In my two previous posts I argued that the failure of the pro-Palestinian left to denounce Hamas’ attack on Israel as antisemitic would come back to haunt them. And, indeed, right wing opportunists, Trump most notably, have positioned themselves as ‘the true defenders of Israel’ and are calling critics of Israel antisemitic.
Make no mistake about it: using this weapon, the rightwing is succeeding at intimidating universities to retract fifty years of racial justice efforts, and there is a real danger that many Jews, who have always been a bedrock of the Democratic Party coalition, will realign and vote for Trump. Left-wing legislators, most notably Ilhan Omar and Jamaal Bowman, are facing well-funded challengers because of their opposition to Israel’s war.
We need a clear understanding on what is and what is not antisemitism in order to defend ourselves from this rightwing attack
There are three positions on the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. The first, held by the right wing of both the U.S. and Israel, is that any criticism of Israel, especially in the wake of October 7, is antisemitic. This position is simple: Israel is the home of the Jews, and any criticism of Israel is therefore an attack on Jews, i.e. it is antisemitic.
The second position, held by many on the left (including, of course, some Jews in the U.S. and in Israel), is that Israel is an illegitimate settler state that was founded by dispossessing Palestinians of their land, and denying their national self-determination. To many who believe this, all attacks on Israel, including Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israeli civilians, are justified, and are not antisemitic. (To be fair, many who believe Israel is an illegitimate state react defensively to this criticism and say they ‘mourn the deaths of innocent lives on all sides of the conflict.’ But this is not sufficient: the concrete question is whether they directly condemn Hamas.)
The third position (which is barely being heard now) is that criticism of Israel and/or Zionism is not by itself antisemitic, but that there can be antisemitic critiques of Israel and Jews in general. This position has been well articulated by the Nexus Task Force Statement on Antisemitism (LINK). Most importantly, this position maintains that it is antisemitic to lump all Jews together as collectively responsible for the state of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people. Or the flip side of the same coin: it is antisemitic to hold (as Trump did on March24) that any Jew that does not support Israel’s war is anti-Jewish.) Distinguishing a critique of Israel from a critique of Jewish people is important because Hamas failed to do so. It targeted Jewish civilians (including women, children and elders) on the grounds that all Israelis are culpable for Israel’s aggression against Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza. (Those of us who have bothered to pay attention to the biographies of those killed and captured by Hamas learned that several of the kibbutzim targeted by Hamas consisted of Jews who were among the strongest opponents of Netanyahu’s fanatic rightwing vision of Greater Israel.)
The problem of equating all Jews with the current rightwing version of Zionism is a grave error because it renders invisible those Jews both in Israel and in the diaspora who oppose Zionism as it exists today. Please remember that in 2023 Israel was literally torn to pieces by mostly Jewish protests against Netanyahu’s efforts to nullify important parts of the Israeli constitution. Indeed, it seems obvious to many observers that Netanyahu is waging the current Israeli war precisely to shore up support for his rightwing Zionist regime that was on the verge of collapse before October 7.
The problem with equating all Jews with modern Zionism is that it also cannot appreciate the significance of Senator Schumer’s speech denouncing Netanyahu and calling for regime change. Chuck Schumer built his entire political career on support for Zionism, but that Zionism is now gone. The left must learn how to make a popular front against rightwing Zionism that includes the Schumers of the world who are mourning the loss of their version of Zionism. Whatever one thinks of Israeli policies before 2018 (the year the Nation-State Law declared Israel to be a Jewish nation), the Zionism of the far right that now runs Israel is a far cry from that of the Zionists actively seeking a two-state solution, or the early Zionists willing to live in a secular, non-religious country on equal footing with Palestinians and other Muslims and Christians.
It is essential to understand that Netanyahu is trying to not only destroy Palestine but also to destroy earlier concepts of Israel/Zionism. Indeed, I would argue that the rightwing coup that produced Netanyahu and Israel’s genocidal war is pursuing a path that may well lead to the destruction not only of previous ideas of Zionism, but of Israel itself. But this is a topic for another day….
The critique of Zionism as it now exists is not antisemitic. The new extremist rightwing Zionism seeks to destroy Palestine and make claim to Gaza and the West Bank as part of Greater Israel (with future claims on Lebanon and Jordan certainly in the works). It is incumbent on the entire world to isolate and destroy this extremist regime. And, as the March 25 UN Security Council vote for an immediate cease fire (without a U.S. veto) shows, Israel is well on the way to becoming an international pariah.
The only claim to legitimacy that is propping up this regime is its claim that it is standing up to antisemitism. The clearer we become about what is and is not antisemitism, the more effective we will become on defending democracy against the rightwing of both Israel and the United States.
The long view 