Showing posts with label Israel Advocacy Movement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel Advocacy Movement. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 29, 2023


The Queen Bee syndrome is getting in the way of Jewish unity. It does this by creating conflict between Jewish women, and in some cases, men as well. In Queen Bee syndrome, a woman, the “Queen,” is mean to others, in particular to other women. The Queen may do so in order to establish a pecking order, or to get ahead in what she perceives to be a man’s world offering only limited opportunities for women. But whatever the catalyst, Queen Bee behavior by nature results in alienation—the alienation of those who might otherwise have been allies. Queen Bee syndrome is far from the only obstacle standing in the way of Jewish unity. But it should be addressed, because it affects Jewish unity as a whole, rendering us weak and ineffective as a force for good in the world.

Now, the vast majority of my own female colleagues, likeminded souls who fight on Israel’s behalf in a hostile world, are lovely. We network and help each other. We chat on the phone and share good news. We critique each other’s work with kindness and sensitivity and sit and schmooze together at press events, subtly rolling our eyes at each other whenever a speaker says something not in line with our political beliefs.

Why not? We’re on the same side. We are allies. Talking shop is fun.

But for some reason, a small number of women in Israel advocacy and related endeavors remain nasty, cold, and patronizing in their dealings with other women. There was the interview subject who told me my questions were too personal, even salacious, and that I clearly hadn't read her books. "I am an intellectual and a scholar and my work and ideas and thinking is [sic] at another level," she told me, putting me in my place for suggesting she might be mortal.

Public Embarrassment

Then there was the woman who upbraided me in public while I was delivering prepared remarks before a crowd. She actually wagged her finger and yelled at me. This queen bee, too, was putting me in my place. She had the power to overrule me, interrupt me, embarrass me in public. I think she wanted the other people in that room to know it should have been HER giving that speech. She wanted them to know I was noone, that I was stupid, and that they would have been much better served to be hearing from HER. 

Another time, in the run-up to yet another Israeli election, I messaged a female colleague: "I had this idea that perhaps women journalists and bloggers on the right could issue a statement in support of voting for Likud. Would this be a worthwhile effort, in your opinion?"

"maybe. couldn't hurt," she responded.

Encouraged, I wrote up a draft of a statement and sent it to her for input. She never responded. A bit later, I wrote, "Too emo?" in a last-ditch effort to elicit a response.

But she never was going to respond. I wasn't important enough. She wanted me to know that. 

Did I imagine these things? Read too much into them? No. The same woman avoided my eyes in the supermarket when I tried to smile and greet her. At an event, during the question and answer period, she pointedly took questions from everyone in the audience who raised their hands, everyone except for me. When my hand was the last one still standing in air, she said, "Well, that's all we have time for, tonight."

It's a shame. Because it's like these women have forgotten that we have a higher cause. It's not about who's smarter, or better, or more important. It's not about a pecking order, but about fighting for Israel and Jewish rights.

It's The Patriarchy

Of the woman I interviewed who told me she was too smart to answer my questions, I was told by the male colleague who made the introduction that I should expect in future, to be invited to this woman's fabulous dinner parties where she always hosts the most fascinating guests. 

He may have been a regular at her table, but I'm still waiting for an invitation. Because guess what? I'm a woman. There's no way she's going to invite the competition. There's no way she's going to invite the likes of me. 

And that's my general experience with Queen Bees. Queen Bees curry favor with the men while lashing out at the women and belittling them, often in public. The Queen Bee must call the shots, and so she is always the one to end a conversation or the relationship, such as it is. She often does this by ignoring you, your messages, and/or your emails, just as that female colleague did, after encouraging me to write up that statement she never intended to sign.

Why do some women mistreat others of their own gender? Some say it’s because of the patriarchy: queen bees have to eliminate the others if they want to rise to the top. Others say that women being mean to women is biological. Women try to destroy other women because historically, women have always had to compete not only for men but for the resources they need for their offspring. 

In the world of Israel advocacy however, there's no place for this sort of angling for resources, power, or pride of place. There's enough room for all of us, and each of us has our own unique perspective to share. No woman actively fighting for her people should be to be afraid to enter a room for fear of being belittled by the others. No woman should be bullying those fighting for the same cause. Ego should have no place in this arena.

Queen Bees Come In Three Varieties

Does Queen Bee syndrome sounds familiar to you? It's no surprise. I'm not the only one to have these experiences. You've probably witnessed this behavior, yourself. 

