Jewish law students at UC Berkeley stand against silencing of Palestine solidarity activism at Berkeley Law

We are a group of anti-Zionist Jewish law students at UC Berkeley. For the past year, we have been organizing and advocating for Palestine alongside Law Students for Justice in Palestine (LSJP). While Zionists claim to speak on behalf of all Jews, we feel an obligation to speak for ourselves. We are horrified by Israel’s escalating ethnic cleansing in Gaza and express our continuous and unwavering support for Palestinian liberation. We grieve the lives lost on October 7th but refuse to let our grief be turned into an excuse for genocide.

We also write outraged at the egregious claims made by Berkeley Law’s own Professor Steven Davidoff Solomon in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. He urged the legal community not to hire Berkeley Law students who have spoken up for Palestine, labeling these students and their beliefs “anti-semitic.” Indeed, some employers have already followed Professor Solomon’s edict and rescinded job offers from law students who have expressed support for Palestinian liberation. These are the same strategies of repression that we saw last year at Berkeley Law, when law firms revoked employment offers from students of color for their support of Palestine.

We firmly reject Professor Solomon’s characterization of pro-Palestine activism as antisemitic. As Jews, we deeply value the traditions of tzedek (justice), tikkun olam (repairing the world), and teshuva (accountability). It is because of our Judaism, and not in spite of it, that we reject the idea that only a right-wing settler-colonial state, built on the expulsion and massacre of Palestinians, can keep Jews safe. We condemn Israel’s ongoing killing of Palestinians, theft of Palestinian land, and unceasing campaign over the last sixteen years to make Gaza unlivable. Standing against Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of two million Palestinians in Gaza is not antisemitic. Despite Professor Solomon’s claims that he is a representative of the Jewish community at Berkeley Law, he does not speak for us.

Against the ongoing specter of genocide, Professor Solomon’s op-ed weaponizes antisemitism to silence pro-Palestine students. This is shameful. The impact of his intimidation campaign is also far from neutral. The students who are most vulnerable to false charges of antisemitism are disproportionately students of color. The consequences of lost employment are far more devastating to students without familial wealth. Although a wide array of student organizations have pledged not to invite Zionist speakers in solidarity with LSJP, Professor Solomon exclusively calls out groups representing law students of color, queer students, and women. Labeling these students as antisemitic exacerbates their exclusion from the legal profession, exploits their vulnerability in order to suppress their courageous political advocacy, and falsely suggests an oppositional relationship between Jewish students and students with other marginalized identities.

Berkeley Law’s administration has refused to condemn Solomon and has contributed to this intimidation and silencing. Despite the law school’s supposed commitment to “free speech,” Dean Chemerinsky made the outrageous decision to withhold academic credit from student law journals that adopt LSJP’s bylaw, punishing groups who choose to incorporate anti-racist and anti-colonial values into their legal scholarship.

We strongly denounce the Dean’s actions and those of employers who discriminate against students for expressing pro-Palestine opinions. The legal community should support and uplift those who advocate for justice and against ethnic cleansing and genocide. Furthermore, as we have seen on our own campus, the consequences of doxxing, harassment, and job loss disproportionately fall on students of color, who are already drastically underrepresented in the legal profession.

While Professor Solomon and Dean Chemerinsky choose to use their positions of power to perpetuate false narratives about the Palestine solidarity movement, we proudly stand with the ever-growing movement of American Jews who refuse complicity in the genocide, ethnic cleansing, and oppression of Palestinians carried out by the Israeli apartheid regime with the support of the United States government. We recognize that an ethnostate built and maintained through the dispossession and subjugation of Palestinans will never keep Jews safe. As Jews, we stand proudly in solidarity with our classmates seeking liberation and self-determination for Palestine.