“Is Anti-Zionism Always Antisemitic?” a New York Times article (12/10/23) by Jonathan Weisman asked. Trying to pinpoint the moment when “anti-Zionism crosses from political belief to bigotry,” Weisman suggested there were different kinds of anti-Zionism based on different visions of what Zionism means. But his effort to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable critics of Israel painted principled supporters of equal rights as antisemitic bigots.
Weisman offered one definition of Zionism—the way it was “once clearly understood”—as “the belief that Jews, who have endured persecution for millenniums, needed refuge and self-determination in the land of their ancestors.” To oppose this kind of Zionism “suggests the elimination of Israel as the sovereign homeland of the Jews”—which he said to many Jews “is indistinguishable from hatred of Jews generally, or antisemitism.” Their argument is:
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.
On the other hand, wrote Weisman, “some critics of Israel say they equate Zionism with a continuing project of expanding the Jewish state.” This kind of anti-Zionism merely opposes “an Israeli government bent on settling ever more parts of the West Bank,” land that could serve as “a separate state for the Palestinian people.”
These two views of Zionism seemed to represent the poles of acceptable and unacceptable anti-Zionism. The piece quoted Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) explaining that “some anti-Zionism” isn’t “used to cloak hatred of Jews”; Nadler stressed, though, that “MOST anti-Zionism—the type that calls for Israel’s destruction, denying its right to exist—is antisemitic.”
The Nexus Task Force, a group associated with the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, has a definition of antisemitism that is more tolerant of criticism of Israel than that of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, also cited by the Times. But it still insists, Weisman wrote, “that it is antisemitic to reject the right of Jews alone to define themselves as a people and exercise self-determination.”
Not ‘self-determination’
Jonathan Weisman (New York Times, 12/10/23): “Virulent anti-Zionism and virulent antisemitism ultimately intersect, at a very bad address for the Jews.”
The phrase “self-determination” is doing a lot of work here. In international relations, it is generally used to mean that the residents of a geographical area inhabited by a distinct group have a right to decide whether or not they want that area to remain part of a larger entity. It’s a right that seems to come and go depending on political allegiances: When Albanians in Kosovo wanted to secede from Serbia, their right to do so was enforced with NATO bombs. If ethnic Russians who wanted to split off from Ukraine got help from Moscow, though, that wasn’t self-determination but a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty.
To call Zionism a belief in Jewish “self-determination,” however, perverts the concept to include moving to a geographic region and forcibly expelling many of the people who already live there, in order to create a situation where members of your group can have a “sovereign homeland” where they “are assured of governing themselves.”
Ensuring the dominance of a particular ethnic group through forced migration is not usually called “self-determination,” but rather “ethnic cleansing.” This is the older version of Zionism that Weisman seems to suggest can only be opposed by antisemites.
It’s true that there is another vision of Zionism, unsatisfied with expelling the indigenous residents to the fringes of Israel/Palestine, that insists on incorporating those fringes. Ever since the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has occupied the remaining parts of what was the League of Nations’ Palestine Mandate, where many refugees from the establishment of Israel were forced to live.
But because Zionism requires a Jewish state, the people who lived in those occupied territories could not be treated as citizens. Maintaining Israel’s veneer of democracy requires the political fiction that these undesirables are not part of the country that rules them, but instead belong to non-sovereign entities—like the Palestinian National Authority and the Gaza Strip—whose raison d’etre is to provide a rationale for why the bulk of the Palestinian population isn’t allowed to vote in Israeli elections.
As it happens, this is precisely the strategy that white-ruled South Africa employed to pretend that white supremacy was compatible with democracy; it called the fictitious countries that the nation’s Black majority supposedly belonged to “bantustans.” This and other resemblances to white South Africa are why leading human rights groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s B’Tselem call Israel an apartheid state.
But both versions of Zionism involve the dismissal of one group’s rights in order to create a polity dominated by another group—a project that can certainly be opposed in either iteration without signifying animosity or prejudice toward anyone. (To be sure, there are antisemites who use “Zionists” as a transparent codeword for Jews. These are generally pretty easy to spot.)
A smear that needs correction
Weisman relied on this New York Times article (12/4/23), which gives no indication of talking to any protesters, to smear protesters as antisemitic.
There is much to take issue with in Weisman’s article, but there is one point he makes that really warrants a correction. As an example of straightforward “Jew hatred,” he cites “holding Jews around the world responsible for Israeli government actions”—and offers as an example that this is what “pro-Palestinian protesters did last week outside an Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia.”
But the protesters at Goldie, a vegan falafel restaurant, weren’t blaming “Jews around the world” for Israel’s assault on Gaza; they were holding Goldie’s owner, Israeli-born Michael Solomonov, responsible, because his restaurants had raised $100,000 for United Hatzalah, a medical organization that supports the Israeli Defense Forces.
According to the Guardian (12/8/23), which interviewed “protesters and current and former employees at Solomonov’s restaurants,” critics both inside and outside the staff were concerned that Solomonov hosted a fundraiser for prominent pro-Israel politicians, and had “booked and paid for multiple, lavish private dinners…for IDF members preparing to deploy to fight for Israel.” (The New York Times article—12/4/23—that Weisman linked to did not appear to be based on interviews with any protesters, but instead quoted numerous politicians condemning their demonstration.)