From the Atlantic, “Why Do Women Bully Each Other at Work?”:

The bitches, as Shannon saw it, came in three varieties. She categorized them on her personal blog, in a post titled “Beware the Female BigLaw Partner.”

First was the “aggressive bitch”—a certain kind of high-ranking woman at the firm where she worked who didn’t think twice about “verbally assaulting anyone.” When one such partner’s name appeared on caller ID, Shannon told me, “we would just freak out.”

Next was the two-faced “passive-aggressive bitch,” whose “subtle, semi-rude emails” hinted that “you really shouldn’t leave before 6:30.” She was arguably worse than the aggressive bitch, because you might never know where you stand.

Last but not least, the “tuned-out, indifferent bitch,” Shannon wrote, “is so busy, both with work and family, that they don’t have time for anything … This partner is not trying to be mean, but hey, they got assignments at midnight when they were associates. So you will too.

“There obviously are exceptions,” she added. “But there aren’t many.”

The Passive-Aggressive Queen Bee 

According to the theory of the Queen Bee syndrome, Queen Bees like to cut you down. That makes passive-aggressive behavior par for the course. Like the interview subject who felt it necessary to make me feel bad about the nature of my questions, though I had clearly stated up front that she could skip over any and as many questions as she liked. 

More from the Atlantic:

[Shannon] once spotted a female partner screaming at the employees at a taxi stand because the cars weren’t coming fast enough. Another would praise Shannon to her face, then dispatch a senior associate to tell her she was working too slowly. One time, Shannon emailed a female partner—one of the passive-aggressive variety—saying, “Attached is a revised list of issues and documents we need from the client. Let me know of anything I may have left off.”

“Here’s another example” of you not being confident, the partner responded, according to Shannon. “The ‘I may have left off’ language is not as much being solicitous of my ideas as it is suggesting a lack of confidence in the completeness of your list.”

Is Shannon perhaps being a bit thin-skinned? 

Shannon admits that she can be a little sensitive, but she wasn’t the only one who noticed. “Almost every girl cried at some point,” she says. Some of the male partners could be curt, she said, but others were nice. Almost all of the female partners, on the other hand, were very tough.

In my case, too, I found I was not the only female in Israel advocacy who had been cut down to size by a Queen Bee. One day, I called a writer friend, and told her about my experiences. "Who?" she asked me. It was just us chickens, so I named names, all the big deal women who had made me feel ant-sized and marginalized in our shared world, the arena of Israel advocacy. She too, had been abused by what I now know, are serial abusers of their own sex, women active in their own circles.

Male Vs. Female Boss

Sometimes a woman has to take it, be maltreated by the other women, if she wants to stay in the game, stay relevant. Other women have a choice. They don't have to stay. But even then, it's hard. It takes courage to make a move when your self-confidence has taken a beating and you've been made to feel inadequate. According to the Atlantic, it took 16 months for Shannon to finally decide to up and leave.

Is the Queen Bee syndrome real? There is ample evidence to suggest that it is. For example, both women and men prefer a male over a female boss. It seems plausible to conclude that a large enough number of women in the workplace are unpleasant to others, so much so that both women and men have been traumatized. They’d rather have a male boss than take the risk of suffering further female tyranny:

In 2011, Kim Elsesser, a lecturer at UCLA, analyzed responses from more than 60,000 people and found that women—even those who were managers themselves—were more likely to want a male boss than a female one. The participants explained that female bosses are “emotional,” “catty,” or “bitchy.” (Men preferred male bosses too, but by a smaller margin than the female participants did.)

In a smaller survey of 142 law-firm secretaries—nearly all of whom were women—not one said she or he preferred working for a female partner, and only 3 percent indicated that they liked reporting to a female associate. (Nearly half had no preference.) “I avoid working for women because [they are] such a pain in the ass!” one woman said. In yet another study, women who reported to a female boss had more symptoms of distress, such as trouble sleeping and headaches, than those who worked for a man.

Queen Bees Preen

According to the BBC, Queen Bee syndrome was first defined by psychologists at the University of Michigan in 1973:

Queen bee syndrome describes a woman in a position of authority in a male-dominated environment who treats subordinates more critically if they are female. Prof Dame Sally Davies, England's first female chief medical officer, used the term in 2014 when describing her own experiences in the health sector. "I saw it particularly in medicine - queen bees preening and enjoying being the only woman," she said.

Margaret Thatcher, the UK's first female prime minister, has been described as a queen bee for not promoting or furthering the careers of women in her cabinet.

