Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism

Substack #3 ....

Welcome to the third substack of the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism (ICSA)! And welcome to the many new subscribers since the previous issue … In these early days the newsletters will be aimed at getting people up to speed and providing some initial resources, but they will grow gradually more substantive as ICSA begins to bloom. So…

Some Updates

ICSA has obtained a fiscal sponsor! This means you will soon be able to donate tax-deductibly! (I know you’ve been itching to give.) ICSA has a long list of scholarly projects to pursue, all of which will require funding, so stay tuned for info on how to open your (or others’!) wallets.

ICSA has added a bunch of new scholars to its roster since our last substack!

ICSA has obtained some speakers slots at a major fall conference, so will shortly be recruiting scholars to fill those slots!

ICSA just got the green light from a major educational institution to produce an 8-session foundational course on the history of antizionism! This should be put together over the summer, filmed in the fall, and released by spring of 2027.

What is ICSA?

ICSA is the newly launched initiative to produce, promote, and disseminate scholarship in the critical study of antizionism. It aims to be housed in or affiliated with a proper university (talks are underway), and to change the current dominant academic discourse (which is deeply anti-Israel and anti-Jewish), with the goal of ultimately reclaiming the academy and even saving Western Civilization (yes, it is that ambitious).

To learn more about ICSA, visit www.icsaz.org and follow us on X @InstituteCSA and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/icsa48/. If you think you might want to be part of it—either as a scholar, a donor, or in any other capacity—please DM me. Currently more than 70 scholars have expressed interest (and I’ve only just begun recruiting), and numerous others are volunteering their skills and services.

ICSA has officially launched with a seven-webinar series featuring prominent scholars, generously sponsored by the Chai Mitzvah Scholars Circle, starting with a foundational webinar offered by myself a few weeks ago. A recording of that webinar is available here. The rest of the series will continue in February, and its dates and details will be announced shortly, on X, on this substack, and elsewhere. (Hint: Sunday Feb 22, at 12 noon Eastern time, will be the first one—mark your calendar!)

Some Background

If you’re interested in really understanding how we got here, my recent two-volume book might be useful. In Israel Breathes, World Condemns I document and analyze the trajectory that led to the horrific campus response to the October 7 massacre (endorsement and celebration rather than horror and condemnation), then document and analyze what campuses have become in the aftermath of the massacre (the phrase “cesspools of Jew-hate” comes to mind). They’re currently available in inexpensive editions; they’re being republished in more expensive academic editions in the next month or so, so get them now! Volume 1 (The Trajectory) is here; Volume 2 (The Aftermath) is here.

You can also get some background from my recent conversation with Shai Davidai—a true hero in the battle against campus antizionism—which you may find here.

Some Resources

The interest in focusing specifically on antizionism—especially the critical study thereof—is growing quickly. You’ve probably already noticed if you’re on social media, particularly through the work of the activist groups Movement Against Antizionism and StopAntizionism. (Check them out, and follow them on social media.)

Some recent articles have been especially interesting or useful:

(1) This week, Cary Nelson, the true Dean of the Scholarly Battle Against Antisemitism, weighed in with the serious manifesto that I was planning to write, if I had more time, only he surely did it better anyway. Though I don’t quite agree with every detail, this is a masterful and essential foundational piece that all antizionologists—those who critically study antizionism—must read.

He writes:

The South Africa-born Israeli cultural analyst and journalist Samuel J. Hyde recently called for “a collective intellectual mobilization” to make antizionism a field of study. The formal study of antizionism would become a recognized field producing a much larger body of scholarship, the subject of multiple university courses, and an effective funding infrastructure to help the work flourish. The two years of campus and community radical, overtly antisemitic antizionism that have swept Western countries since 10/7/23 have made some aware that much more dedicated and collaborative work by faculty members is needed if antizionism is to be analyzed and understood. As Hyde writes,

“The young people who chant for intifada and denounce Zionism with quasi-religious conviction do not believe themselves ignorant. They think themselves enlightened. The slogans that saturate social platforms – settler colonialism, decolonization, and the genocide libel – did not originate in the fevered minds of the naïve but in the quiet, tenured rooms of the university. They have become the moral grammar of our time and are now wielded to sanctify the murder of Israeli Jews on October 7.”

