Let's call anti-Zionism what it really is: political antisemitism ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, August 04, 2025

Let's call anti-Zionism what it really is: political antisemitism

We have been looking at anti-Zionism the wrong way. Too many have tacitly accepted the idea that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are separate ideas, perhaps related, but anti-Zionism is a new concept that doesn't fit with traditional antisemitism and therefore should not be judged the same way.

In fact, however, anti-Zionism is not a new concept. It is simply political antisemitism, and it has been around since at least the 19th century.

Nathan Schneider, a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, wrote an essay about how the word "antisemitism" is being misapplied to valid political expression. He wrote it using the firebombing of the peaceful and mostly elderly Jewish demonstrators in Boulder as a backdrop:

The statements coming from Boulder’s institutions and leaders, from news editors and politicians I have known for years, keep repeating the word “antisemitism” to explain why someone would attack peaceful Jewish demonstrators. But it is a word that draws a line, beyond which lies the unspeakable.

This word has morphed from naming the persecution of a diasporic civilization into justifying the policies of a nation-state backed by the most powerful military in the world; from a cry against genocide into a way to excuse it. The U.S. government, under both major political parties, has used “antisemitism” to carry out assaults on human and constitutional rights—on political protest, on academic freedom, and on immigrants and asylum seekers.

The change that has come over the word is itself unspeakable. One must pretend that the word has not changed or risk accusations of antisemitism. But changed it has. As someone who lost Jewish relatives in the Holocaust, I now fear the exploitation of “antisemitism” to silence and deport political opponents more than I fear actual antisemites.

His support for this thesis actually undermines it:

Locally, the explanation of antisemitism doesn’t compute. When I hear it, I think of a retired Jewish professor in Boulder whom I last saw from a distance, with a sign calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The professor’s ceasefire group was not attacked, although it also demonstrates regularly in downtown Boulder. Both groups include Jews. Why was one group and not the other a target? “Antisemitism” makes this question unspeakable.

His argument then goes to the unspeakable itself - tacitly justifying attacking Zionist Jews:

It is unspeakable that terrorism might have a cause—that however categorically wrong terrorism is, the chances of it rise when our government enables atrocities elsewhere. It is unspeakable that the eventual attacker may have been stewing in helplessness and rage, watching day after day the scenes of families and homes annihilated in Gaza, while hearing again and again in this country that the real problem is “antisemitism.” Every day the flows of media and the speeches of politicians ignore simple evidence.

This is immorality disguised as a philosophical and semantic argument.

The question isn't why Jews who demonstrate for hostages are attacked and those who demonstrate for Gaza are not. The question is why Zionist demonstrations are subject to violence while very few other kinds of political demonstrations would be.

The reason has everything to do with the attackers and not with the attacked. It is perverted to look at a terrorist attack through any other lens. And notice that while he is willing to understand the motivations of terrorists, he shows no such understanding of Israel's ethical imperative to target and destroy Hamas.

Schneider - who mentions that he lost Jewish relatives in the Holocaust - wants to distinguish between the anti-Zionism that he believes motivated the attacker in Boulder and antisemitism, which he carefully redefines as "the persecution of a diasporic civilization" rather than, you know, Jews.

There are two levels of deception by definition here. One is how Schneider redefines antisemitism as "the persecution of a diasporic civilization" rather than the more straightforward "persecution of Jews." He wants to exclude the half of the world's Jews in his definition - the ones who live in the Jewish state.

The other is to define anti-Zionism as justified criticism of Israel. But it isn't. It denies the very concept of national self determination for a group that has been defined as a nation even in diaspora, by Jews, by non-Jews and by the antisemites themselves. It is the only anti-nationalism that justifies attacking the citizens of the nation itself.

There is no problem with trying to create a distinction between traditional antisemitism and politics. But what Schneider and other anti-Zionists do not want to admit is that anti-Zionism is simply political antisemitism.

This puts anti-Zionism in its proper historical context. It isn't a new form of antisemitism at all. Its classic formulation is in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Then as now, Jews are cast as outsiders who support immoral aims and support an ideology of Jewish domination and impunity. Their hidden allegiance is to a group of powerful Jewish political and financial leaders. Today's version is that these Zionist Jews are part of a conspiracy to control Western foreign policy and to dominate the non-Jews - both in the Middle East and in the West. The idea of Jews' disloyalty and their unbridled political greed is a direct line that connects the hate of the past to the hate of the present. Israel represents the Elders of Zion, a tiny group of puppet-masters, and hate for Zionist Jews is an extension of the age-old conspiracy theory that Jews secretly want to control the world.

And this is why political violence against Jews is "understandable" - it is only understandable when you share the premises that underlie the Protocols.

That explains his wonder at why Jews at a pro-hostage demonstration might be attacked while Jews at a pro-Hamas demonstration are safe. It is because anti-Zionism is a subset of antisemitism, and just as no one wonders at anyone attacking Jews, no one is confused by attacking proud Jews who support the Jewish state. The psychology behind the hate of Israel and the hate of Jews is identical, but there is no similar general conspiracy-minded hate of even Hamas.

The question isn't whether a non-citizen should be deported for political opinions. The question is whether those opinions are really just window dressing for hate. And when people style themselves as anti-Zionist that indicates that they are the kind of people who applaud violence against Jews who don't agree with their politics - and as such, deporting them is as reasonable as deporting a German neo-Nazi who is in the US on a green card. And mentioning that there are Jews who agree with them is as perverted as the neo-Nazi saying that some of his best friends are Jewish antisemites.

This characterization of anti-Zionism as political antisemitism clears up the confusion people have over free speech and opposition to Israeli policies. When the attackers call themselves anti-Zionist, and not just critics of Israeli policy, that is the line that they draw themselves to distinguish between valid political expression and rebranding the world's oldest hate.