There's A Ripple Effect

Some women, for example, Shannon, manage to extricate themselves from a Queen Bee-ruled workplace. But often, there’s a ripple effect (emphasis added):

In 2011, Prof [Naomi] Ellemers and her colleagues [at Utrecht University in the Netherlands] carried out a study asking Dutch policewomen to recall specific experiences of being discriminated against. They found that being reminded of gender discrimination prompted participants to downplay the sexism they had experienced. It also triggered queen bee behaviour among policewomen who identified weakly with other women at work. "They are being taught to be successful in the organisation you need to adopt male characteristics," Prof Ellemers says.

"They cope with gender bias by demonstrating they are different from other women."

These women use phrases such as: "I'm not like the other women, I'm much more ambitious."

Prof Ellemers calls this "self-group distancing" - a response that is also found among other groups that are under-represented at work - and argues queen bee syndrome is a product of gender stereotyping.

Perhaps so, but if women are to be part of a cohesive and strong Jewish front in the battle for Israel’s reputation and against Jew-hatred, they must always squelch the impulse to be nasty to their sistahs. Queen Bee syndrome may be about women’s inhumanity to other women, but Jewish unity is impossible when a significant number of them refuse to be nice to the others. Putting ego aside for the sake of our people and our nation is absolutely critical.



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Wednesday, January 11, 2023

From Ian:

Col Kemp: Jew-Hate at American Universities
[The Amcha] report paints a stark picture of an increasing, intensifying and carefully coordinated campaign of attacks on Jewish identity at over 60% of the colleges and universities that are popular with Jews, including 2,000 incidents intended to harm Jewish students since 2015.

[T]hese activists demand an end to Zionism, which... means just one thing: an end to the democratic State of Israel. This itself is antisemitism in any book and is spelt out as such in the US State Department definition of antisemitism.

Despite expending so much energy against their fellow students, German Gentiles had plenty left for their Jewish professors. Unsatisfied with Nazi race regulations restricting Jewish faculty, students boycotted the classes of those who were exempt under the race laws and pressured university authorities to dismiss them. The result was that every Jewish professor who was still legally allowed to teach had resigned by 1935.

The Amcha report characterises the situation on US campuses today as a crisis for American Jews. It is much more than that. It is a crisis for us all that one section of our student body is bullied, abused, intimidated and cast down by their fellow students and often abandoned by their professors and faculty authorities.

It is high time for the federal government, under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to withdraw its funding from all universities that participate in bigotry such as that.


Jonathan Tobin: Ilhan Omar is the Democrats’ problem, not Kevin McCarthy’s
By standing with Omar, Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have effectively normalized antisemitism. And McCarthy’s effort to punish her will again test whether they mean what they say when they speak of their opposition to hate.

As was the case with Greene and Gosar last year, it will take a vote by the majority of the House to remove Omar from her perch on the Foreign Relations Committee. Given the GOP’s narrow majority, the fate of Schiff (who repeatedly lied about the hoax he helped promote that former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election) and Swalwell (who had an intimate relationship with a Chinese spy) will also be part of the same debate.

Democrats will also answer the list of Omar’s antisemitic statements and actions with their own brand of “whataboutism,” which will involve McCarthy’s recent embrace of Greene, who was an ally during his fight for the speaker’s chair. They’ll bring up other Republicans for censure, as well. One is Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who lied about just about everything during his campaign for election, including whether he was Jewish.

If every member of Congress or the executive branch had to be censured for lying, however, Washington would soon be emptied of politicians, including Biden, who takes second place to no one when it comes to being a serial fabulist. Moreover, there is an argument to be made that neither party should be engaging in this kind of tit-for-tat punishment.

If the voters think they deserve nothing better than to be represented by such scoundrels, perhaps it’s best if we leave it to them to decide at the ballot box who should sit in Congress or on committees. As the great cynic, journalist H.L. Mencken wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

Nevertheless, if the Democrats are going to play this game, then McCarthy can hardly be blamed for answering in kind. And if House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) isn’t prepared to agree to remove Omar, then the speaker is justified in seeking to oust her.

At stake here is not the broader question of how much extremism or bad behavior Congress should be willing to tolerate in its members. Rather, it is specifically one that will force Democrats to decide what is more important to them.

