ANTISEMITISM AND ANTI-ZIONISM: 15 THINGS TO CONSIDER

People with empathy might ponder these things next time they dismiss Jewish concerns.

There’s an elephant in the room.

There is an elephant in the room and we need to address it. It’s the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

I’ve already tried to make a case that addresses the “yes” or “no” reply to the question of whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Here, I try to move past that binary and simply ask you to consider 15 things next time you are tempted to dismiss the idea that the incendiary attacks we are hearing against Israel right now have any relation to centuries of ideas about Jews.

I am not Jewish. So, on the one hand, should I be the one defining the problem and offering solutions? On the other hand, why is it always left to Jewish people to make this case? It’s time for allies to stand up.

Here are my 15 things to consider about antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

1. Stop saying “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.” This is a deeply problematic statement. The idea that Jewish people and their allies scream “Antisemitism!” when confronted with anti-Zionism is a deflection and a projection. The statement “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism” is used to avoid confronting the possible (in fact, undeniable) presence of antisemitism in the anti-Zionist movement. They accuse Jews and their allies of deflecting real concerns about Israel by crying antisemitism. It is they, though, who deflect real concerns about antisemitism by cry-bullying about Zionists “silencing” them.

2. Start acting like antiracists. Stop acting like racists. We might expect this behavior from right-wing extremists, who deny the presence of racism and dismiss invitations to self-examination. But it’s (mostly) not coming from those people. This atrocious deflection is coming overwhelmingly from progressive, self-declared antiracism activists who, when faced with the remotest suggestion that they might be exhibiting any form of prejudice, always respond respectfully and engage in introspection. Except when it comes to Jews and antisemitism. Instead, not only will they not engage in self-reflection in this sole instance, they double down and accuse Jewish people of manipulating their experiences with prejudice to “silence” criticism of Israel. In other words, they invoke antisemitic ideas of Jewish deviousness to avoid addressing their own antisemitism. This is obviously among the most unprogressive responses imaginable.

3. Be clear on nomenclature. Anti-Zionism is not “criticism of Israel.” Anti-Zionism is the idea that Jewish people do not have the right to self-determination. It is a call for the eradication of the state of Israel. The (very different) statement “criticism of Israel is not antisemitic” is probably fair (though it depends on the language and imagery we use and on our motivations). But anti-Zionism means something very specific. And if Jewish people are the only people whose right to self-determination we oppose — indeed, if the only country in the world we seek to eradicate is the Jewish one — well, excuse me for concluding the blatantly obvious.

4. Understand your biases. We might conclude that we do not “hate” Jews, therefore we are not “antisemitic.” The terminology is problematic, I admit that. The prefix “anti-” suggests active antipathy. That exists, but it is probably not the most significant factor here. We are not suggesting that people hate Jews, therefore they hate Israel. That’s not how this works. What is happening is that we hear allegations against Israel that dovetail with prejudices about Jews that have been handed down to us through generations of Western civilization and we are predisposed to believe them. The most obvious example is the idea that Israelis steal Arab land. The fact is that Israel has given away proportionately more land in peacetime than any country in human history. Israel abandoned the Sinai Peninsula — giving up 75% of its landmass and its only hope for oil self-sufficiency — in the faint hope of a cold peace within Egypt. Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza in 2005. Israel offered the Palestinian Authority control over the West Bank through the Oslo Process — and Yasser Arafat overthrew the negotiating table and launched the Second Intifada. Despite all the evidence, much of the world still adheres to a false narrative that Israelis (that is, Jews) take what is not theirs. How does this happen? Inherent prejudices and confirmation bias. We encounter allegations that Israel is taking stuff from Arabs and we hear echoes of our grandparents’ warnings about “those people” and their greed. There are scores of examples like these, in which accusations against Israel dovetail with received prejudices about Jews — and the soils tilled by generations of anti-Jewish bias allow anti-Israel allegations (some with a seed of truth, some completely fabricated) to flourish.

5. You’re criticizing Israel. Your words are heard by Jews. The defense that most “pro-Palestinian” activists make today is that they are not criticizing Jews, just Israel. This is profoundly naïve and disingenuous. Here’s why: There are about 15 million Jews in the world. About half live in Israel. It is simply not sustainable to think that decent, empathetic people could condemn in the most violent, hateful terms possible the one Jewish country in the world, home to half the world’s Jewish people, with no emotional impact whatsoever on the other half of the Jewish people. Outcome matters more than intent. You may heap hatred on Israel but Israelis don’t hear it. The Jews who live here do. And they know what antisemitism-fueled discourse looks like, even if you don’t.

6. Understand Jews’ connections to Israel. Regardless of the sheer numerical importance of Israel, almost every Jewish person in the world has a deep personal, familial, spiritual, religious, historical and/or cultural connection to the land of Israel. Any expression whatsoever that diminishes or dismisses that connection — and such expressions are ubiquitous in the “pro-Palestinian” movement — is an absolute abrogation of the core identity of almost every Jew in the world. Is that antisemitism? Really, who cares what we call it?

7. Act in good faith. The Holocaust is a huge issue (and a huge problem) in this dialogue. If your reaction to even bringing up this history is to roll your eyes, sigh or in any other way dismiss this as absolutely central, you lack the empathy and good faith to be engaged in this discussion.