As I have argued in a series of books – Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, and the Faculty Campaign against the Jewish State (2019), Hate Speech and Academic Freedom: The Antisemitic Assault on Basic Principles (2024), Mindless: What Happened to Universities (2025), and College Zionists Confront the Abyss: The Aftermath of October 7 in Higher Education and its Consequences for Progressive Politics, the latter forthcoming in 2026 – and as Hyde clearly recognizes, faculty members have been the vanguard of efforts to elaborate, rationalize, and disseminate antizionist arguments. Their efforts underwrite the demonstrations that have made antizionist activism the core commitment of the contemporary left.

There is a growing academic community devoted to studying the antisemitic consequences of antizionism …

Read the rest at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-taxonomy-of-antizionism/.

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(2) A man named Kile Jones documents his journey out of antizionism. In fact I am actively seeking more such cases, more such testimonials, of people once gripped by antizionism but who managed to detoxify themselves, so if you know of any please send them my way. This one has the added advantage of being quite scholarly in nature, perhaps given Jones’ two masters degrees ….

He writes:

I was once an anti-Zionist. My political views were shaped by leftist academics during my time doing graduate work at Boston University. I had immersed myself in Marxist theory, sure I was on the righteous path of my political forebears. I was studying the work of Noam Chomsky at the time, enamored by his anarcho-syndicalism, ideas on propaganda, and takes on the Middle East. As you may know, Chomsky is a very prominent anti-Zionist.

When I met him, he had CNN reporters waiting for their interview ahead of me. He came out and told them to wait so we could meet. I was a humble student at the time, and I got to sit and talk about philosophy and politics for 30 minutes with my hero. We discussed liberation theology in South America, the assassination of Bishop Oscar Romero, the legendary philosopher Bertrand Russell, and how much we both disliked Sam Harris. It was the zenith of my political development, I thought. I was on a leftist high and felt certain I would stay a leftist forever. Life has changed, and I just have to say sorry, Mr. Chomsky, I no longer agree …

Read the rest at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/sorry-mr-chomsky-i-no-longer-agree-my-journey-out-of-anti-zionism/.

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(3) I’ve recently become acquainted with the work of Zineb Riboua, currently a research fellow at the Hudson Institute. In this piece published in City Journal a couple weeks back she explores an extremely important component of the antizionist complex:

She writes:

“What did y’all think decolonization meant? Vibes? Papers? Essays? Losers,” wrote Somali-American essayist Najma Sharif on X after the Hamas attacks of October 7. The line was meant as a provocation, but it captured something essential. In much of the contemporary West, decolonization has become a political theology—and, for some, an authorization of revolutionary violence. The days after October 7 showed how deeply this worldview has taken hold. Across Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, university protests and pundits denounced Israel as a “settler-colonial state,” insisted that “decolonization is not a metaphor,” and called for “globalizing the Intifada.”

People often confuse these ideas with Islamism or with remnants of Communism. The confusion is understandable: Islamists condemn Israel in theological terms, and Communists cast global politics as a struggle between exploiters and the exploited. But today’s condemnation of Israel comes from a different lineage—a Third-Worldist conviction that the West is the permanent oppressor and that any movement arrayed against Western power is inherently righteous. This is why Western activists with no connection to the region chant in the vocabulary of decolonial struggle rather than Islamic jurisprudence or Marxist economics. They are channeling a worldview born in Paris, Algiers, and Havana, refined in Western universities, and now applied indiscriminately to conflicts framed as West versus non-West …

Read the rest at https://www.city-journal.org/article/israel-us-west-decolonization-third-world.

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That’s it, for now. Please share this substack and spread the word about ICSA to any interested persons—we’re going to need the whole community involved in the battle, it’s all hands on deck at this existential moment—and feel free to reach out with any questions or to get more involved.

Andrew Pessin