In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a group of European Jews, inspired by the race nationalist fervor that gripped many European communities during this period, formed a movement to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its native inhabitants, the Palestinians, and set up a colony for themselves in their place. In 1948, this movement, which we call the Zionist movement, tried to put its plan into action, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, pushing hundreds of thousands from their homes, and declaring the creation of Israel. Thanks to heroic resistance and help from neighbors, Palestinians were able to cling to 15% of their land, the territories of the West Bank and Gaza, into which the Zionists pushed nearly the entire population. Israel has segregated Palestinians there for decades in what South African civil rights activists have called an apartheid that is worse than what black people experienced in South Africa. Today, Israel is intentionally starving to death 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, many the children and grandchildren of the Palestinians that the Zionist movement forced at gunpoint from their homes decades ago. If the international community does not go to war against Israel to stop the final solution that Israel is currently implementing for Palestinians, they will perish.

I am a law professor at the University of Kentucky. I study justice. My job is to speak truth to power. When I came to understand that Israel is a colony committing genocide, I called for military intervention to rescue the Palestinians and give them back their land. The Zionist movement did not like what I was saying. But the movement did not contest that Israel is a colonization project. The movement did not contest that Israel is committing apartheid. And the movement did not contest that Israel is committing genocide. Because it cannot. Experts agree on those facts.

Instead, the Zionist movement tried to distract me—and you—from the indefensible actions that they support by calling me names. What I oppose when I oppose the existence of Israel is the colonization, apartheid, and genocide for which it stands, and I would oppose Israel whether it was a French colony, a British colony, a Portuguese colony, a Spanish colony, or a Belgian colony. In fact, there was a time when almost all of Africa and the Middle East were colonized by those five European countries. Nearly every country in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East had a group of settlers, like the Jewish settlers in Palestine today, that displaced, segregated, and killed the natives. We smashed all of those colonies and liberated continents in the 20th century with one exception: Israel. If the settlers colonizing Palestine have been held to a different standard, it is that they have been allowed to commit colonization, apartheid, and genocide in the Middle East long after every other Western group has been required to stop.

So let us not be distracted. Let us remember that support for Israel is support for violence, for armed conquest, and for mass murder. It is support for institutionalized rape and torture of Palestinians, for forced displacement, for the use of starvation as a weapon of war, for land theft, and for an actual genocide going on right now. These are actual Israeli policies and the endpoint of all colonization projects.

The Zionist movement cannot talk about what Israel is meant to be because that would reveal a logic of conquest, exclusion and domination, so it instead cloaks Israel in a rhetoric of justice. The movement will call colonization liberation. It will call apartheid civil rights. It will call genocide self defense. And it will call those who stand against their unjust position racists. None of these labels will stick. But that does not matter. For what these falsehoods buy is time. While we debate the fine points of the definition of antisemitism. While we debate whether university presidents should stand up for their faculty when they speak truth to power. While we debate whether they should resign when they have failed to do so. While we debate whether the constitutional protection for freedom of speech should protect criticism of Israel. While we debate whether the angst a Zionist student feels when she learns that Israel is a colonization project committing genocide is the fault of her professors or of the Zionist movement that created Israel. While we debate: Israel is bombing, shooting, shelling, and starving 2 million Palestinians to death in Gaza, and if the Zionist movement can distract us for just long enough, then all 2 million will be dead and it will be too late to save Palestine. The crime will be complete.

So do not let supporters of colonization and genocide distract you with debates about civil rights, free speech, or academic freedom. Instead, continue to talk about what Israel is and what Israel does. And join me in calling for immediate military action by every country in the world to save Palestine and end Israel.

September 18, 2025

(Views my own.)