Don’t be fooled – Biden is the real antisemite

On May 6th, 2024, US President Joe Biden, in a speech on antisemitism, said, “To the Jewish community, I want you to know, I see your hurt, your fear, your pain. Let me reassure you. As your President, you are not alone. You belong. You always have and you always will.” I am a Jewish American but when Biden addressed “the Jewish community,” he was not speaking to me. When Biden said, “you are not alone, you belong,” he was not reassuring me. I am not part of Biden’s imagined monolithic Jewish community and he made that very clear as he continued: “My commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel, and it’s right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad.” For Biden, the only good Jews are Zionists – those who support Israel and its settler colonial project. But what about the rest of us? We Jews who reject a conflation of Judaism and Zionism? We Jews who say never again and mean never again for everyone? We Jews who are calling for a free Palestine and an end to Israel’s occupation?

I am an anti-Zionist Jew. This is the core of my Jewish identity. Such clarity, shared by so many, has been demonized around the world. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the United States, where our government continues to fund Israel’s genocide in Palestine, where American media outlets reproduce Israeli propaganda and call it news, where university administrators silence all dissent under the guise of antisemitism. If you are paying attention, much of this dissent is coming from anti-Zionist Jews but this identity and ethical political position has been framed as impossible by those in power, who are invested in preserving racism, imperialism, and settler colonial violence by flattening a heterogenous religious and ethnic group into a Zionist monolith.

Right now, Zionists like Biden are weaponizing antisemitism to silence anti-Zionist Jews like me. Biden is not alone. I am a tenured college professor who teaches and writes about Palestine. Because of this work, I have received death threats, hateful emails, and calls from students, colleagues, and alumni for me to be fired. Almost all of these attacks have come from Jews who identify as Zionists and see me as a threat. In January 2024, my college caved to this pressure and placed me on administrative leave. I have been removed from my classroom, barred from campus, and locked out of my college email account. I may soon lose my job. All because the comfort of Zionist students has been privileged over the lives of Palestinians, who are being slaughtered by the tens of thousands, starved by the hundreds of thousands, and displaced by the millions.

People like Biden tell Jews that our only real identity is that of victim, whether it be from the legacy of the holocaust or the specter of antisemitism. This narrative of victimhood supports Israel’s occupation of Palestine and genocide in Gaza. This narrative runs so deep that Zionists have convinced themselves they are victimized by Palestinians, the people whose land they are occupying and whose people they are genociding. Currently, President Biden and many congressional leaders are co-opting antisemitism in order to silence dissent. They are redefining antisemitism – a very real form of hate, bias, and violence – by conflating Judaism and Zionism. We cannot let this happen. Not only does it undermine our democratic ideals, it also declares there is only one way to be Jewish and renders all other Jews as either impossible or, themselves, antisemitic.

Despite my skepticism, there were parts of Biden’s speech that resonated with me. He said, “The truth is, we are at risk of people not knowing the truth.” He’s right, but not in reference to the Holocaust. Right now, we are seeing those in power – whether in our government, our media, or our schools – actively denying Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, begun in 1948 and continuing into the present. Anti-Zionists are a threat to this project. The stakes here are critical. We cannot let our government redefine antisemitism to include anti-Zionism – this would frame most Palestinians and many Jews as inherently antisemitic. We cannot let our leaders deny the very real genocide being carried out in Gaza, with our tax dollars and in our name. This war of words in the US has very real consequences – the lives of everyone in Gaza.

Biden has made it clear that he doesn’t care about Palestinians, whether they be in Gaza or the United States. But, despite his posturing, Biden doesn’t care about Jews, either. His interest is only in garnering support from those who share his white supremacist Zionist project in occupied Palestine. To this end, Jews can be very helpful, as long as they are Zionists. The rest of us are enemies of the state. But I’d rather be an enemy than a Zionist – at least here I’m in good company.