Don’t be fooled. Zionism is an Indigenous rights movement and being anti-Zionist is antisemitic.
On Oct. 26, the San Diego Unified School District Board of Education passed a resolution condemning antisemitism, as it’s defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), and as requested by every synagogue and mainstream Jewish organization in San Diego. Since then, Israel-haters in San Diego have been wringing their virtual hands over the audacity of a school district to define antisemitism the way most Jews define it (in a state that over the previous five years saw a 40 percent increase in antisemitic hate crimes, and in a country where Jews are the targets of 60 percent of all faith-based hate crimes).Double-Edged Antisemitism
Recognizing they can’t simply say that they oppose such resolutions because Israel-haters want to exploit Jew-hatred in order to incite hatred against Israel (the world’s only Jewish state and home to nearly half of the world’s Jews), the Israel-haters wax apoplectic about how the IHRA definition “chills free speech” because it supposedly makes legitimate criticism of Israel antisemitic, is a tool for “weaponizing antisemitism,” and will somehow increase anti-Arab or anti-Muslim hatred.
I addressed why these claims are specious and themselves antisemitic in an an essay last month.
Likely because the IHRA definition in pertinent part provides it is antisemitic to deny “the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” we are seeing claims that being “anti-Zionist” is not antisemitic, as well as claims by Israel-haters actually comparing Zionism with racist colonialist ideologies like “Manifest Destiny” (which was used to justify America’s westward expansion and brutal conquest of Native Americans).
These claims are false and also incredibly insulting to the vast majority of Jews, who either are Israeli or feel a very strong attachment to Israel. Moreover, these claims get to the core of why the Arab-Israeli conflict persists, and why, despite at least eight different peace and partition offers since 1937 (to create the first independent Arab state west of the Jordan River), no such offer has ever been accepted.
While the Israel-haters try to redefine Zionism to make it seem somehow equivalent to colonialist ideologies like Manifest Destiny, the truth is that the definition of Zionism is quite simple: Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people, like all other peoples, have a right to self-determination and sovereignty in part of their Indigenous homeland.
The Oct. 9, 1982 Palestinian terrorist attack on the Great Synagogue of Rome, in which killed two-year-old Stefano Gaj Tachè was killed, and the blood of 37 others who were wounded flowed on the stones of the building that should have been the safest refuge for Jews in the Italian capital, was a double slap in the face — not only by the murderers, but by those who didn’t lift a finger to defend their victims.The luxury beliefs of Western anti-Zionists
According to a front-page story last week in the left-leaning Italian daily, Il Riformista, Italian authorities had been warned that an attack against Jews or Israelis was being planned. Though documents cited in the story show that Francesco Cossiga — prime minister of the Italian Republic from 1979-1980, and president from 1985-1992 — had decried it at the time, numerous documents from more than fifteen years ago show that no one ever bothered to investigate the matter further. The implication is that there had been a political agreement between former Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti and Palestinian organizations, which had requested that they be given a free hand against Jews and Israelis on Italian soil in exchange for a vow not to assault “innocent” Italians (i.e. non-Jews).
Though such a promise meant nothing, as Palestinian terrorists hadn’t taken into account the identity of “innocent” Italians when they attacked Rome’s Fiumicino airport in 1973 (killing 34); the 1985 highjacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro; or the 1985 twin attacks on the Rome and Vienna airports (killing 19).
Nevertheless, it was clear that Jewish blood was still a bargaining chip, even after the not-so-distant Holocaust, and after the Ghetto of Rome had been marked forever by the deportations of 1943. Indeed, the above terrorist attacks were simply part and parcel of the “next round.” And the same were once again stained with Jewish blood.
During the year of the attack on the Great Synagogue, PLO chief Yasser Arafat addressed the Italian Chamber of Deputies armed with a pistol. Andreotti, the godfather of the parliament’s pro-Arab policy, had allowed him to do so; and only Giovanni Spadolini of Italy’s Republican Party opposed the event.
Rob Henderson, an Asian-American Air Force veteran and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cambridge, has defined “luxury beliefs” broadly as opinions that confer social status on Western elites at very little cost, while taking a toll on those actually impacted by such ideas. One example cited by Henderson, who grew up poor, neglected and in and out of foster care, is the trendy Defund the Police movement, which is supported significantly more by the wealthy than the poor – and is overwhelmingly rejected by African Americans.
This is not surprising as it is the latter who suffered the most when the woke BLM-inspired slogan following the murder of George Floyd was, was, to varying degrees, actually implemented into policy. Major cuts to the budgets of police forces in major cities like Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Philadelphia led to a dramatic increases in crime – particularly homicides – against African Americans.
Western ant-Zionism, which is increasingly in vogue not only on the far-left, but within major media outlets as well, is similarly a luxury idea – one that is dangerously divorced from the millions of lives who would be impacted by such a ‘solution’ to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Whilst the chances of Israel agreeing, or being forced at the point of a gun, to accept the end of Jewish sovereignty in their historic homeland are inestimably low, the injurious impact of such luxury beliefs is still quite real.
The promotion by pro-Palestinian activists of an non-Zionist future, which represents an existential threat for Israeli Jews, also does grave harm to Palestinians, as it nurtures false hope that they don’t need to bother with the nitty-gritty work of negotiations, compromise and (badly needed) institution-building to ameliorate the conflict, but instead can just wait Zionism out – what former Guardian journalist David Hearst once admiringly referred to using the Arabic word Sumud, meaning steadfastness or staying power.