ANTI-ZIONISM = ANTI-SEMITISM?

THE ARGUMENTS ONE-BY-ONE.

Some arguments in defense of Zionism have recently made an appearance here on this blog. And in fact theree is a pro-Israel offensive being mounted in the media and in society that have had serious sonsequences for students, faculty, administrators, and other citizens and residents of the United States. To be clear, defenders of genocide are neither respected nor gladly welcomed on this blog. Neither do we, however, screen members nor make much of an effort to censor; though we certainly reserve the right to do so. We would rather publicly rebuke and shame advocates of injustice. All of that aside, here are the most popular gambits offered by apologists for Zionism.

1). ONLY the Jews are DENIED the right to self-determination. This is tantamount to antisemitism.

How about the Kurds or the Basques, Catalans, Scots, Kashmiris, Tibetans, Abkhazians, Ossetians, Lombards, Igbo, Oromo, Uyghurs, Tamils and Québécois. These people all have organized nationalist movements to seek self-determination and last time we checked, they had no ethno-state. This argument has no gas … unless it’s methane.

And, btw, no one suggests that failure to support a Kurdish, Catalan, or Igbo state is tantamount to bigotry. In fact, political scientists and others generally recognize that states based on ethnic nationalism – states created to represent and protect one particular ethnic group – are fraught and troubled . What to do with minorities? Expulsion? Ethnic cleansing? Curtailed rights? Civic nationalism or nationalism built around borders rather than ethnicity ,with an equality of civil rights, has clear advantages. If you live in the latter, you should think carefully about what it takes to defend it from those who seek to break with those values.

2). New York Times writer Bret Stephens has outlined the next line of offense: “It is one thing to argue, in the moot court of historical what-ifs, that Israel should not have come into being, Israel is now the home of nearly 9 million citizens, with an identity that is as distinctively and proudly Israeli as the Dutch are Dutch or the Danes Danish. Anti-Zionism proposes nothing less than the elimination of that identity and the political dispossession of those who cherish it.”

Wrong again. It is neither antisemitic nor bigoted to advocate transformation of a state based on ethnic nationalism into one based on civic nationalism based on an equality of rights. Jewishness is not determined by geography.

3). Columnist Stephens carries the argument to its next claim: “Of course it’s theoretically possible to distinguish anti-Zionism from antisemitism, just as it’s theoretically possible to distinguish segregationism from racism.” But just as virtually all segregationists were racists, almost all anti-Zionists are also antisemites. The two are interchangeable.

How to explain then that the core of anti-Zionist protest and action is Jewish? And that a great MANY of the most religious Jews are opposed to Zionism? Argument 3 amounts to a weak attempt at guilt-by-association. It falls on its face.

Want to know how you would have reacted during the incarceration of the Japanese in WWII or the Holocaust in Europe? What you are doing now — or not doing — in the face of a live-streamed genocide makes a good estimate. “We felt helpless. We couldn’t do anything.” Ever ask yourself how often that was said by German citizens in 1940?

There are MANY Jewish voices in opposition to the Zionist project and the live-stream genocide broadcast every single day. Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro is one of the most articulate. Direct, coherent, historical, and to the point:

And finally, WWTPD ? (What would Tom Paine do?). Why, the right thing … every time, of course:

”Mingling religion with politics may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.”
Common Sense