“Their Chaos is Our Peace”: Fighting Zionist Repression in Texas and Beyond

Last month, on March 24, Idris Robinson, a philosophy professor at Texas State University, filed a lawsuit against the university for wrongful termination and for violating his right to free speech. The University had decided not to renew Robinson’s tenure-track contract – despite his stellar academic reviews – after Zionists pressured the school. The Zionists were playing the same broken record: Robinson was “antisemitic,” and a glorifier of “terrorism,” for supporting the Palestinian liberation struggle.

Robinson became a target after giving a talk entitled “Strategic Lessons from the Palestinian resistance” at a public library in Asheville, NC on June 29, 2024 (as part of an anarchist book fair). While Robinson spoke, a confrontation started between Zionist agitators, who came to film the event, and some audience members. It later turned into a scuffle. Robinson wasn’t present for the scuffle (he had been escorted from the room, as noted in the lawsuit). He also did not speak at the event as a Texas State employee. Yet one year later, Zionist agitators managed to spin a narrative and get Robinson fired. As we will see, a closer look at the evidence – including newly released security camera footage – shows that they were the real aggressors.

Robinson’s story fits into a sadly familiar pattern of people losing their academic jobs over Palestine. Faculty members at several universities have been fired, suspended, or pushed out for supporting Palestinian liberation, including Steven Salaita at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2014), Maura Finkelstein at Muhlenberg College (2024), Jodi Dean at Hobart and William Smith Colleges (2024), Jairo Fúnez-Flores at Texas Tech University (2024), Lara Sheehi at George Washington University (2024), Eric Cheyfitz at Cornell University (2025), and Sang Hea Kil at San José State University (2025), among others. Students, who are often in a more precarious position than faculty, have also been expelled, censured, and in some instances kidnapped and jailed by ICE. All these cases are strikingly similar, with university administrators eagerly punishing those who challenge Zionism (or leaving them to be punished by other authorities).

Taken together, these cases are about much more than fighting censorship. They are also a test of whether our own networks of solidarity can support those facing repression. The systematic nature of the repression should also make us rethink the usual defenses of targeted individuals based on liberal ideals of free speech and “academic freedom.” As colonial and white supremacist institutions, universities were never meant to allow inquiry that is aligned with liberation. Anticolonial speech has always had a cost, and some are paying it.

A Scuffle at the Library

Idris Robinson is a philosopher whose work is informed by, and meant to enhance, liberation struggles. Since 2022 he has been teaching at Texas State University (where he is the only Black philosophy professor). Robinson’s talk in Asheville focused on lessons to be learned from the achievements of the Palestinian resistance. This discussion took place at the height of a still-ongoing genocide in Gaza, as Palestinian fighters resisted the Israeli army with bravery and tactical brilliance.

As Robinson spoke, audience members identified three Zionist agitators (two of whom are Jewish) who were filming the event. The audience confronted them, and a scuffle broke out. The crowd moved from the library conference room to the hallway and eventually outside. Robinson left the room before things escalated, and none of those present witnessed him participating in any physical confrontation.

The Asheville incident has been widely framed as a violent “antisemitic” attack. The Anti-Defamation League, a Zionist counterinsurgency organization, included the incident in its bogus “antisemitism map” with the description: “Jewish individuals were harassed and assaulted at an anti-Israel event at a library.” Multiple media outlets also incorrectly reported that one of the Zionist agitators is a “Holocaust survivor” (one of the Zionists, David Moritz, only claims that his father was a survivor). The Zionist Organization of America declared that the whole anarchist book fair was “antisemitic.”

Asheville Police pursued charges of “ethnic intimidation” against some of the event attendees. Given the unfavorable political climate and draconian legal system, four attendees ended up pleading guilty to assault – a fact paraded by Fox News and other right-wing media. All this helped create the false narrative that the Zionists were the victims.

