Opinion | Israel is the problem
by Fred Smoller
Photo Courtesy of The Panther Archives
The Trump Administration’s efforts to clamp down on college campus protests against the Gaza war do not address the real problem and therefore will not be successful.
The slaughter of the Palestinian people by the Netanyahu government — not traditional antisemitism — is what is animating students on college campuses such as the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Irvine and Chapman.
Israel is the problem — not protesting students, leftist professors, weak administrators, nor entrenched institutional antisemitism.
It is not at all surprising that rage against the Gaza war is taking place on college campuses, where hard conversations and open inquiry are part of the university’s mission.
College students are not alone in condemning Israel’s actions.
Israeli Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov says Israel is committing genocide.
Prominent Jewish leaders such as Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Barack Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza.
In a sharp break with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump blames Israel for starving children in Gaza.
Former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert wrote an op-ed in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, titled "Enough Is Enough. Israel Is Committing War Crimes".
In June, Haaretz reported that Israeli soldiers had been ordered to shoot at Palestinians “to drive them away or disperse them, even though it was clear they posed no threat.”
New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman, who happens to be Jewish, wrote ” [O]ne day, foreign photographers and reporters will be allowed to go into Gaza unescorted by the Israeli Army. And when they do, and the full horror of the destruction there becomes clear to all, the backlash against Israel and Jews everywhere could be profound.”
In a vote at the United Nations, the United States and Israel were the only two countries to vote against a resolution which said that starvation of civilians is prohibited under international humanitarian law. It passed overwhelmingly.
The New York Times reported that “rabbis from across the world are taking the unusual step of speaking out against the Israeli government’s conduct in the war, on moral and religious grounds.”
A recently released United Nations report says that “More than half a million people in Gaza are trapped in famine, marked by widespread starvation.” Starvation and malnutrition have claimed 303 lives, including 117 children, as of late August 2025 .
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that 192 journalists, at least 184 of them Palestinian, have been killed by Israel. This week Israel fired twice on a hospital killing 20 people, 5 of whom were journalists.
Public support for Israel by the American people has collapsed. “More than half of U.S. adults (53%) now express an unfavorable opinion of Israel, up from 42% in March 2022 – before the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip,” according to Pew Research Center.
This war is a “shanda” for Israel and the Jewish people and the US, which is complicit in this atrocity. As journalist and author Peter Beinart, who is also Jewish, writes l “How could a people who claim to be in covenant with God — who claim to believe in the inherent dignity of all human beings — be complicit in this brutal oppression, culminating in genocide?"
Only when there is a comprehensive settlement which guarantees safety and justice for Israelis and Palestinians will campus protests subside.
As a college professor and Jewish person, I long for this day.
Smoller teaches political science at Chapman University. Chapman is under investigation by the Trump administration for antisemitism allegations.