The Israeli slide to religious fundamentalism and ultranationalism has made more people realize that many Jews oppose Zionism not out of “self-hate,” but because we believe in the equality of all human beings.
I met Yair Lapid when I was an adolescent Zionist. I now recognize that Zionism has only served to uphold the basic tenets of antisemitism — that Jews do not belong in the world.
Larry Haiven shares more than two dozen recent examples of the pro-Israel lobby’s cancel culture playbook in action in Canada.
Scholar Achille Mbembe was booked to speak at a German festival, but he has been smeared as antisemitic for likening Israel to apartheid South Africa and supporting the boycott campaign. Israel lobbyists are also targeting the festival director, Stefanie Carp.
The witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn for supposed ‘anti-Semitism’ has been a consistent feature in British politics, orchestrated by Israel and its allies also in Jewish organizations. Chief UK rabbi Mirvis has just served a desperate incitement-blow in a Times article.
Last week Ami Ayalon, a former Israeli security official, urged American Jews at J Street to restrain Israel’s “unjust” war in Palestine because it fuels anti-Semitism around the world. The statement is remarkable because that view is generally seen as anathema: saying that Israel’s actions have any role in the growth of anti-Semitism.
In recent weeks, the chancellors at the University of Illinois and University of Massachusetts have targeted pro-Palestinian voices on their respective campuses. The Illinois Student Government responded by passing a resolution titled “Condemning Ignorance of Racism and Equating Anti-Zionism with Anti-Semitism,” but the attacks come amidst a wider crackdown on such perspectives which is being fueled by the Trump administration’s Department of Education.
UMass Amherst Students for Justice in Palestine write an open letter to the university chancellor demanding a retraction on allegations against the BDS movement and demand that the university make a clear public statement explaining the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
Batya Ungar-Sargon asked students not to protest Ruth Wisse at Bard because she’s a Holocaust survivor, giving her a pass for anti-Arab racism. The panel she did want the students to protest featured Ungar-Sargon and a black Jew, Shahanna McKinney-Baldon, who now seeks an apology for Ungar-Sargon’s error-laden account of the event.