The University of California, Berkeley, has allowed several student groups—an amalgam of Muslim and leftist organizations—to turn themselves into “Jew-free” zones after they adopted by-laws prohibiting any pro-Israel speakers at events. It doesn’t matter whether the event involves Israel; if you support the Jewish state (and, for now, most Jews still do), you are disallowed.

The Jewish News of Northern California reported on this initiative a month ago, but it’s now made national headlines because the Daily Mail picked it up. It’s noteworthy that no mainstream American outlets got there before the Daily Mail did. According to the Jewish News:

The statement, written by Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine, goes beyond the now-familiar calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, pledges that have become commonplace at U.S. universities (The campus advocacy group Amcha Initiative has tallied 28 such resolutions adopted since 2021.)

Rather, in addition to supporting BDS, groups that adopt the bylaw also pledge not to invite “speakers that have expressed and continued to hold views … in support of Zionism, the apartheid state of Israel, and the occupation of Palestine.”

The rule is in the interest of “protecting the safety and welfare of Palestinian students,” the provision says. As to how it will be enforced, the bylaw leaves that up to each group, though “suggested strategies can include publicly stipulating [each individual] organization’s position of anti-racism and anti-settler colonialism to speakers, ensuring that proposals for speakers emphasize the organization’s desire for equality and inclusion,” or “informing speakers of the event’s goals and mission values.”

Naturally, the rule doesn’t explain how stifling the free expression of ideas will advance “protecting the safety and welfare of Palestinian students.” It doesn’t need to. We all know that, for both young Americans and leftists, words are violence.

Image: Two crescents, both allied over antisemitism by Andrea Widburg

Since the initiative’s proposal, nine groups have adopted it. According to the Daily Mail, these groups are:

Berkeley Law Muslim Student Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Womxn of Color Collective, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Queer Caucus, Community Defense Project, Women of Berkeley Law and Law Students of African Descent.

It goes without saying that some of these groups are Muslim. However, the presence of the “Queer Caucus,” the “Womxn of Color Collective,” and the “Women of Berkeley Law” is the giveaway that the real commonality is leftism. Whether coming from a Muslim, Black, LGBTQ+++, or feminist perspective, all these groups have Marx in common. If you know anything about Marxism, that’s not a surprise.

Karl Marx was genetically Jewish, but his father had converted the whole family to increase economic opportunities. Marx could have been another Benjamin Disraeli, fascinated by and proud of his Jewish heritage despite the family conversion when he was still a child, but he went the other way, to florid antisemitism. His crackpot economic writings became gospel for socialists, and he baked Jew hatred into them:

What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.…. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities…. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange…. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.

Although most of the world’s Jews were mired in abysmal poverty, Marx turned antisemitism into an integral part of socialism by making it synonymous with capitalism. For that reason, a fundamental principle of socialism is to rid the world of Jews. In this way, it is precisely the same as Islam, a fundamental principle of which is to rid the world of Jews.

Both doctrines reflect the totalitarian opposition to an ideology predicated on individual liberty and personal morality. In other words, Islamic and socialist anti-Semitism are bound together by ignorance, narcissism, and sociopathy. No wonder the two ideologies are so comfortable in each other’s company—and no wonder student groups at Berkeley that are socialist, Islamist, or both, readily embraced an openly antisemitic policy.