Chronicle poll results: Is anti-Zionism antisemitism?
We asked our readers if anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Here's what they said.
Last week, the Chronicle asked its readers in an electronic poll the following question: “Is anti-Zionism antisemitism?” Of the 378 people who responded, 55% said yes; 38% said no; and 7% said they were not sure. Comments were submitted by 106 people. A few follow.
Denial of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in our historical homeland, of the right to be a member of the family of nations, can only be antisemitism, even when it comes from fellow Jews.
Some anti-Zionist statements may contain antisemitic statements, but criticism of the state of Israel is not inherently antisemitic.
Depends on the intention of who’s using the term.
Holding the world’s only Jewish state to impossible standards that nobody else is held to is absolutely antisemitism. It’s just a shame that so many people fail (or refuse) to see that.
This really is dependent on how it is expressed. There are ultra-Orthodox Jews who are anti-Zionist in ideology who I don’t believe are self-hating. At the same time, when anti-Zionism is used against the Jewish community as a whole, it is being used in an antisemitic way.
Not all anti-Zionism is antisemitism, but for those who even understand the definition, I would bet that 98% who feel that Jews should not have a homeland also feel that Jews should just disappear entirely. Not all antisemitism is anti-Zionism, but I would bet that only 1% of those who dislike Jews for some particular baseless prejudice/ignorant scapegoating/inferiority complex are OK with Israel existing — just so they can keep track of whom to blame for their problems.
Anti-Zionism is a political or religious issue. Antisemitism is discriminations against persons or a people. To combine the two is a form of discrimination in itself.
The veil has been lifted over the obscurity since Oct. 7. When the left attacks Jewish students on campuses from Harvard to UCLA, when they attack Jewish-owned restaurants, when they target Jewish — but not non-Jewish — politicians for supporting Israel, when they (attempt to) burn down or desecrate synagogues from London to Montreal to Seattle to Melbourne, can there be any doubt?
No. Anti-Zionism is opposition to the Zionist political movement, and to the state of Israel as a political entity due to its oppression of Palestinians, not a hatred for Jews or an opposition to Jewish peoplehood. As an anti-Zionist Jew, I don’t believe that we need an ethnostate or a demographic majority to be safe in Eretz Yisrael or anywhere else, and that maintaining such a system is immoral and incompatible with the principles of democracy and Jewish law. Referring to anti-Zionism as inherently antisemitic is creating a rift between mainstream Jewish institutions and the large number of young anti-Zionist Jews who represent the future of the Jewish people.
The struggle for Palestinian freedom from Israeli occupation is no different from other freedom movements against French or British occupation across the world. Palestinians aren’t simply
antisemitic, they want to live lives in freedom, dignity and safety just like we all do. I am a Jewish organizer and I have never experienced antisemitism from Palestinian comrades. The focus on antisemitism is a distraction used to discredit the Palestinian liberation movement.
They’re have been anti-Zionist Jews since the inception of Zionism as a movement. Equating the two is obviously just a way to repress criticism of Israel.
It doesn’t have to be but it almost always is. PJC
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