Is it the fight against antisemitism at a time when Jew-hatred is on the rise throughout the globe? Or is their true allegiance to identity politics and the toxic intersectional myths that allow Omar to paint herself as an oppressed victim, rather than a hatemonger, simply because of the color of her skin?
Caroline Glick: The ‘woke’ West is assaulting Jews for embracing their heritage
As Israel is being pilloried at the U.N. Security Council by friend and foe alike for daring to allow Jews to visit the Temple Mount, professor Richard Landes joins Caroline Glick on this week’s episode of the “Caroline Glick Show” to discuss the contemporary roots of the demonization of Jews and the Jewish state.

Landes recently published “Can the Whole World Be Wrong: Lethal Journalism, Anti-Semitism and the Global Jihad,” the product of 22 years of work.

He began his study of the subject in the aftermath of the first modern blood libel, the alleged killing of Muhammed al-Dura, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, by IDF forces in Gaza on Sept. 30, 2000.

The false allegation that the boy was killed by IDF forces that day, and that they murdered him deliberately, formed the basis of a massive propaganda effort. Its product has been the legitimization of the mass murder of Jews in Israel and worldwide by Palestinians and other jihadists.

Landes argues that the West’s embrace of the al-Dura blood libel was the foundation not only of the antisemitism assaulting the Jewish people worldwide today, but also of the West’s inability to acknowledge, let alone defeat, the forces of global jihad, whether in the United States or Europe or in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and beyond.

Glick and Landes examine the current pathologies of the “woke” West—including the assault on Jews for embracing their heritage, by among other things, visiting the Temple Mount—through the prism of the al-Dura incident. Their conversation traverses space and time and ends with vital insights into what needs to happen for the West to survive the ravages of the Red-Green alliance which was born with the al-Dura blood libel.

Tuesday, December 06, 2022

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Herzog's Abraham Accords trip and the Palestinian elephant in the room
Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani said as much speaking to reporters Sunday night, saying the Abraham Accords will ultimately only succeed if a two-state resolution to the conflict is achieved.

Hamad also made sure to speak of the Palestinians in his public remarks at the start of his meeting with Herzog. There is firm support in Bahrain for “achieving a just, comprehensive and sustainable peace that guarantees the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and that will lead to stability, development and prosperity for both the Palestinian and Israeli people as well as for the people of the region,” Hamad said.

The incoming Israeli government needs to take those words seriously. The status quo of continued terrorist attacks on Israelis, as well as Palestinians acting against Israel being shot by security forces on an almost daily basis, might be manageable on a military basis, but it is unsustainable for the long-term stability and future of the Israeli and Palestinian people.

The Palestinian issue is likely to be number 999 on the to-do list of the Benjamin Netanyahu-led coalition, due to the obvious reasons of the coalition partners having no interest in pursuing any kind of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

Granted, during both Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid’s tenures there was little to no movement with the Palestinians, with the strategy seeming to punt the issue down the field for later.

That’s likely what the Biden administration surmised as well, knowing the tenuous makeup of the “change” government in which there was no consensus for engagement with the Palestinians.

With the likely new government, there will be a consensus, and it will not be about jump-starting negotiations about a two-state solution. It’s unclear if US President Joe Biden will push back now that Netanyahu is back in power.

Even if he doesn’t, it behooves Netanyahu to take the Bahraini comments to heart. Taking the Abraham Accords for granted, and ignoring the Palestinian issue, will only come back to hurt Israel in the end.
Foreign Ministry summons UN Mideast envoy over sympathy for Palestinian attacker
Wennesland later tweeted that he was “horrified by today’s killing of a Palestinian man, Ammar Mifleh, during a scuffle with an Israeli soldier near Huwara in the o[ccupied] West Bank.

“My heartfelt condolences to his bereaved family. Such incidents must be fully & promptly investigated, & those responsible held accountable,” he added.

Wennesland’s comments were lambasted by Israeli officials.

Prime Minister Yair Lapid backed the officer who shot the attacker.

“Any attempt to distort reality and tell false stories to the world is simply a disgrace,” tweeted Lapid. “Our security forces will continue to act determinedly against terror wherever it raises its head.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon also slammed Wennesland’s statement, calling it a “total distortion of reality.”

“This is NOT a ‘scuffle’ — this is a terror attack!” he added.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz also said he “strongly condemned” Wennesland’s remarks.

“I want to praise the police officer who neutralized a terrorist yesterday. I strongly condemn the attempts to present the event in a false and manipulative manner, and the statement of the UN envoy to the Middle East against the [officer], who acted with determination and professionalism,” Gantz said on Twitter. Injuries caused to a police officer following a stabbing attack in the northern West Bank town of Hawara on December 2, 2022. (Israel Police)

Huwara Mayor Moein Dmeidy and others on Saturday cited secondhand accounts that said there had been an altercation between Mifleh and an Israeli motorist after a car accident, but Associated Press journalists were unable to find witnesses to the events that led up to the shooting.

