JEW GOOD. ZIONIST BAD.

HOW TODAY’S ARBITRARY LOVE/HATE APPROACH TO JEWS FITS CENTURIES OF ATTITUDES.

Well this comes as a shock.

There is an absolutely explicit position on the left today that it is perfectly fine to be a Jew, as long as you prove yourself to be anti-Zionist.

This dovetails with a long history of random determinations by others that Jews would be accepted if they would just not exhibit the traits that set non-Jews into murderous frenzies.

Victim-blaming plays a role in every form of racism. But in antisemitism, it is a core characteristic. There is almost always an assumption, even among antiracist people, that there must be something about Jews that brings out the worst in others. People who decry the revolting idea that her “provocative” attire led to a woman’s rape seem quite comfortable with the idea that Jewish characteristics lead to antisemitism. If antisemitism has been rampant for millennia, goes the logic, there must be something to it. For a bigotry to be this ubiquitous, the victims must bring it on themselves.

Let’s illustrate both the offensiveness of this approach and its irrationality. Women have been oppressed across every century and society. Do they deserve it? Queer people (by whatever term we used in different times and places) have been oppressed and killed. Do our core identities justify this treatment? Or is the problem with the perpetrators? In almost every other case, we accept that racism and hatred are the fault of the racist and the hater, not the victim. With antisemitism, our default, very often, is: What did those people do to make an entire society turn on them like that?

Only in the case of Jews do people ostensibly of goodwill overwhelmingly blame the victims for their experiences with discrimination.

The manifestation of this phenomenon is most visible today in the false dichotomy between “Jew” and “Zionist.”

For the vast majority of Jews, Zionism is an inherent part of their identity. A survey this year indicated that 91% of Canadian Jews are Zionists, with 70% saying they are “very” or “somewhat” emotionally attached to Israel. So next time some activist group trots out their token Jew, remember that they represent (according to this same survey) 3% of Canadian Jews, and probably a similar number of Jews in other countries. (Six percent of Canadian Jews answered “Don’t know” to the question ‘“Do you agree or disagree that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state?” So much for “Two Jews, three opinions.”)

Let me just note here that the tidy differentiation between “Jew” and “Zionist” that Western activists meticulously make is almost unknown in other parts of the world. The invaders of October 7 came to kill Jews, not Zionists. For them, there is no difference.

Let’s also remember that opposition to Israel is premised on a litany of red herrings — “occupation,” “settlements,” “refugees” blah blah blah. But anti-Zionism was the unanimous position of the entire Arab world in 1948, before any of these issues existed. Anti-Zionism was premised then — and is largely premised now — on the idea that Jewish people have no right to national self-determination in their indigenous homeland. The tidy differentiation between anti-Zionism and antisemitism was then — and is now — pretty much nonexistent across the Arab and Muslim worlds.

The idea that Jews would be welcome in the salons of today’s left as long as they renounce their people’s right to national self-determination comports with centuries of empty promises.

Antisemites have always promised Jews that they would be safe and accepted if only they renounced some or all aspects of their core identity. The expulsions from Iberia were preceded by assurances that, if Jews converted to Catholicism, they would be fine. They weren’t, of course.

The Enlightenment idea that, if Jews would give up their religion, they could exist safely as people just like everyone else. Some did — and that only worked for a short time, if at all. The “race science” of the 19th century made short work of that inclusive idea, recasting Jewishness as an inherent racial (and, of course, inferior) identity from which conversion could not cleanse Jews of their inherent identities.

Jews have heard all this before. If you would just renounce the thing that we have arbitrarily decided we don’t like about you, we’ll let you be.

It never works.

Today, the world has decided that Israel, the Jewish state, is the essence of evil. This makes about as much sense as the old accusations that Jews poison the water supply and consume the blood of Christian babies.

I mean, sure, criticize a country’s policies or whatever. But if you make the case that Israel ranks anywhere near the top of the list of countries that deserve censure — sorry, but you really don’t have the intellectual legitimacy to engage in this dialogue.

And yet, the idea that Israel is the embodiment of contemporary human evil is the foundational premise of much of the left today. And the vast majority of correct-thinking progressives experience no cognitive dissonance when called out for making a false dichotomy between “Jew” and “Zionist.”

Zionism is a core characteristic of almost every Jew. This should be obvious. Almost every Canadian thinks Canada should exist. Almost every Belgian thinks Belgium should exist. This is almost certainly true even of countries with truly atrocious governments. Probably very few Russians, whatever their politics, think Russia should not exist.

Today, it is not considered polite to express hatred for Jews — or, at least, it wasn’t a year-and-a-half ago. But railing against the Jewish state as the very embodiment of evil, as the manifestation of the worst forms of inhumanity, is not only acceptable, but a price of admission to the A-List of the left.

To point out the obvious anti-Jewish racism at play here invites reflected accusations of racism on oneself, the best defense being, of course, an offence. Point out the obvious racism of supporting every form of national self-determination except the Jewish kind and expect to be bombarded by associations with the capital crimes of “apartheid,” “settler-colonialism” and the progressive movement’s door crasher special du jour, “genocide.”

Today, the world tells Jews to stop being who they are — a people who, among other things, are deserving of national self-determination — ensuring them that Zionism is the only problem we have with them.

But condemning Jews for being Zionists is like condemning the ocean for being wet.

There is a serious danger in making this case. Racists may conclude that, if all Jews are Zionists, then firebombing a synagogue in Vancouver is entirely justified. Of course, violent, deranged people will find justification for whatever they want to do. What we need to take from this discussion is not that anti-Zionism is a legitimate “political” position, but that it is an illegitimate “racist” position. Firebombing a synagogue is never justified, whether the motivation is antisemitism or anti-Zionism. This should not be difficult to understand.

Generations after generations have invented “good” reasons to hate Jews. Today’s reason is Israel. Fancy that up any way you want, but it doesn’t make ther underlying problem any less true. The Zionism litmus test for dividing Jews into “good Jew” / “bad Jew” groupings is a very old form of selection.

When push comes to shove, anyone with a sense of history knows that, when arbitrary categorizations like these are applied, there will be, in the end, no good Jews. Because this process is not a legitimate effort to differentiate the acceptable type of Jew from the unacceptable, but a waystation on the road to annihilationist racism. They’ll come for the low-hanging fruit of “bad Jews” today but that merely clears the way for Phase 2, when they come for the “good Jews.”