Playing the Victim While Being the Aggressor

The Asheville incident is a good example of Zionists playing the victims while being the aggressors. The three Zionist agitators in the library – David Moritz, Monica Buckley, and David Campbell – are well-known in Asheville for their racist provocations. A report about the library event from the Asheville Blade details their “long records of open bigotry and harassment.”

Moritz, a real estate investor who is currently running for Asheville City Council, has been spreading anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda that would have made the editors of Der Stürmer proud. Buckley, a realtor and yoga instructor, has spread her Zionist message in Asheville City Hall, and her social media is similarly filled with racist content. She openly supports the US-reboot of Betar – a Zionist terrorist group historically inspired by Mussolini’s fascist militias – which recently has been stalking Palestinian organizers and calling for “blood in Gaza.” The third agitator, Campbell, is a Christian Zionist who describes himself as a “MAGA extremist.” On social media, he posts racist, homophobic, and anti-trans content, along with pictures of himself with armed Zionist Americans and Israeli soldiers.

These agitators have a history of going to public spaces looking for a fight. Moritz has taunted students in the Gaza solidarity encampments at both UNCA and UCLA (at UCLA he was caught on camera putting his hands on the neck of a university security guard). Buckley is known to get into people’s faces and then play the victim; one Asheville resident summarized her behavior at protests: “Monica [Buckley] gets as close as possible with a sign or a flag in your face…If you move the flag, they start screaming assault.”

At the Asheville library, Moritz and Buckley were violent and even bragged about it.

Security camera footage from that day shows Moritz kicking a person, unprovoked. His kick sent the person flying, falling to the ground on their back. Moritz was so proud of himself that he uploaded a video of his kick, on repeat, to social media (with the title “Jews Fight Back,” which is the slogan of Betar). Moritz was also captured on camera kicking a second person, outside the library, as event attendees were attempting to responsibly escort the agitator out to prevent further escalation. Again unprovoked, Moritz kicks – yet even after this second kick, no one in the footage hits Moritz back.

Like Moritz, Buckley has also boasted on social media about her violence at the library event. In one Instagram video (which she has since deleted) Buckley claims that someone took her phone and says, “So I jumped her, to get my phone back.” Buckley alleges that she was then surrounded by violent audience members and adds, “I held on and I fought hard and I didn’t stop fighting the whole time, and those little fuckers can fuck off.”

All this information has been either ignored by mainstream media or somehow twisted to fit the agitators’ narrative. Knowing that corporate media will cherry-pick in their favor, Moritz and Buckley also posted videos where they present themselves as “peaceful,” innocent attendees who were victimized by an “antisemitic mob.” In one joint video posted on Buckley’s Instagram page, Moritz even declares that anti-Zionism “is worse than antisemitism, it is genocidal antisemitism.”

Texas State University Sides with the Zionists

For an entire year, the summer 2024 Asheville incident was of no concern to Texas State University (TXST). Idris Robinson was teaching at the University as usual, in good standing with colleagues. In an internal review, the chair of the philosophy department commented that “Idris is making excellent progress on the tenure-track.”

But on June 5, 2025, David Moritz wrote an Instagram post smearing Robinson in connection to Asheville – saying he “glorifies terrorism” and incites violence – and identifying him as a TXST professor. The post listed the contact information for TXST President Kelly Damphousse and encouraged people to act. The following day, Robinson was informed that he had been placed on “administrative leave.” The University did not give specific reasons, only mentioning “multiple complaints and allegations” concerning the summer 2024 event.

It is worth dwelling on this sequence. A random real estate schmuck in North Carolina posts something on the internet, and the next day a brilliant philosopher in Texas is suspended from the job. What exactly happened behind the scenes, of course, remains unclear. (TXST has so far not complied with a public information request for material regarding Robinson’s termination, explaining that given the lawsuit, “the University will seek to withhold any [relevant] information.”) But what’s clear is that unlike in some other cases of Palestine-related firings, there was no public campaign against Robinson by major Zionist organizations. All it took, apparently, was a social media post.

