I subscribe to an email list owned by a group called Princetonians for Free Speech (PFS), which just today put out an open letter to Christopher Eisgruber, President of Princeton University, in advance of tomorrow’s speech by Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States. I don’t ordinarily feel the need to respond to statements by PFS, but in this case, a brief comment is in order.

The letter begins as follows:

On April 9, we wrote to you regarding our deep concerns about the disruption of the program featuring former Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on April 7 and actions of antisemitism during and after that program. 

Princetonians for Free Speech is an alumni organization created to promote free speech, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity at Princeton. Over 7,500 Princeton alumni subscribe to our email updates and regular reports, a number that is growing steadily.

The implicit suggestion seems to be that the 7,500 Princeton alumni who subscribe to PFS’s email updates and reports agree with what they have to say. I emphatically do not agree with them. So for relevant purposes, make that number 7,499. It may well be lower.

I was a participant at the April 7 protest against Naftali Bennett’s speech on campus. I intend to write at length about the event in the near future. For now, let me simply make explicit a few facts that have been obscured by PFS’s polemics on this topic. 

So far, the Center for Jewish Life (CJL) and Chabad have invited Naftali Bennett and Yechiel Leiter to campus. It is arguably the case that both individuals are war criminals, or at least suspects in the commission of serious war crimes. It is patently nonsensical to suggest that either criminals or criminal suspects have unfettered rights of free speech on a university campus, much less unfettered rights to advocate the further commission of the crimes of which they have credibly been accused.

PFS’s loud protestations to the contrary all beg the question in an obvious way. The evidence in favor of describing Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide is much, much better–by orders of magnitude–than the evidence required to arrest an ordinary criminal for a crime. PFS, CJL, and Chabad may wish to evade this fact, but it is, at this point, far too obvious to be wished away. Just as it would be absurd to permit an accused bank robber to give a lecture on fractional reserve banking to the Department of Economics, so it’s absurd to permit accused war criminals to come to campus and lecture us (in a closed, essentially unadvertised session) about the morality of war. But this is the absurdity which PFS regards as an uncontroversial exercise of free speech. Maybe we should empty the jails and prisons for more “free speech” of the same kind. 

To describe the same fact from another angle: both Bennett and Leiter are active combatants in the same war of extermination. We should not be confused by the fact that they happen not to be physically fighting on the battlefield. By any functional measure, the political leadership of a nation at war consists in the relevant sense of combatants, should be regarded as such, and are regarded that way by the Israel Defense Forces when it comes to targeting Israel’s adversaries. People would immediately grasp this if Bennett and Yechiel were members of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, or the PFLP. No one at Chabad or CJL would regard the presence of such people on campus as a neutral exercise of “free speech.” And no one would say that such a person’s wearing a suit or giving a talk immunizes them from military targeting. The same applies here.  

Put another way, CJL, Chabad, and Princeton University have decided that the exercise of what they quixotically regard as “free speech” requires giving a propaganda platform to one set of combatants (but not the other) in an ongoing war of extermination. To repeat: this is actively to participate in this same war in just the way that Ezra Pound, or William Joyce, or Julius Streicher did in their respective capacities. Pound, Joyce, and Streicher were not innocents. They were culpable participants in an evil enterprise. So are Bennett and Yechiel. So are their enablers at the CJL, Chabad, and Princeton University. So is PFS. 

An individual at the Bennett demonstration made this very clear to me. He walked up to the barrier separating the pro-Bennett from the anti-Bennett sides at the April 7 demonstration, and said: “We will defeat you. You will never win.” The formulation makes explicit what should be obvious: the invitation of Bennett was regarded by those inviting him and those attending as a partisan event intended to show solidarity for one set of combatants, while treating those opposed to Bennett as an opposing set of combatants. This claim simply echoes the constant refrain that those of us opposed to Israel’s war are in fact proxies for Hamas.

Given this, I would suggest that not just Bennett and Yechiel but the principals of the inviting organizations be regarded–and treated–presumptively as accomplices to a major ongoing war crime. Ideally, they would all be arrested, arraigned, indicted, tried, and punished for it. It’s unfortunate that we don’t inhabit a milieu that makes that possible. But the moral judgment remains: such people are beneath contempt, and should be regarded and treated that way. 

Morality aside, it’s incredibly stupid to invite to campus one set of combatants in an ongoing war of any kind. As combatants, both individuals are legitimate military targets by any plausible account of in bello norms. Arguably, so too are the entities inviting and hosting them–Chabad, CJL, and the University itself. In turning campus into a legitimate military target, all three organizations have turned every individual in the vicinity into a potential human shield. With all due respect, I don’t think that the University’s “security forces” are up to the task of defending the University against a literal military attack. But that’s what the University has invited into our midst, practically by engraved invitation.

I hasten to say that none of the preceding is intended either as a statement of personal intentions or as advice to anyone. I’ll be at the anti-Leiter demonstration tomorrow, but I’ll be unarmed, and have no intention of attacking anyone. Nor am I suggesting that any particular party attack the speaker. I simply underscore the obvious: it would be no surprise if someone did. That’s what happens to participants in warfare, after all. Robert Kennedy, Meir Kahane, and Rehavam Zeevi were all assassinated under similar circumstances. Nothing immunizes a Naftali Bennett or a Yechiel Leiter from the same or similar treatment.

CJL, Chabad, and Princeton itself have, for the last year and a half, played a dishonest, cowardly game with all of us. They have issued indiscriminate accusations of anti-Semitism while not just excusing the actions of outright racists and war criminals, but actively participating in the racist war of extermination that these criminals are prosecuting. They should reflect on the possibility that a game of this kind can only last so long. 

“I tremble for my country,” Thomas Jefferson famously wrote about slavery, “when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.” You don’t have to believe in God or in the literal truth of Jefferson’s statement to tremble at the possibility at which it hints: justice, if awakened, would strike many self-righteous people at Princeton dead in their tracks. That, frankly, may not be cause for lament. But since we’re now all the hostages and human shields of their improvidence, the rest of us have good reason to challenge their moral bona fides. The first step is to question their standards of judgment. The second is to stand up for our own. And rest assured, we will.