UC policy is half right

Mild thanks to the University of California Regents for softening policy on intolerance (article March 24). As initially proposed by pro-Israel groups, the policy would have conflated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Zionism is a political movement started by upper-middle-class, atheist, European Jews who believed that Jews must be separated from other societies.

Their proposal was an exclusivist Jewish state in Palestine, propagandized as a “land without people” that would privilege the rights of Jews above all others. When Max Nordau, chief aide to Theodor Herzl, “father” of Zionism, learned that Palestine was occupied, he exclaimed “then we are committing an injustice!”

This injustice, compounded enormously, is at the heart of the problem, and it is what the Zionists do not want known. They want to shut up those who know about this and the continuing injustice from proclaiming its truth.

The problem with the adopted policy is that it focuses almost exclusively on policing criticism of Israel, rather than protecting all students from bigotry. The UC process was predicated on the absurd notion that support for Palestinian rights is inherently anti-Semitic.

This story was originally published March 27, 2016 at 9:06 AM with the headline "UC policy is half right."