This level of precarity should not be surprising given how the University operates. Tom Alter, a tenured history professor, was fired by TXST in September 2025 after a fascist influencer smeared him on social media for things said in an off-campus talk. TXST was forced to reinstate Alter after a judge’s injunction, but did not allow him to teach, and soon fired him again. In the same month, TXST effectively expelled Devion Canty Jr., a Black undergraduate student who mocked the death of white supremacist Charlie Kirk near a Turning Point USA memorial on campus.

All these decisions were overseen by TXST President Damphousse. Damphousse studied “law enforcement” and as a young man had aspired to become a police officer, before settling for a job as a prison guard. In his academic research on “terrorism,” funded in part by the Department of Homeland Security, Damphousse compares “left-wing terrorism” (in which he includes Puerto Rican independence activists, environmental activists, and Black liberation activists) to “right-wing terrorism” – all in hopes of improving counterinsurgency strategies. Could such a person be expected to defend employees and students who challenge capitalism, US imperialism, and white supremacy?

And given that US universities are deeply invested in the genocide – through partnerships, endowments, and a shared US-Israeli imperialist agenda – why would their administrations defend those who get in the way?

“Our Collective Has to Catch Us”

Many are outraged by the repression on campus. Students, faculty, and staff at Texas State have expressed solidarity with Idris Robinson and Tom Alter. At March 2026 campus protests, signs read “Justice for Idris & Tom.” The local employees’ union (TSEU CWA 6186) condemned the firings of both professors as well as the forced withdrawal of Canty. A union spokesperson noted that Robinson’s case “is nearly identical to Tom Alter’s and shows once again that Texas State University President Kelly Damphousse would rather cede to political pressure than defend faculty.”

Eric Cheyfitz, a tenured Cornell University professor who was suspended in 2025 over Palestine, argued that labor power is key to fighting back in cases like Robinson’s. “The only way to stop anything is general strikes,” Cheyfitz said. “If we strike whenever they do this to one of us, that would change the face of things, because the university couldn’t hire scab labor like you do in an auto factory. If faculty had the courage to organize and walk out, that would have made a difference.”

Maura Finkelstein, a Jewish anti-Zionist anthropologist who was fired from her tenured position at Muhlenberg College in 2024, also emphasized the need to organize against this systematic repression. She considers Robinson’s case to be essentially identical to her own and to all other Palestine-related firings. “All of these stories are the same,” Finkelstein said, “and I think it’s really important to refuse to be scared by the particulars.” In every case, the university – a paradigmatic liberal institution – readily disposed of those who went against the dominant, genocidal agenda. In every case, we saw that if you scratch a liberal, a fascist bleeds. This is why Finkelstein wishes for networks of support that can nourish our movements without being dependent on such institutions.

“We have to take risks,” Finkelstein said, “and then our collective has to catch us.” Losing a job in the US means losing health insurance, she explained, and this is obviously designed to keep people in line. To truly “catch” people would mean collectively ensuring they have what they need after getting fired; it must go beyond individual fundraisers to cover legal fees. We must also address the fact that those who have been fired over Palestine usually cannot get rehired in the US, no matter how much they had been wronged by their employers.

Building collective support that enables risk-taking is urgent. In his recent book The Revolt Eclipses Whatever the World Has to Offer (2025), Robinson describes the US as on a trajectory toward another civil war. Tension with fascist forces is mounting; those forces use all means available in their assaults, and they have control of the major institutions. Appealing to such institutions for help will not fix our problems nor stop the US-backed genocide. Robinson gives us a better way to relate to these institutions: “their chaos is our peace, their confusion is our sanity…”

Relevant fundraisers:

– Idris Robinson (sign petition)

– Tom Alter

– Devion Canty Jr.

– Sameer Project and lifeline4gaza

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