Rabbi Wendi Geffen of a Reform congregation outside Chicago gave a sermon after the last Gaza conflict saying anti-Zionist Jews must not be allowed inside the Jewish “tent” because the “vast majority” of Jews support Israel. And she said the assertion by some Jews that Zionism contradicts progressive values is a threat to the Jewish people more dangerous than external threats. Her views are important because they reflect official Jewish statements that conflate Zionism and Judaism.

Emad Moussa calls on Palestinians and their allies to avoid dealing with the accusations of antisemitism in a defensive fashion; for it distracts from the moral objectives of the Palestine problem. Rather, we must declare: It is bigotry not to recognize Palestinians as an independent entity and acknowledge their historical rights.

French writer Bernard-Henri Levy makes an absurd assertion on Kristallnacht anniversary– that just as Jews ignored the warning signs of the coming storm in 1938, they are ignoring signs now; “anti-Zionism and hatred of Israel” are “black stars which are above our heads, which are still under control for the moment but which could be the prelude to the worst.”

Right after Israel’s foreign minister derided social media portrayal of Israel at an ADL conference, two New York Times staffers came on to criticize social media for spreading antisemitism and conspiracy theories. Their appearance was an implicit endorsement of the Israel lobby group, with the imprimatur of the New York Times.

Charges of antisemitism are being used as a weapon to weaken Palestinian solidarity. It is time for this tactic to be called out and confronted head-on.

Supporters of Palestinian human rights are always accused of antisemitism. Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s gave a strong answer to such charges when he said he is “totally fine” with them because they are absurd. “I mean, What? I’m anti-Jewish! I mean, I’m a Jew, all my family is Jewish, my friends are Jewish.”

Britain’s pro-Israel lobby gained another victory last week after a prolonged campaign of intimidation finally pushed a major UK university into firing one of its lecturers. Bristol University dismissed David Miller, a political sociology professor, even though an official investigation had concluded that accusations of antisemitism against him were unfounded. Research by Miller, a leading scholar on propaganda, had charted networks of influence in the UK in relation to Islamophobia that included the very pro-Israel lobby groups that worked to get him fired.

The pogroms against Palestinians that are a weekly occurrence, and the long reign of Netanyahu, have all been rendered “understandable” by a crew of hasbara culture journalists like Yair Rosenberg, Bret Stephens, David Frum, and Jeffrey Goldberg, who have purveyed a mythology of Jews as the sacred special victims of history. The ethnocentricity has laid waste to Jewish political culture.

Pro-Israel writers have dismissed all criticism, opposition and even enmity to Israel and its actions as springing from an ancient malady, antisemitism. They thereby erase the true history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, in a so-far successful effort to discredit the critics. Israel’s actions exist very much in history, and its supporters use very sharp elbows and knees to get its way.

The chief judge of the federal Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals used Zionism to argue for a religious exemption to Colorado’s anti-discrimination act.