Dmeidy argued the officer had no justification to kill Mifleh after he had already overpowered him. Mifleh was “killed in cold blood,” said the mayor, who arrived at the scene moments after the shooting.

Dmeidy said a Palestinian ambulance arrived minutes after the shooting but security forces prevented the medics from administering aid. Dmeidy said Israel has not handed over Mifleh’s body for burial.

Border Police said that the officer with stab wounds was subsequently taken for medical treatment, as was the officer who subdued the attacker. A knife used by an alleged Palestinian attacker in the West Bank town of Huwara on December 2, 2022 (Israel Police)

Images of the officer who killed the stabber were posted to social media on Saturday, some including threats against him.

The officer himself said it could have been a “more significant attack” had the attacker managed to grab his gun.

“During a struggle with the terrorist I understand that if he succeeds in stealing my rifle, there will be a more significant attack here. I manage to pull out my handgun and I shoot the terrorist until he is neutralized,” he said in a video published by police.


Thursday, June 09, 2022

From Ian:

Mark Regev: Shireen Abu Akleh, Palestinians, Al Jazeera and press freedom - opinion
The accusation of a willful murder is made when among the nations of the Middle East it is in Israel alone that a free and critical press thrives. Israel’s famously boisterous and pugnacious media is always ready to expose a misbehaving politician, government wrongdoing and the IDF’s mistakes. This while the practice in the PA and Al Jazeera falls into a very different category.

Press freedom in the PA, Qatar
Although a PA basic law theoretically guarantees a free press, in reality such freedom is nonexistent: the media is severely constrained, critical platforms are shut down and journalists arrested when the authorities object to their work. Reporters have been beaten while in custody, blogger Nizar Banat ended up dead. When Abbas was angered by an Al Jazeera story, he ordered the closure of the network’s Ramallah offices.

The Palestinian president might have championed the deceased Abu Akleh as a martyr, but live Palestinian journalists know what may happen if they incur the wrath of the PA.

For its part, Al Jazeera likes to present its reporting as hard-hitting independent journalism, but the Qatari government-funded channel’s hundreds of employees never report about matters that could embarrass their patron.

Consequently, Qatar’s ongoing systematic mistreatment of the country’s migrant worker population of more than two million (similar in size to the entire population of Gaza) does not make it to Al Jazeera’s newsroom. The network has been equally silent on the kingdom’s discriminatory sexist male guardianship laws, on the criminalization of criticism against the emir’s leadership and on the lack of press freedom.

Even more problematic, following last year’s war in Gaza, the channel was presented with an award from Hamas for its reporting of the conflict. Hamas acclaim for Al Jazeera is not new, the network has a history of glorifying the perpetrators of terror attacks and broadcasting material that incites violence; its recent regurgitation of erroneous claims that the Jews somehow threaten al-Aqsa Mosque just the latest example.

Ultimately, like with its Kremlin-controlled sister channel RT, the Qatari state furnishes a television news station with a highly tendentious agenda.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European democracies banned RT broadcasts deeming them a “direct threat” to the “public order and security” of the EU. Yet, despite Al Jazeera’s record of affinity with a terrorist organization sworn to Israel’s destruction, Jerusalem takes no analogous action, media freedom being sacrosanct.

While Shireen Abu Akleh’s untimely death warrants thorough examination, allegations that Israel deliberately targets the press deserve no credence. They are cheap propaganda and should be dismissed as such.
Daniel Greenfield: Liberating our Jerusalem
In 1966, Jerusalem was a city sundered in two, divided by barbed wire and the bullets of Muslim snipers. Diplomacy did not reunite it. Israel pursued diplomacy nearly to its bitter end until it understood that it had no choice at all but to fight. Israel did not swoop into the fight, its leaders did their best to avoid the conflict, asking the international community to intervene and stop Egypt from going to war. Read back the headlines for the last five years on Israel and Iran, and you will get a sense of the courage and determination of the Israeli leaders of the day.

When Israel went to war, its leaders did not want to liberate Jerusalem, they wanted Jordan to stay out of the war. Even when Jordan entered the war, they did not want to liberate the city. Divine Providence and Muslim hostility forced them to liberate Jerusalem and forced them to keep it. Now some of them would like to give it back, another sacrifice to the bloody deity of diplomacy whose altar flows with blood and burnt sacrifices.

