Israel should not be exception to critical thinking
On too many college campuses, the verdict on Israel still precedes the trial.
At lectures, at protests and on social media, students hear that Israel is a colonial project, practices apartheid and is committing genocide. These words carry enormous moral weight; two also have precise legal definitions. Yet the claims are repeated before anyone asks: What does the term mean? What facts would establish it? What evidence points the other way?
Universities cannot claim to teach critical thinking while exempting accusations against Israel from proof. As faculty finalize spring syllabi, they should consider assigning “Israel on Trial: Examining the History, the Evidence, and the Law” by Judge Roy K. Altman.
Altman, a federal judge in Florida, treats each common accusation against Israel as a charge that must be proved. He defines the claim, identifies the facts needed to support it, and weighs sources, corroboration and contrary evidence against the governing standard.
Because colonialism is chiefly a historical claim, he tests it against historical records, archaeology and genetic evidence. Because apartheid and genocide are legal claims, he examines the elements international law requires.
Altman concludes that the charges do not survive examination. I agree. But the book’s classroom value does not depend on agreeing with him. Its most important audience is students who have heard the accusations but have never been shown how to test them.
This is about accountability to evidence, not deference to a judge. Students should inspect Altman’s sources, challenge his reasoning and seek out the strongest opposing arguments. Discomfort with a book is not a rebuttal.
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The distinction between accusation and proof matters especially in law. In my “The Law and the Holocaust” course, students trace what happened when false accounts of a people moved from rumor into official institutions. Some stereotypes were codified directly; others generated prosecutions and judgments. Either way, the legal system lent the accusation institutional authority, which could then be mistaken for proof.
Today, the vocabulary of law can do similar work. Students hear of a “genocide case” against Israel and assume genocide has been judicially established. It has not. When the International Court of Justice issued provisional measures in January 2024, it found that the rights South Africa asserted on behalf of Palestinians under the Genocide Convention were plausible — not that genocide was plausibly occurring.
Joan Donoghue, then the court’s president, later said publicly that this was a common misreading. Yet “plausibly genocidal” became the shorthand. Likewise, students hear Israel called an “apartheid state” and mistake an accumulation of assertions for a completed legal analysis.
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That is why Altman’s book belongs in law schools. An international law course can set the political use of “apartheid” and “genocide” beside the elements of the legal claims. An evidence course can test source reliability, corroboration and inference.
The book should be taught as a demanding legal challenge, not an answer key. Students who reject Altman’s conclusions should be able to identify precisely which definition, source or inference fails. A lawyer cannot announce, “This is genocide,” and treat the announcement as the analysis.
Undergraduates would benefit, too, in courses on Middle Eastern history, human rights and colonialism, and in first-year seminars on media literacy.
Colleges often invoke critical thinking in the abstract. The debate over Israel is a concrete test.
Can students hear a grave accusation from peers, online or from a professor — and still ask for the evidence? Can they scrutinize a position they already favor? That standard applies to arguments defending Israel, too.
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This is a familiar ideal in Jewish learning. In the beit midrash, the best chevruta partner is the one who pushes back hardest. Pirkei Avot teaches that a machloket l’shem shamayim, a dispute for the sake of heaven, will endure. Jewish tradition has never shied from argument; it insists only that the argument be honest and that both sides answer to the text.
Our legal system rests on a similar insight: Truth is likely to emerge when the strongest case on each side is tested against the other. Parents, alumni, trustees and faculty can ask universities to bring that ethic to the Israel debate: Assign the evidence, invite rebuttals and let students weigh them.
Students may finish the book persuaded, unconvinced or somewhere in between. They should not finish where too many began: with a verdict they never tested. For law students, learning to reason like a lawyer requires the courage to ask, even when the whole room seems certain: “But is it true?”
Andrea J. Martin, co-founder and director of the Center for Jewish Legal Studies, teaches “The Law and the Holocaust” at Penn State Dickinson Law.
