Monday, December 11, 2023
Elder of Ziyon
New York Times politics writer Jonathan Weisman wrote an interesting piece, "A Fraught Question for the Moment: Is Anti-Zionism Always Antisemitic?"
It is worth looking at the arguments against that proposition in more detail, since the arguments themselves reveal the deceptiveness of anti-Zionists.
First, he brings the argument saying the two are essentially the same. That argument is straightforward:
Zionism as a concept was once clearly understood: the belief that Jews, who have endured persecution for millenniums, needed refuge and self-determination in the land of their ancestors. The word still evokes joyful pride among many Jews in the state of Israel, which was established 75 years ago and repeatedly defended itself against attacks from Arab neighbors that aimed to annihilate it.If anti-Zionism a century ago meant opposing the international effort to set up a Jewish state in what was then a British-controlled territory called Palestine, it now suggests the elimination of Israel as the sovereign homeland of the Jews. That, many Jews in Israel and the diaspora say, is indistinguishable from hatred of Jews generally, or antisemitism.
[F]or some Jews, the answer to the question is obvious. Of course anti-Zionism is antisemitism, they say: Around half the world’s Jews live in Israel, and destroying it, or ending its status as a refuge where they are assured of governing themselves, would imperil a people who have faced annihilation time and again.
“There is no debate,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, which has been defining and monitoring antisemitism since 1913. “Anti-Zionism is predicated on one concept, the denial of rights to one people.”
The arguments against, on the other hand, all play word games.
Opposing the so-called "occupation" is not anti-Zionist to begin with. Plenty of Zionists hold that position. That is indeed valid criticism of Israeli policies. Laila al-Haddad is purposefully conflating legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Zionism, which is calling for the destruction of Israel. She then innocently claims that it is the former position that is being classified as antisemitic.Yet some critics of Israel say they equate Zionism with a continuing project of expanding the Jewish state. That effort animates an Israeli government bent on settling ever more parts of the West Bank that some Israelis, as well as the United States and other Western powers, had proposed as a separate state for the Palestinian people. Expanding those settlements, to Israel’s critics, conjures images of “settler colonialists” and apartheid-style oppressors.Laila el-Haddad, a Palestinian activist and author, called it “a chilling attempt to punish and silence voices critical of Israeli policies.”
Jonathan Jacoby, the director of the Nexus Task Force, a group of academics and Jewish activists affiliated with the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, said the group had wrestled with the issue for several years now, seeking a definition of antisemitism that captures when anti-Zionism crosses from political belief to bigotry. He warned that shouting down any political action directed against Israel as antisemitic made it harder for Jews to call out actual antisemitism, while stifling honest conversation about Israel’s government and U.S. policy toward it.
Again, this is a straw man argument. Just because some Jews say that some valid criticism of Israel is antisemitic doesn't mean that anti-Zionism - the opposition to Zionism itself, and the desire to see Israel destroyed as a Jewish state - is not antisemitic.
Ms. Omar said the Republican resolution that she opposed “conflates criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism” and “paints critics of the Israeli government as antisemites.”
That's the third time that the same invalid argument is used, and it is no more valid this time. Ilhan Omar opposes Israel as a Jewish state. That is not "criticism of the Israeli government." And given that she herself has a pattern of engaging in antisemitic tropes, she is actually Exhibit A that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are indistinguishable.
Eva Borgwardt, the 27-year-old political director of IfNotNow, said she graduated high school wanting to be a rabbi. Now she speaks of a renaissance of Jewish identity in the United States, a “diasporic” chicken farm, queer Talmudic studies and a Judaism based on good works — including the securing of equal rights and protections for Palestinians.“For Jews questioning Zionism, the issue is protecting the rights of a minority from a state determined to eliminate them,” she said. “What could be more Jewish than that?”
This argument says that if someone is proud to be Jewish, they cannot be antisemitic. But the problem here is that she is not proud to be Jewish at all: her "Judaism" is that of a "diasporic chicken farm" and "queer Talmudic studies." Instead of redefining anti-Zionism, she chooses to redefine Judaism, and then uses that as an argument that she cannot be antisemitic.
In reality, her contempt for Judaism is as clear as her contempt of Israel.
And that's it. Those are all the arguments provided that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. Every one of them depends on redefining either what anti-Zionism means or what Jewishness mean.
If you cannot argue based on the plain definition of the words, then you have lost the argument.