As we remember Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day, it is important to remember that the city is united and free because diplomacy failed. The greatest triumph of the modern state happened only because diplomacy proved hopeless and useless in deterring Muslim genocidal ambitions. Had Israel succumbed to international pressure and had Nasser been as subtle as Sadat, then the Six-Day War would have looked like the Yom Kippur War fought with 1948 borders– and Israel very likely would not exist today.

Even as Jews remember the great triumph of Yom Yerushalayim, the ethnic cleansers and their accomplices are busy searching for ways to drive Jews out of Jerusalem, out of towns, villages and cities. This isn’t about the Muslim residents of Jerusalem, who have repeatedly asserted that they want to remain part of Israel. It’s not about peace, which did not come from any previous round of concessions, and will not come from this one either. It’s about solving the Jewish problem.

As long as Jews allow themselves to be defined as the problem, there will be plenty of those offering solutions. And the solutions invariably involve doing something about the Jews. It only stands to reason that if Jews are the problem, then moving them or getting rid of them is the solution. There is less friction in defining Jews as the problem, than in defining Muslims as the problem. The numbers alone mean that is so.

Yom Yerushalayim is a reminder of what the real problem is and what the real solution is. Muslim occupation of Israel is the problem. The Islamization of Jerusalem is the problem. Muslim violence in support of the Muslim occupation of Israel and of everywhere else is the problem. Israel is the solution. Only when we liberate ourselves from the lies, when we stop believing that we are the problem and recognize that we are the solution. Only then will the liberation that began in 1967 be complete.

Only then will we have liberated our Jerusalem. The Jerusalem of the soul. It is incumbent on all of us to liberate that little Jerusalem within. The holy city that lives in all of us. To clean the dross off its golden gates, wash the filth from its stones and expel the invaders gnawing away at our hearts until we look proudly upon a shining city. Then to help others liberate their own Jerusalems. Only then will we truly be free.
The Soviet origins of left-wing anti-Zionism
Ironically, Soviet anti-Zionism itself drew extensively from Nazi rhetoric and imagery. Many prominent contributors of propaganda material, such as Trofim Kichko, Yuri Ivanov, Lev Korneev and others unabashedly recycled ideas directly from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf. They even blamed the Jews for the extermination of both Jews and non-Jews during World War II. Today, anti-Zionist groups keep that legacy alive by routinely comparing Zionism to the Nazis. For example, Shahd Abusalama, a professor at Sheffield University in the United Kingdom, found it acceptable for a first-year student to compare an Israeli operation in Gaza to the Holocaust.

One of the Soviet propaganda machine’s greatest victories was the United Nations’ 1975 adoption of the “Zionism is Racism” resolution. Its revocation in 1991 had little effect on the U.N.’s stance on Israel. Statistics from 2020 are particularly illustrative: Israel was targeted by 17 U.N. resolutions, while all other countries combined, including regimes like Iran and North Korea, received six. On campus, Israel is frequently attacked in the same language. For example, at a Cornell SJP poetry reading, one participant designated Israel a “racist, exclusivist, supremacist state.”

Throughout their entire anti-Zionist campaign, the official Soviet line was that anti-Zionism was not anti-Semitism. A 1979 article in TheWashington Post noted, “Although the number of anti-Semitic books and denunciations has grown continuously [in the Soviet Union] since the Six-Day War in 1967, recent months have brought remarkable new additions to this genre. Officially, they are labeled ‘anti-Zionist.’ Soviet bureaucrats vehemently reject suggestions that ‘anti-Zionism’ means ‘anti-Semitism.’ To many Soviet Jews, it is a distinction without a difference.”

Today, this is one of the most popular talking points among left-wing anti-Zionists and anti-Semites. Indeed, it is telling that anti-Israel groups have repeatedly attempted to block universities and municipalities from adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Anti-Semitism, which defines certain kinds of anti-Israel rhetoric as anti-Semitic. At the City University of New York (CUNY), for example, former president of CUNY’s SJP chapter Nerdeen Kiswani tweeted: “#IHRAoutofCUNY we know all too well that this purposeful conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism is used against Palestinians and organizers for Palestine. We must protect our right to organize and speak out against oppression.”

There is no doubt that today’s left-wing anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism can be directly traced to the Soviets’ anti-Zionist propaganda campaign. Knowing this is the first and perhaps most important step toward creating a more balanced and honest dialogue on the issue.

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