Every now and then even the most cynical and desensitized member of the Jewish community is shocked by the persistence and protean nature of Jew-hatred.
In the Shoah’s aftermath, faithful antisemites proffered no deathbed confessions.
Like most viruses, antisemitism merely mutated to infect or reinfect its host. Old-fashioned Jew-hate endures, whether casual antisemitism or violent rhetorical and physical manifestations, something Israeli and diaspora Jews too regularly encounter.
Yet, as has been well documented, it is increasingly cloaked in so-called ‘anti-Zionism’. Israel, in the eyes of its enemies, is not a light unto but the Jew among nations. Israel, alone of nation-states, is portrayed as irredeemable, to be delegitimised and erased.
No other national liberation movement, no other humanist ideology, no other majority-held belief of a historically oppressed people is condemned but Zionism. No other liberal democracy but Israel finds itself singled out by a global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, ultimately committed to its destruction by stealth. No other 75 year-old state but Israel so arouses the pathological hatred of activists and ‘intellectuals’, ostensibly championing Palestinian rights. No other national group on earth is targeted, no matter one’s relationship with Israel, as diaspora Jews are individually and collectively held to account for the actions of any Israeli government. Not the Chinese or Iranian diaspora and nor should they be held responsible for the actions of, respectively, a one-party state and a theocratic state. No, just Jews.
Only Israel so unbalances the cognitive faculties of erstwhile intellectuals. Consider the example of the Orwellian named ‘Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism’.
It was recently established by among others two extremist leaders of the American Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. San Francisco State University Professor Rabab Abdulhadi argues “welcoming Zionists on campus” amounts to “a declaration of war against Arabs, Muslims, [and] Palestinians.” In September 2020, she sought, unsuccessfully, to host celebrated terrorist Leila Khaled, the first woman to have hijacked a (Tel Aviv bound) plane to lecture on “resistance.” Her comrade, University of Massachusetts Professor Heike Schotten, asserts: “‘J’ means “Jewish” rather than “Justice”; “Zionism” has nothing to do “with Judaism or Jewish people.”
Clearly, we shouldn’t hold our collective breath waiting for ICSZ to produce serious scholarship into historical or modern Zionism. ICSZ’s very name gives the game away. Before conducting any ‘research’ its loathing for the existence of “settler colonial” Israel, and desire to sweep it into the dustbin of history, is hidden in plain sight.
ICSZ’s founding ‘points of unity’ illustrate its raison d’etre. “We reject the exclusionary/scarcity model of academic work,” they declare obtusely. By contrast, its members “aim to broaden the community of participation in rigorous research and conversation on Zionism.” Ironically, they seek this outcome by claiming rights of self-determination which they demand Jews be denied (i.e. Zionism) and by fostering an exclusionary – some say Stalinist – academic environment. A scholar who failed to subscribe to these ‘points’ will be blacklisted from ICSZ’s upcoming conference ‘Battling the ‘IHRA definition’: Theory & Activism’ to be held at the University of California. You read that right. Delegitimising the widely accepted definition of modern antisemitism, which identifies anti-Zionism as a form of antisemitism, is portrayed as “a tool of and a shield for repressive state power.”
ICSZ’s ‘points of unity’ drift into classic antisemitic tropes, as pointed out by another critic. By dint of its own scare quotes, ICSZ concerns itself with “Studying Zionism – its direct work for the Israeli state and its ‘other work’.” “Joining the “resistance to structures of racism, group supremacy, violence, militarism, colonialism, and capitalism,” entails researching “the role that Zionism plays in struggles over racism and violence.”
How radical chic of ICSZ to ascribe the world’s ills to shadowy, powerful Jews.
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, writing for the Jerusalem Post, reminds us that in March 1941, Nazi theorist and ideologue Alfred Rosenberg launched the Institute for Research on the Jewish Question. Its inaugural conference, ‘Research in the Struggle against World Jewry’, concluded that the solution to the Jewish question was for the Jews to disappear. Fast forward 82 years and it is the Jewish state which must disappear.
By contrast, how fares the Institute for Critical Studies of Dhimmitude? A study of Muslim-majority institutionalization of anti-Jewish (and anti-Christian) discrimination and second-class citizenship – Apartheid anyone? – is of course a fanciful idea. It if did exist, it would be shutdown quicker than one could say ‘tenured professorship’.
Laughably, the ICSZ rejects “academic professional success as a measure”. Perhaps because logic, reason and critical inquiry are hallmarks of scholarly achievement.
ICSZ and its fellow travelers are no laughing matter or isolated development. Student groups at UCLA’s Berkeley School of Law recently banned ‘Zionist’ speakers and the Berkeley student council overwhelmingly rejected the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Of late, the large American Anthropological Association has backed academic BDS; and academic departments on more than 100 US campuses have adopted official anti-Zionist stances, with some embracing academic BDS.
This sort of obsession with Israel, and Jews who identify with Israel, confirms a trend many of have long documented: modern anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic.
It is incumbent on Jewry, here, in the US and elsewhere, to fight the new antisemitism with every fibre of one’s being, alongside our allies. Vocabulary matters. Zionism needs to be reclaimed from its enemies and its true nature affirmed. Granted, there are religious and (mostly) secular non-Zionist Jews who don’t subscribe to Zionism. Oddly enough, they manage to carry on without wishing harm upon half of the world’s Jewish population, nor devote their waking hours to coveting the end of the Israeli state.
Cast your eyes over the Israelis protesting the Netanyahu government, agree with them or not, or in part. They are proud Zionists animated by Zionist conviction. The vigor – and very existence – of the protests attests to Israel’s democratic resilience.
Anti-Zionists, whether they to care to admit it, are hostile towards Jewish concerns. Yet Zionists often arrive at the scene of the latest gunfight over Israel armed with a chalif, even when faced with inherently irrational arguments – such as the jibe ‘Progressive except Palestine’ directed at individuals who describe themselves as politically progressive, liberal, or left-wing but who either support Israel, do not express pro-Palestinian sentiments or do not comment on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Zionism was and remains a progressive movement.
How else to describe the achievement of a collective of human beings who took their destiny into their own hands and exercised agency? A free and self-governing people who reestablished a state of their own in the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland, resurrected the Hebrew language and pioneered social, political, and environmental progress. Jews would be masters of their own fate, never again to be subjugated or oppressed or reliant on others for their safety, their lives, and their futures.
For too long caveats have been added to Zionist beliefs, diverse and nuanced as they often are. It does not placate Israel’s enemies, who never entertain complexity or compromise. When is the last time you heard the likes of Bob Carr support Palestinian self-determination – and rightly so – by lamenting the genocidal charter and terrorism of the rulers of Gaza, Hamas? Or note that Mahmoud Abbas this year celebrated the 18th year of his four year term as Palestinian Authority President? You know the answer.
Last time I checked, these practices were anathema to progressive politics.
As a modest start, here’s a new, more accurate slogan for the anti-Zionist folks over at the Institute for Critically Abolishing Israel: “Progressive, except for the Jewish state”.
Nick Dyrenfurth is the author or co-author of twelve books, including Boycotting Israel is Wrong (with Philip Mendes).
