It’s Not ‘Anti-Zionism.’ You Just Hate Jews
Many on the Left claim that their bigotry isn't really against Jews, just against Israel. They claim to be anti-Zionist, but that's nonsense. They just hate the Jews.
In light of the war between Hamas and Israel, the world’s oldest hatred has resurfaced with a vengeance. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in the West exemplified by anti-Jewish protests on college campuses across America and vandalism targeting Holocaust memorials across Europe.
When confronted with their despicable bigotry, the culprits will always chant the same refrain: “It’s not anti-Semitism. It’s anti-Zionism.” They argue they don’t hate all Jews, just Israel. They decry the “settler-colonial” “genocidal” Jewish state and argue that all Palestinians want is, in the words of Briahana Joy Gray, “ending an ethno-nationalist state and having a state more like what we have in the United States of America."
That claim is total bullshit. While it is entirely possible to be critical of Israeli policy or leadership, that is not what these people are doing.
Consider one of the most popular chants heard at these protests. When marchers cry “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” they are calling for the total destruction of Israel and the death of all Jews living in its borders.
That river in question is the Jordan River which sits on Israel’s eastern border with Jordan and Syria while the sea refers to the Mediterranean Sea on the western border. A “free” Palestine implicitly requires the entirety of Israel to disappear. Given the fate of the Jews in Arab majority states around the Middle East, this would be enacted through mass violence.
Pardon me, I mean “resistance.” After all, “violence is not a violation of international law” according to our totally not anti-Semitic experts if it’s vaguely defined as resistance.
But then please explain to me how it’s not anti-Semitism to involve Jews totally unrelated to what is happening in Israel in your protests? Last week, a group of so-called pro-Palestine supporters stood outside of Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles and tried to block the entrance.
Things quickly devolved into violence, as events including radical leftists often do, and had to be broken up by LAPD. President Biden even weighed in, writing on X that he was “appalled” and that “intimidating Jewish congregants is dangerous, unconscionable, anti-Semitic, and un-American.”
So it’s anti-Zionism to harass Jews at temple in America now? I dunno, that seems a lot more like brownshirt behavior than resistance to me.
Oh but it wasn’t to protest the Jews, Salon argues. It was to protest a real-estate group selling land in Israel! I suppose that justifies the violence and the anti-Semitic chants then. Remember, all things are permitted if you say it’s resistance.
The anti-Semititism has gotten to the point where even implying Jews would be welcome at an event is met with vitriol. In a hilarious example of infighting, NYC’s Dyke March had to walk back a statement saying Jews would be welcome at the event after a number of pro-terrorist accounts accused them of supporting genocide.
“The NYC Dyke March statement equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and denouncing the heroic Oct. 7 operation is a liberal Zionist position, contradicting the Thawabit,” claimed one account. “False claims of antisemitism shield Israel from accountability.”
The Thawabit is a series of statements that define the Palestinian cause against Israel. These statements include: the right to resistance, the right to self-determination, Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, and
the right of return. Allowing Jews at an event somehow contradicts these principles, insane as they are.
I’m really struggling to see how this isn’t just blatant anti-Semitism.
Besides, the results of all this “anti-Zionism” sure make it seem like the West is descending into 1940s style Germany. In France, the disgusting rape of 12-year-old Jewish girl by attackers who “forced her to have anal and vaginal penetration, fellatio, while uttering death threats and anti-Semitic remarks” sparked a national reckoning that had both French president Emmanuel Macron and opposition leader Marine Le Pen on the same page over condemning anti-Semitism.
Back in California, L.A. District Attorney George Gascón condemned “the escalating wave of antisemitic attacks against the Jewish community” following an assault on a Jewish couple following a Shabbat service.
If we should know what these “anti-Zionists” are by their fruit, then this whole movement is a rotten cesspool of Jew hatred.
And that’s the truth of it. It’s not about Palestine, it’s not even about Israel. It’s about hating on Jews. It’s a rot that has existed since time immemorial and has been given a new coat of paint to fit with the modern era. It’s obvious when you examine the behavior of so many who claim to just be against Israel and not against Jews that they’re lying.
Giving any credence to the lie of anti-Zionism is allowing that ancient evil to gain a foothold. It must be opposed in all forms, from BDS to despicable attacks on Jewish places of worship.
And to those who continue to peddle anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism lie, cut the crap. We know who you are. We see the truth. And we say, never again.