The headquarters of The New York Times. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

How to get the New York Times to publish an opinion article about Jewish summer camp?

Turn it into an attack on Zionism.

A “guest essay” on the Times opinion page, headlined “‘Campsickness’ Is Real and a Sign of Something Special,” begins innocuously enough: “I was happy the whole time … At camp, I made friends easily, found meaning in my Jewishness, and happily ignored the problems that awaited me come late August.”

So far, so good. Read on, though, and the author eventually makes her purpose clear: not merely praising Jewish camp, but denouncing Zionism and distancing herself from it.

“My camp’s focus on Zionism turned my friends and me into fanatics for the cause,” she writes, “As I entered my 20s, my life experiences and education made me challenge the ideologies I’d been exposed to.”

Nothing like “education” as a cure for fanatical Zionism, right?

It’s ironic, because a good education would explain the Jewish people’s historical and religious connection to the land of Israel and share the sad history of what happened to the Jews when we lacked a state. Such an education would reinforce a person’s commitment to and understanding of Zionism, not make a person challenge the need for a Jewish state in the land of Israel.

Sadly, such an education is increasingly scarce in many American universities. The author of the Times article, Sandra Fox, is identified as “the Goldstein-Goren visiting assistant professor of American Jewish history” at New York University.

And sure enough, Fox is listed as a signer of the infamous “Elephant in the Room” letter. The letter echoes the old Soviet-era “Zionism Is Racism” lie, three times using the term “apartheid” to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

The signers of the letter falsely, and without evidence, accuse the Israeli government of planning to “ethnically cleanse all territories under Israeli rule of their Palestinian population.” They express indifference about the future existence of a Jewish state, asserting, “Without equal rights for all, whether in one state, two states, or in some other political framework, there is always a danger of dictatorship.” (There’s always a danger of dictatorship, period, but acknowledging that simple truth without qualification would undermine the effort to smear Israel as a burgeoning dictatorship.) And they falsely state that Israel’s so-called occupation is “illegal” and that “Palestinian people lack almost all basic rights, including the right to vote and protest.” The letter deceptively conflates Arabs inside Israel with those in the West Bank and Gaza, blaming the Jewish state for the plight of Arabs everywhere.

The letter attacks not only Israel but also the Jewish religion.

“Israel has grown more right-wing and come under the spell of the current government’s messianic, homophobic, and misogynistic agenda,” the letter says. By including “messianic” with the negative terms “homophobic” and “misogynistic,” the letter-signers distance themselves from, among other things, Maimonides’ principles of Jewish faith: “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and though he may delay, I wait daily for his coming.”

References to the messiah (like references to the land of Israel and to Jerusalem) are all over the Jewish liturgy — from many versions of the kaddish prayer and the yigdal hymn (based on Maimonides’ principles) to singing about Elijah the prophet at a Passover Seder or at the end of the sabbath. It’s in the Bible, too, in the book of Malachi. One could denounce politicians in Israel or in other countries for mistakenly believing that they are the messiah. But lumping in a hope for the coming of the messiah with homophobia and misogyny is just a sign of ignorance about — or contempt for — Judaism.

A demand of Fox and her fellow academics in the Elephant letter is that “leaders of North American Jewry” — such as scholars, rabbis, and educators — “commit to overhaul educational norms and curricula for Jewish children and youth in order to provide a more honest appraisal of Israel’s past and present.” No one is against honesty, but to hurl false charges of apartheid and ethnic cleansing while preaching the need for honesty is grotesque.

These sorts of things don’t just show up on the New York Times opinion page by accident. The Times editorial page has become a shtetl of anti-Zionist Jews. The editorial director of the Times opinion section, Allison Benedikt, is the author of a 2011 article, “Life After Zionist Summer Camp,” in which she described herself marrying her “Jew-hating fiancé.”

She went on. “We are now a united front against the organized Jewish community,” Benedikt wrote. “Most of my Jewish friends are disgusted with Israel.”

Another influential editor at the Times opinion section, Max Strasser, is a vocal public critic of the idea of a Jewish state.

It’s easy to see why the Times wants to dismantle Jewish summer camps.

Fox writes about how as a camper, “I cried from homesickness as an Israeli counselor consoled me until I fell asleep.” It takes a real New York Times nudnik to see that sort of summer experience as fanaticism-breeding ideological indoctrination in need of an overhaul.

Jewish summer camps are places where American Jews might interact with Israelis and know them as actual caring human individuals rather than as the racist ogres routinely depicted in antisemitic caricature by the New York Times and by American university professors (or by American university professors writing in the New York Times).

The best thing about one Jewish summer camp I know these days is that, unlike when I was a camper, the New York Times is no longer available for reading in the camp’s library.

Ira Stoll was managing editor of The Forward and North American editor of The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular Algemeiner feature, can be found here.