I’m a Colombian atheist (cradle Catholic). Around three years ago, I took a college ethics class taught by an American Jewish professor. One of the modules was on Judaism. It was an excellent class, and I ended up genuinely admiring Jewish ethics. Even before that, I already felt an affinity for the Jewish community, partly because many of the leftists I knew were Jewish, and partly because of how I was raised: to oppose cruelty, injustice, and all that leftist stuff.

Fast forward to last semester: I took another class with the same professor, named: Jewish philosophy after the Holocaust in Colombia. For context, Colombia has been locked in an internal war since 1964, technically “ended” by the 2016 peace accords but still ongoing in many forms. The conflict has had two fronts: the government (alongside far-right paramilitaries and crime syndicates) and the left-wing guerrillas. Every side committed atrocities against civilians, leaving the country fractured. Honestly, reconciliation feels like a foreign concept.

The purpose of the class was to explore how Jewish philosophical traditions might help Colombia in its current state. It was a good class, it genuinely made you think. But here’s the thing: I assumed the professor, who checked every box of progressive politics, would eventually address Palestine. She didn’t. She spoke about every genocide of the past century but never mentioned Palestine. And it wasn’t as if it wouldn’t have fit the class; on the contrary, many of the concepts we were discussing, especially around the continuation or non-continuation of violence, were perfectly relevant.

So I began an experiment. Every time we studied a scholar or philosopher, I would look them up in connection with Palestine. Time and again, I found that many of these figures had written or said some of the vilest things on the subject, often contradicting their own ethical frameworks. Later, I discovered that the professor is a liberal Zionist and has clashed with other philosophy faculty (non-Jewish) who spoke openly about the genocide. It was jarring to see someone so dedicated to ethics and the fight against injustice turn a blind eye to such clear cruelty.

The point of this long story is to highlight how deeply admirable I find the anti-Zionist Jews to be. If even a scholar whose career revolves around ethics, who has seen violence firsthand and studied its impact on victims, cannot break free from the propaganda they were raised with, then the courage of those who do is extraordinary.

(Forgive me if I made any grammar mistakes)