Anti-Zionism isn’t always antisemitism, but don’t ignore the red flags

It is certainly true that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are conceptually distinct phenomena, but that does not mean they are unrelated in reality. There has always been an undercurrent of anti-Jewish bigotry in much criticism of Israel. Sometimes, only a dramatic revelation can uncover a connection.

Consider the case of Haverford College, in suburban Philadelphia, where Jewish students, with ties of religion and shared ancestry to Israel, had complained of intimidation from classmates, administrators and faculty. The college administration insisted that the alleged harassment was not based on Jewish identity, but rather on “specific political views and positions on world events, namely, the Israel-Palestine conflict.”

Then a tenured Haverford faculty member was arrested by the FBI for repeatedly sending menacing messages to a Jewish colleague, with hate-filled slurs and embedded threats of violence. That finally prompted Haverford’s president, Wendy Raymond to officially acknowledge antisemitism at her college.

In a statement to the college community, Raymond declared that she was “heartbroken and furious” at the “heinous online attacks, which were antisemitic in nature.”

Haverford had previously been given fair notice that campus anti-Zionism could descend into palpable antisemitism but chose to ignore it.

In 2024, a group of Jewish students and faculty, calling themselves Jews at Haverford, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the college. Their 90-page complaint alleged numerous instances of disparate treatment, insults, shunning, exclusion and bullying from other students and faculty — based on their Jewish identification with Israel — that had been tolerated or disregarded by Haverford’s administration.

In a subsequent pleading , the plaintiffs submitted five X posts by Professor Guangtian Ha, of the Haverford religion department, comprising “abusive, obscene denunciations” of Zionism and Zionists, which would thus include “every Haverford student” who is a Zionist.

Ha declared that “the only way to deal with zionists is to stop talking to them,” and “anyone who says ‘what about Hamas’ can go f— themself.”

Ominously foreshadowing worse things to come, Ha warned that “in my little world . . I will never forgive them. I know their names and I know their faces.”

Despite the implicit threats for the exclusion, or worse, of students who care for Israel, the Haverford administration failed to investigate, reprimand or even caution Ha. Rather than recognize the glaring red flag, Haverford argued that the threatening posts, and similar alleged incidents, constituted only “opposing viewpoints on world affairs.”

Regrettably, the court agreed . In baffling disregard of Ha’s obscene condemnation of certain names and faces, whom he would never forgive in Haverford’s little world, the judge held that the posts were “leveled at the State of Israel” and therefore not aimed at “people of Jewish descent.”

But Ha then proved them both wrong. In October 2025, he allegedly began cyberstalking a Jewish professor who had drawn his ire. According to the indictment and other prosecution pleadings , Ha used multiple phony X accounts to send the victim more than 50 vicious and unmistakably threatening antisemitic messages.

The messages were filled with classically anti-Jewish images: “Jewish cockroaches,” “blood guzzling demons,” “Jew pig,” “jew filth” and “demonic evil of the jews.” They often trafficked in overt Nazi language: “The fuhrer is coming;” Jews should be “placed in special camps;” “Exterminate the jews;” “Make it 6 million;” and “you shall see a true holocaust.”

Far worse were the threats. Several messages referred to the township where the victim’s family lives: “The end of American jews is close. Let’s start with the jews in Lower Merion.”

Other messages included the address and photographs of the victim’s home, one with an “eyes” emoji and another with a bulls-eye emoji. Still others evinced real-time access to the house: “Blurring your home on google map and installing a security camera next to your mailbox won’t help.”

Most terrifying was a threatening warning against the victims’ children that included the name of the family’s seven-month-old infant. “Homeless dogs jews will once again become, if you do survive,” Ha wrote. On two occasions, the harassment was so severe that the victimized family fled their home with their three minor children.

According to the prosecution, Ha “admitted to FBI agents that he created and used” the offending accounts, which had been traced to his IP addresses. Ha has pleaded not guilty . His defense attorney did not respond to multiple inquiries from me.

Although now banned from campus, Ha had been active in Haverford’s anti-Zionist movement, once having ironically complained of “Zionist witch hunts.”

It would be foolish to argue that anti-Zionism is always camouflage for antisemitism. But as Ha’s example demonstrates, it would be dangerous to assume that it never is.

It seems improbable that Ha could have been exposed to the vile language of Western antisemitism in China, where he was born and raised . It is far more likely that he could have learned it on an American college campus, after moving here in his early twenties to attend graduate school at Columbia.

Therein lies an important lesson for university administrators. There is barely concealed bigotry lurking on your campuses. Listen to your Jewish students, who can tell you much about antisemitism if you are willing to pay attention.

Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor Emeritus at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. He is the author of “The ‘Colored Hero’ of Harpers Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War against Slavery,” and many other books.