, Israeli fellows

An anti-Zionist student group at the University of Chicago called on students last week to boycott courses about Israel and Israeli academic fellows.

“Don’t take sh*tty Zionist classes,” UChicago Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) said in an Instagram post last Wednesday. “Support the Palestinian movement for liberation by boycotting classes on Israel or those taught by Israeli fellows. By attending these classes, you are participating in a propaganda campaign that creates complicity in the continuation of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.”

The group accused university courses that aim to educate students about Israel of “controlling the narrative” to erase Palestinians, and presenting the Israel-Palestine conflict “as a conflict between two equals in an effort to legitimize its existence.”

“They use the deceitful and propagandistic term ‘1948 Arab Israeli War,'” SJP continued. “These classes often rely on Orientalist narratives, pinkwashing, and liberal washing in an attempt to legitimize Israel as a paragon of Western liberal values. Controlling the narrative is incredibly important to settler-colonial states.”