How Zionism Feeds Antisemitism
Our best hope against antisemitism is to defeat Israel’s dual campaign to raze Gaza and bind our fate as Jews to that insidious project.
A young person holds a sign that reads “Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism” during a “Freedom for Palestine” protest march that drew thousands of participants on November 4, 2023, in Berlin, Germany.
The cynicism of House Resolution 894 “strongly condemning and denouncing the drastic rise of antisemitism in the United States and around the world” is boundless. Put forward by two Jewish Republicans, Representatives David Kustoff and Max Miller, it states that the official view of the US Congress is that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” This is unserious, inane, and dangerous.
Democratic Representative Jerry Nadler, also Jewish, replied to HR 894, by saying: “With this resolution, the GOP has shown themselves fundamentally unserious about combatting antisemitism.… its authors carefully avoided mentioning any of the obvious instances of antisemitism coming from their own leaders.… For example, the resolution implicitly compares some peaceful protesters with the January 6th rioters and insurrectionists.… More problematically, the resolution suggests that ALL anti-Zionism—it states that all anti-Zionism is antisemitism. That is either intellectually disingenuous or just factually wrong.… the authors, if they were at all familiar with Jewish history and culture should know about Jewish anti-Zionism that was and is expressly NOT anti-Semitic.
Good for Nadler for speaking truth in the face of Orwellian absurdity. But it’s not enough. This bill is part of a larger movement to make people feel unsafe to say that they oppose Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. If you think it is a coincidence that we are getting this “resolution” as the temporary cease-fire ends and as Israel is expanding its killing campaign into the south of Gaza, then, as my Bubbe would say, I have this bridge in Brooklyn you just have to buy. If you think that the rash of stories this week where Israeli police are releasing “new information” about the Hamas killings of October 7 just as the bombings move south are also a coincidence, then maybe I could throw in the Manhattan Bridge for free.
This is a bill that will receive near-unanimous support from antisemitic Republicans and Christian Zionists like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson: the people who love Israel and hate Jews. That any Democrat would link arms, or in Chuck Schumer’s case hold hands, with these people is a mark of shame.
But that’s not the only reason to oppose HR 894. We must stand against condemning anti-Zionism as antisemitism, because it will only feed the existing hate against the Jewish community, much of which is already afraid. While it’s true, as I wrote in October and as Nadler affirms, that anti-Zionism and antisemitism should never be conflated, it is also true that this kind of ham-fisted, coercive defense of Israel aids and abets antisemitism—an antisemitism that then becomes exploited and weaponized to support Benjamin Netanyahu’s martial agenda.
by Dave Zirin