While President Donald Trump was signing an executive order aimed at silencing dissent against Israel on campuses, Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia student and member of the campus protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza, was arrested. Additionally, federal grants for Columbia University were frozen until the university adopted the Israeli government’s policy prescriptions on how to conduct its business. This led to something shocking and unprecedented in modern American discourse: bipartisan support for what can only be described as fascism, with liberals and conservatives uniting in favor of authoritarian government overreach that violated the rights of all Americans.
Such authoritarian and fascist measures are rare in America, where freedom of speech is a cornerstone of national identity. Given the importance of free speech in American life, one might expect a massive backlash from civil rights groups, liberals, the media, and libertarians against Trump’s actions. Instead, the students who courageously stood up for human rights and justice have been blamed, smeared, and subjected to relentless legal and propaganda attacks.
Every headline in leading newspapers, every opening of mainstream television news, every first post by social media influencers, and every press release or conference by members of Congress inundates us with outcries about the injustice and inhumane treatment of Jewish students by anti-war protesters. The descriptions of this alleged mistreatment evoke imagery and language that younger generations know only from history books: disturbing black-and-white videos of Nazi mobs targeting Jewish stores, harrowing tales of Russian pogroms, and the graphic details recounted in Schindler’s List. These images flash through our minds repeatedly due to the constant mentions of the plight of Jewish students supposedly besieged by anti-war students.
Those making these claims argue that the student protests are not about opposing Israel’s actions but about harassing Jewish students simply for being Jewish. When pressed by media figures—even those who might be sympathetic—to provide specific examples of such harassment, they often respond with outrage rather than evidence, as if to deflect from the lack of concrete instances.
They ask, “If these students are really against Israel, why are they targeting Jewish students?” From this, they conclude that the protests are motivated by antisemitism. Based on these assertions, any rational, unprejudiced person might agree that the campus protests are driven by pure antisemitism and that those involved should be investigated, suspended, or even deported. After all, throughout history, a civilization’s moral health has often been judged by its treatment of Jews, and this situation seems to indicate a dangerous decline. But is this truly the case? Are these claims based on genuine concerns for the safety of Jewish students, or are they state-sponsored emotional manipulation for geopolitical purposes?
The Truth
Let’s investigate and find out the truth together instead of just giving you a short yes or no answer. To do that, we first need to know how many Jewish students attend these universities and are in each class for the claims to hold any weight. We can look at the number of Jewish students in Ivy League and elite schools, where the student protests are happening. The insidious antisemitic claims suggest that every university and college with interrupted classes is packed with Jewish students, and when protests target these institutions, the only students whose learning suffers are Jewish ones. This is used to paint campus protests as antisemitic.
However, according to Hillel, a Jewish campus organization, the estimated percentage of Jewish students in Ivy League and elite schools from 2023-2025 is around 14%. That means, on average, there are only 1 or 2 Jewish students in every class of 10 that’s been supposedly disrupted by “antisemitic protesters.” This is nowhere near enough to make it all about Jewish students.
What about the other 9 students—maybe Chinese, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Black, or White? Why did their learning get interrupted and ruined? And why isn’t the government issuing executive orders to protect them or defunding universities for abandoning them? Plus, Jewish students are often part of these protests, even leading them. So, the idea that campus protests are inherently antisemitic because they target Jewish students doesn’t hold up—it’s nothing more than a state-sponsored smear campaign.
Since we’ve established this isn’t about Jewish students, what’s really going on? Are they saying these elite colleges somehow belong to Jews—like a synagogue or yeshiva—so any protest against them is automatically antisemitic?
Yes, that’s the implication. Their claims suggest these elite institutions are Jewish, either literally or because they push Jewish interests. These schools are viewed as extensions of the state of Israel—places of Jewish radicalization, like madrassas—so any pressure on them or their policies is labeled antisemitic.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what’s really at play here. It’s why the presidency is flexing its power to crush student protests. It’s why Columbia University handed over sensitive student information to ICE to target Mahmoud Khalil for rendition. It’s also why Columbia hasn’t fought Trump’s freeze of its $400 million annual federal grant, even though the law supports a challenge—and they’d win. Instead, they’ve caved to his Orwellian demands. And it’s not just Columbia. Harvard, UPenn, Cornell, Yale, Princeton, and other top schools have all settled frivolous lawsuits from pro-Israeli groups and the Education Department without even checking if the claims had merit. They’ve folded in unison, coordinated like clockwork.
So why did they do it?
Because these universities believe that the end justifies the means, and with the end being the Jewish state, they’re ready to sacrifice their students and their academic reputation.
The proof of this lies in the demands students made of their universities and these institutions. The primary demand from student activists was for universities to adopt the BDS agenda: Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Israel. BDS—Boycott, Divest, and Sanction—is an international Palestinian solidarity organization that pushes for economic and cultural pressure to compel Israel to end its nearly century-long occupation of Palestine. This demand arises not only from the cultural and educational connections these institutions maintain with their Israeli counterparts but also from their use of massive endowments to make deliberate, ideological investments in Israel.