Obviously Solomonov and his critics have different views of his actions. But there is no evidence that protesters were targeting his restaurant simply because he was Jewish, and it’s an irresponsible smear for Weisman to assert that they were.
ACTION: Please tell the New York Times to correct its false claim that people protesting at a Philadelphia restaurant owned by a prominent supporter of the Israeli Defense Forces were “holding Jews around the world responsible for Israeli government actions.”
CONTACT: You can send a message about factual errors to the New York Times at nytnews@nytimes.com.
Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.
It’s gratifying that FAIR has taken this issue up.
But I think it’s important to address the elephant in the room: If _antisemitism_ means ‘holding Jews around the world responsible for Israeli government actions’, as the Zionists aver, then *they* are the principal purveyors of antisemitic tropes, on and off campus.
Although the Nexus ‘definition’ explicitly aims to improve on the IHRA version, it suffers most of the same technical and political problems. It bends over backwards to allow that antizionism is not *necessarily* antisemitic, as if antiracists had something to apologise for. There may be occasional instances of antizionists expressing antisemitic sentiments, but it would have to be perishingly rare. Zionism, in contrast, is always racist.
https://bureauofcounterpropaganda.blogspot.com/2022/01/onto-front-foot.html
Below is my letter to the Times:
To the editors:
The argument made in FAIR (12/15/23) by its editor, Jim Naureckas, seems right to me: that the Times, in Jonathan Weismann’s “Is Anti-Zionism Always Antisemitic?” (12/10/23), let stand an improperly-researched and unsupported claim that “Jew hatred…holding Jews around the world responsible for Israeli government actions” is what “pro-Palestinian protesters did last week outside an Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia.”
Critique of the actions of individual Jewish persons, without any tendency to paint Jewish persons generally with broad brush, is certainly the approach taken by many Palestinian (and, for that matter, Jewish) protesters known to me as they object to support for the IDF or current policies of the State of Israel. It falls short of the NYT’s and any acceptable journalistic ethics to imply otherwise of a whole crowd of protestors (or even, if by suggestion, just its leaders) without careful research and explicit justification. In fact, Weisman’s article itself does a commendable job of representing many voices–at least Jewish voices–as holding a range of nuanced and defensible positions which are too often written off as antisemitic without due diligence. It seems worth asking whether Weisman committed that offense, inadvertently, in his treatment of the Philadelphia protesters.
If it seems to you, as it does to me, that Weisman’s writing lacked due diligence in this regard in his otherwise well-reported article, I request (per your policy) that the Times post a correction of its error in editorial judgement in assessing that unfair characterization of the Philadelphia protesters as fit to print, and that Mr. Weisman consider correcting his negative characterization of the protestors personally in social media.
Sincerely,
Thomas Loughran
1. “This and other resemblances to white South Africa are why leading human rights groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Israel’s B’Tselem call Israel an apartheid state.”
— Well, I suppose so. But the primary argument these groups employ to identify Israel as an apartheid state is its close conformity with the internationally recognized definition of apartheid, which does not demand a comparison with the South African version.
2. “As an example of straightforward ‘Jew hatred, [Weisman] cites ‘holding Jews around the world responsible for Israeli government actions’ ”
— Conversely, it seems that Israel inherently claims to represent all Jews around the world, as manifested in its own twisted version of the right of return (all Jews can immigrate to Israel).
3. The restaurant example is strikingly similar to the recent incident at Indigo Books in Toronto, in which protesters decorated windows with washable red paint and attached posters criticizing its owner and largest shareholder, Heather Reisman, for her central role in the Heseg Foundation that sponsors “lone soldiers” (non-Israeli volunteers) for their expenses after they leave the Israeli army. Heseg has charitable status — but shouldn’t, because it violates a law forbidding recruitment for a foreign army.
In response, politicians, mainstream media and the police labelled the protesters anti-semites displaying hate speech. Cops tracked 11 of them down and smashed into their homes in predawn raids, seized their computers and cellphones, and criminally charged them.
This is what free speech has come to in Canada. Of course the posters on Indigo’s windows didn’t mention Reisman’s ethnicity but called out her support for apartheid.
My comment wasn’t posted, so I’ll try again.
Excellent, as well as very timely article Mr. Naureckas… thank you. The term antisemitic is indeed one that is often used in an effort to silence legitamite criticism in regards to the actions of the state of Israel. I’ve often wondered why the term “islamophobic” is not given equal bearing in the world’s stage today… this being perhaps a rhetorical question as we all know the reasons why.
To perhaps confuse matters more, there’s also another meaning to the term Zionism,” one being a perversion of the term, and one that’s sometimes used to refer to what some consider to be an attempt at “world domination” by the wealthy elite. Whether there is either a jewish, or an Israeli connection intended when employed in this manner I don’t know.