8. Know your history. The relationship between the Holocaust, Israel and Zionism is complex. I cannot possibly do it justice in this brief space. But the least you need to know is this: the Holocaust happened because of the Nazis, yes. But it was allowed to occur, in the scope that it did, killing more than one-third of the Jewish people in the world, because every other country outside of Germany was complicit. At the Evian Conference of 1938, the entire “civilized world” voted as one to reject sanctuary to the imperiled Jews of Europe. Democratic countries, led by the United States, but enthusiastically endorsed by Canada, Australia and every free European country, refused to take any Jewish refugees. The Holocaust happened because the entire world turned their back on the Jews. The existence of Israel is the Jewish people’s answer not only to the Holocaust, but to the Evian Conference. It is the recognition that Jews can count on nobody but themselves at the most existential moment. If you don’t get that, you get nothing.

9. Know the centrality of Israel. Because of this, the appealing, naïve, preposterous idea of a “one-state solution” (which is, to be extremely generous, the least genocidal interpretation of the phrase “From the river to the sea”) denies the core reason Israel exists: So that, no matter what, there will always be one country in the world whose immigration policy welcomes endangered Jews.

10. Recognize the right to Jewish self-determination. All of these (entirely legitimate) arguments for Israel’s right to exist are (or, at least, should be) irrelevant. The Jewish people have a right to national self-determination. If you think that the Palestinian people have a right to national self-determination, but Jewish people do not, you need to take a deep look into yourself and your biases.

11. Don’t (mis)define Jews. If, however, you buy into the argument that Jewish people do not deserve self-determination because they are a “religion” rather than a “race,” you lack the knowledge to be engaged in this discussion. Judaism is a religion. But Jewishness is something broader, with Judaism at its core. Jews are a people, an ethnocultural group, a nation. Yes, Jewishness is different than how most other identities are constituted. But the fact that you do not understand the nuances of what makes a Jew a Jew, or who the Jewish people are, does not justify abrogating their right to national self-determination. Why should Jewish people suffer for your ignorance?

12. Understand that Jews are deeply invested in Israel. Another Holocaust related point: as the magnitude of the Shoah slowly dawned on Jewish (and non-Jewish) people, in the years after 1945, it would have been completely understandable for the surviving Jews in the world to have plummeted into an unprecedented collective depression, to have given up all hope of redemption or belief in the humanity of their fellow beings. Instead, in ways that dumbfound me as a non-Jew and a student of history, the Jewish people engaged in what is one of history’s most profoundly inspiring and redeeming experiments in rebirth and renewal. Whether they chose to move to Israel or not, whether they signed up as foreign volunteers to defend Israel when it was attacked by its combined neighbors at the moment of its birth, whether they sold the family silver and sent the money the new state, whatever they did, almost every single Jew in the world took hope and invested their emotional, spiritual and financial resources into building the Jewish state. That personal and familial connection remains — even among Jews who have never set foot in Israel. This is what you spit on when you spit on Israel.

13. Israel as a testament to the past and a guarantee of the future. Political Zionism was invented in the 19th century, but after the Holocaust, it became an almost universal Jewish value, and the closest thing that could exist to an antidote to the Holocaust. Nothing — nothing — could undo what the Nazis did (with the complicity of the entire world). But the universal Jewish commitment to creating, building and sustaining the Jewish state is viewed by almost all Jews as both a tragically belated testament to the memory of those murdered (if Israel had existed 10 years earlier, six million might not have died) but also a promise to the future, the greatest fulfillment of the crucial words “Never again!”

14. Israel doesn’t guarantee Jewish survival. But it’s the best bet. This raises two additional questions: Does the existence of Israel guarantee the security of the Jewish people? October 7 said, clearly not, and that was only a reiteration of decades of genocidal attacks against the Jewish people in Israel by state actors and terrorist organizations. It is, nevertheless, the surest guarantee that Jews will never again lack a coordinated defense against those who seek their destruction.

15. Don’t be cavalier about genocide. The other question this raises may be (we know this from far-too-common statements): Isn’t it a bit paranoid to think that Jews could face another holocaust? Is this not evidence of a particularly Jewish “persecution complex”? If this idea so much as enters your mind as a legitimate argument, you lack both knowledge of the world and empathy for the Jewish experience. Plenty of voices have called, and continue to call, for the annihilation of the entire Jewish people — voices not only in the darkest recesses of the Internet, but from leading religious, political and social figures around the world, including the government of Iran, which is nearing the capability to eradicate at least half the Jewish people in the world with nuclear weapons. Even if there were no chance of a future genocide (there is, and your dismissal of the possibility is one of the reasons for your Jewish neighbors’ anxieties right now) the fears among Jewish people of a repetition of that unimaginable history is absolutely legitimate. How could it not be? Their grandparents thought they were integrated, welcome citizens in their “civilized” societies. Now the world is dogpiling in ways that have resonance for anyone with knowledge of that history.

It is impossible in this short space to thoroughly itemize the connections that Jewish people worldwide have with the people, land and state of Israel and that, by extension, help explain why the words you may intend as “only directed toward Israel” have impacts on Jews that many perceive as antisemitic. 

But that complexity, if nothing else, should encourage any person of goodwill to exercise some degree of humility and empathy when approaching this subject.