Student activists argue that the companies and Israeli organizations these colleges fund are complicit in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Endowment money supports research labs in Israel that have developed sinister AI programs like “Lavender” and “Where Is Daddy,” which Israel has used to annihilate entire families in Gaza based on weak links to Hamas—like a photo or proximity to a Hamas vehicle. Israel could only pull this off thanks to the generous, ideologically driven investments from these institutions.
A tangled network of staunch Zionist donors, alumni, lobbyists, faculty, and university bureaucrats funnels a significant chunk of these institutions’ billions in endowments to the Israeli economy each year—particularly its booming tech and weapons sectors. Most of the major donors and top administrators at these schools are either hardcore Zionists or radical Jewish nationalists. Up to 65% of the top 20 donors and 60% of these institutions’ leadership are Jewish Zionists. Big names among these donors include Michael Bloomberg, John Paulson, Ronald Perelman, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Lewis, Henry Laufer, Leslie Wexner, Marc Rowan, Bill Ackman, Charles Kushner, Idan Ofer, Leon Cooperman, Henry Swieca, Robert Kraft, Ronald Lauder, Haim Saban, Kenneth Griffin, and more. Some might ring a bell due to other connections. For example, Leslie Wexner and Marc Rowan, Apollo’s CEO, tie into the Epstein-Israel conspiracy. Wexner and Leon Black, Apollo’s former CEO, were both deeply linked to Epstein and his alleged Mossad-backed blackmail scheme. Bill Ackman, married to a former IDF soldier, has openly wielded his wealth to bully universities into suppressing anti-Israel protests. Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner—Trump’s son-in-law—helped Jared leverage his position to bribe Arab and Muslim nations with U.S. money and weapons to normalize ties with Israel.
These deep-pocketed donors have pumped billions into these universities—not out of charity or to advance human knowledge, but to align their interests with the Jewish state. The success of these institutions hinges on how well they serve Israel: indoctrinating students with a radical Zionist agenda, sharing valuable research with Israel, and using donated funds to bolster Israel’s economy. Critics call this setup a money-laundering racket to fleece the U.S. This intricate system has allowed Israel to sustain a robust economy despite nonstop wars and genocides over the past 1.5 years, while also churning out more successful startups than any other nation in the last two decades.
To safeguard their investments and the perks they’ve amassed, these mega-donors also pour cash into U.S. political campaigns—both Democratic and Republican. One of their top picks is Donald Trump. Here’s what Trump vowed during his September 2024 campaign: “Colleges will and must end the antisemitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support,” he told Jewish donors in a virtual speech. “No money will go to them if they don’t.”
Beyond investments, these elite colleges are vital to Israel as pipelines of influence into America’s ruling class and federal coffers. The academic, cultural, and historical propaganda they churn out indoctrinates students with Jewish nationalist ideologies before they assume leadership roles in America and beyond. Essentially, these universities act as radicalization hubs for the Jewish state—akin to Al Qaeda’s madrassas in Afghanistan. These prestigious “yeshivas” shape tomorrow’s fiercest Zionist leaders. Look at Senator Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—all Ivy League products. They rank among America’s most extreme Zionist radicals in power today, so fervent that even some Israeli Jewish radicals find them excessive. Shockingly, these men weren’t always this way. They didn’t grow up knowing Jews or tied to Zionist groups. Entering these schools, they were typical American guys chasing thrills—hookups, beer, and parties—chanting “USA, USA, USA” and “God Bless America.” But they emerged transformed, radicalized into Zionism (Jewish nationalism), craving not beer or women but death and destruction—eager for endless Middle East wars, regime changes, and ethnic cleansing campaigns.
The innocent “USA, USA, USA” became the militant “Am Yisrael Chai,” a Jewish nationalist war cry. “God Bless America” turned into “God Bless Judeo-Christian.” Tom Cotton himself admitted he didn’t even know Americans celebrated Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur—let alone died for Zionism or funneled tax dollars to Israel—before Harvard. “I’d heard of them in a vague biblical sense,” he said, “but the idea that you wouldn’t have classes on them or that people might go home for them wasn’t in my realm of experience as a high school kid from rural Arkansas.”
Clearly, Ivy League schools aren’t just for learning science, math, philosophy, theology, or the arts—they’re for indoctrination into a specific religion and tradition. Teaching about Yom Kippur, Passover, or other Jewish customs is fine, just like teaching about Christmas or Eid. But force-feeding these traditions turns them into a gateway to Zionism and extremism. That’s what these Ivy League schools have become: turbocharged radical Jewish nationalist madrassas.
This is exactly what the backers of student crackdowns aim to shield. Protecting these hidden yeshivas—and their ideological and economic perks for the Jewish state—is the real reason behind the antisemitism accusations and harassment, with “protecting Jewish students” just a flimsy excuse.