That being said, though “Zionism” when used in regards to the original concept describing a Jewish state lends itself towards a beautiful vision, but Israel as a Jewish state no longer represents that. Israel is now a racist, colonialist, imperialist, supremacist, undemocratic, Jewish, apartheid state that’s armed, funded, and shielded from accountability by a colonial Western establishment, governments, corporations, and institutions that have created a new paradigm where might makes right prevails unmasked and uncontrolled by international law or moral principles while committing the crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in the state of Palestine. Nothing semitic in that.
So much you conveniently left out. Palestinians have been offered land and self governance many times, they rejected it every time because they denied Israel’s right to exist. After being attacked by Jordan and Egypt they gained control of Gaza and the West Bank because they won that war. You can’t judge or feel what is or isn’t antisemitism, you’re not Jewish. Zionism is about wanting a homeland for Jews, just like Palestinians want a homeland. Both people have historic roots in the land, except Judaism is centuries older than Islam. Watch Bill Maher’s latest show-closing editorial and get some perspective.
Nothing in your comment is any more than boilerplate Zionist claims. You justify using military force to obtain land: the Lebensraum principle. You justify the existence of Israel as a Jewish-supremacist state on the childish grounds that one religion is older than another. Perhaps you might try reading the Old Testament accounts, those used by Zionists as the basis for the Israel project, which describe the ancient Israelites committing mass murder against the inhabitants of Canaan and stealing their land.
I’m not convinced, Mr Grossman. Neither are many millions of pro-Palestinian supporters around the world who demand a transformation of the region into a secular democracy with equal rights.
Sorry Jim but racists don’t get to justify their racism. We don’t let the Klan explain why its okay to burn crosses on people’s lawns. We also don’t let antisemites who attack a Jewish business owner in America explain why its justified to attack him. The protestors in Philly are wrong and deserve to be called out.
I could tell it was a smear in the Politico article I read about the restaurant incident. I thought to myself, “I bet the owner is on record supporting the genocide in the Gaza Strip.” I couldn’t have been more correct.
“Is Anti-Zionism Always Antisemitic?” Never. Zionists are not semitic, they are antisemitic Europeans which is their schtick. They speak Yiddish which is not a semitic language unlike the Arabic and Hebrew spoken by Arabs and Mizrahi Jews. The author is an ignorant propagandist helping Zionist murderers keep people confused.
When Anti Defamation League calls Jewish peace demonstrations “anti-semitic” you know the anti-semitism claims have gone entirely off the rails.
Comment sent to NYT on 12/16/23
Please correct the false statement (in your article of 12/4/23) that protestors at a Philadelphia restaurant were “holding Jews around the world responsible for Israeli government actions.” The Guardian, which actually interviewed protestors and employees of the restaurants, found that they were protesting because, the owner had raised $100,000 for an organization supporting the Israeli Defense Forces. The complaint against Mr. Solomonov, was a very specific one and the protest was not directed at “Jews around the world.”
It is entirely possible to demand the destruction of Israel – as a Jewish-supremacist, undemocratic state – without being in the least antisemitic. Many, possibly, the vast majority, of people who identified as Jewish in the late 19th century regarded the Zionist project as dangerous stupidity of the lowest order. As, indeed, it proved to be. Stupid, but at the lethal expense of the Palestinian people.
What does the much-reviled Hamas believe on this matter?
“The Zionist project is a racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist project based on seizing the properties of others; it is hostile to the Palestinian people and to their aspiration for freedom, liberation, return and self-determination. The Israeli entity is the plaything of the Zionist project and its base of aggression.
Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.”
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/hamas-2017-document-full
We are all responsible for the phenomenon of Zionism because we did not accept victims of the Jewish diaspora into our communities, or practiced ignorant and demeaning prejudice against Jews when they were allowed to settle amongst us. European countries allowed Jews to settle but restricted them from most forms of labor and then attacked them when they used money-lending to support themselves. People in The United States have for the most part freely expressed discrimination against Jews and their culture. Many Jews were never made to feel comfortable and safe here, and when they wished to move, no habitable lands elsewhere were not already occupied, so they followed our example in displacing Native Americans and killing them. Let’s try to end this violence without casting blame on others.
Sure, there was widespread anti-Jewish prejudice in the West. Zionists cynically exploited this from the end of the 19th century to the present day to garner support for their ruthless project to expel all the Palestinian Arab people and steal their land. A Jewish-supremacist state is no more justifiable than a white-supremacist state. Blame? Plenty of it on Israel’s side.
The NYP is promoting the restriction of free speech which is guaranteed by the constitution. this is the first step twards a new “Big Brother ” country .
They need to read the Book ” Zionism the real enemy of the jews” : by English historian Alan Hart before reporting like that .
If you can’t define Zionism but declare yourself an anti-Zionist, then you are a simpleminded Jew hating bigot.
I mean, if you’re not Black, and you consider BLM to be a dangerous aspect of society, then chances are you’ll be called a racist.
Not sure what’s so confusing here, but then again, I’m a Jew and a Zionist and I know what I’m talking about. It’s fair to suggest that anti-Zionists don’t have a fucking clue about us.
Lots of opinions! Thank you!