But projecting ancient antisemitic stereotypes, conspiracies, and tropes onto the world’s only Jewish state, where half of the world’s Jews live, is not “criticism of Israel.”
Just as you should be able to criticize the regime in Sudan without anti-Blackness, you should be able to criticize the State of Israel’s government, policies, and politicians without peddling ancient antisemitic tropes, conspiracies, and stereotypes. Just as you should be able to criticize Barack Obama without racist caricatures, you should be able to criticize Benjamin Netanyahu without antisemitic caricatures that look like they could have come out of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer (ultimately, antisemitic caricatures perpetrate antisemitic stereotypes that probably won’t affect Netanyahu much, but they will hurt your Jewish friends and family). It’s not that hard.
When you believe every single thing the Jewish state does must have some nefarious, manipulative intention (e.g. thinking Tel Aviv Pride is just a pinkwashing ploy to detract from Israel’s crimes against Palestinians), or when you sincerely believe that a country the size of New Jersey with 0.1% of the world’s population is behind most of the planet’s evils, you are not operating based on reality. You are operating off a conspiratorial worldview called antisemitism. And that’s not “criticism of Israel.” That’s an ancient, deadly bigotry.
But calling for violence against Israelis, especially Israeli civilians, is not “criticism of Israel.”
You would think that this would be entirely self-explanatory. Advocating for mass shootings in the United States, for example, is in no universe equivalent to criticizing the policies of the Trump administration. Likewise, calling for violence against Israeli citizens – through bombings, stabbings, car-rammings, shootings, and more – is in no way equivalent to criticizing the policies of the Israeli government. Nobody is genuinely unable to make that very clear distinction; anyone pretending otherwise is being dishonest.
Much of the rhetoric we hear from the pro-Palestine crowd is in no way legitimate criticism of anything or anyone. For example, we’ve heard pro-Palestine protestors chant “bomb, bomb Tel Aviv,” “by any means necessary” (the means: children burnt to ashes), and “globalize the Intifada,” the last and bloodiest of which predominantly targeted civilians. What about Israel are they criticizing, exactly?
But denying over three millennia of Jewish history is not “criticism of Israel.”
Denying any people their history is bigoted. Denying a historically marginalized group its history – one that our ancestors fought so hard to preserve in the face of the unimaginable – is especially bigoted.
Jewish history is exceptionally well-recorded, both by Jews and non-Jews alike. We know where our ancestors came from and what was important to them because they made sure to pass that information down to us, generation to generation.
Thinking that you get to swoop in, 3000 years later, to deny us this history because it inconveniences your political narrative about a 100-year-old conflict is not only bigoted, but deeply entitled. Who do you think you are?
But delegitimizing, distorting, or denying over three millennia of Jewish identity is not “criticism of Israel.”
I don’t care if it inconveniences your narrative: for millennia, it’s been extensively well-established that today’s Jews are the direct genetic and cultural descendants of the ancient Israelites. It’s been extensively well-established that the Jewish people became a people in the Land of Israel, and that the Land of Israel has continued to play a central and important role in Jewish identity. It’s been extensively well-established that the Jews who were never displaced from the Land of Israel maintained strong cultural and communal relations with the Jews in the Diaspora, considering members of the same nation. In fact, it’s been extensively well-established that Jews have historically seen ourselves as an “am” – a nation – rather than a religious group.
You do not get to rewrite our very identity because it discomforts the overly simplistic narratives that you’ve been sold about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Our ancestors endured the unendurable for 3000 years to preserve this identity. You don’t get to take it away from us, and any attempt to do so is plain bigotry and entitlement, not criticism.
But discriminating against Israelis or against Jews because of their (real or perceived) connections to Israel is not “criticism of Israel.”
Discriminating against people based on their country of nationality is called xenophobia. Xenophobia, like antisemitism, is a bigotry, not a criticism. About 78% of Israelis were born in Israel, and like you, they didn’t choose where they were born (for comparison, around 85% of Americans were born in the United States. Not such a drastic difference).
For example, boycotting Israeli restaurants is not “criticism of Israel.” It’s blatant xenophobia. You are well within your right to boycott any business or establishment whose political views or values don’t align with your own, but someone’s nationality alone is not a political view or a value.
Likewise, marginalizing Jews out of every facet of public life (e.g. creating boycott lists of “Zionist” therapists or authors) based on tenuous connections to Israel – say, having family there, or having visited there – is not “criticism of Israel.” It’s blatant antisemitism. Newsflash: the vast majority of the world’s Jews have links to Israel, given that half of us live there (the reason half of us live there? Well, mostly because we were expelled from other countries and had nowhere else to go).
But Holocaust denial is not “criticism of Israel.”
Calling Israelis or the State of Israel “Nazis” is a form of Holocaust denial. How come? Holocaust denial is not necessarily only a denial that the Holocaust happened at all, but much more commonly, it’s a distortion or denial of the basic historical facts about the Holocaust.
Some of the basic facts about the Holocaust are the following: (1) the Nazis persecuted and targeted all Jews for extermination, whether they were Zionists or not. Thus, Zionists cannot be Nazis; (2) internal and public Nazi documents extensively demonstrate that the Nazis were vehemently opposed to the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state (for a more thorough breakdown, please see my post “Nazi Views on the Zionist Movement”). Thus, the Jewish state cannot be the inheritor of Nazism; (3) during and after the Holocaust, the Nazi regime and Nazi figures collaborated with the Arabs against the establishment of a Jewish state, not in favor of it (see my posts “Palestine and the Holocaust” and “Final Solution, Rebranded” for more on this).
Needless to say, Holocaust denial is not “criticism” of Israel (or of anything else).
But holding Israel – or Israelis or Jews – to double standards is not “criticism of Israel.”
Self-determination is considered a basic tenet of international law. If you believe all national groups have a right to self-determination except for Jews, that is a clear double standard rooted in antisemitic bias (and if you don’t believe Jews are a “national group,” you are choosing to distort over three millennia of Jewish identity, during which we have predominantly identified not as a religious group, but as an “am” – a nation).
Say, then, that you don’t believe in nation-states. That’s your right. But in that case, you shouldn’t support the free Palestine movement, either, as that is exactly what the movement advocates for – a Palestinian nation state.
And look: even if you don’t support the existence of any nation-state, how come you think the Jewish one, where half of the world’s Jewish population lives, where the vast majority of Jews arrived as refugees with nowhere else to call home, should be the first one to go?
But calling for the destruction of Israel is not “criticism of Israel.”
The State of Israel exists. It has existed for the past 77 years. It exists along with the 9.5 million people of all backgrounds who call the nation home. We are no longer in 1947, when the (re)establishment of a sovereign Jewish state was a matter of debate. It’s been established.
There is no reasonable scenario in which the State of Israel ceases to exist without significant bloodshed of both Israelis and Palestinians. All historical precedent – in Israel and outside of it – makes this clear. Countries don’t just peacefully and bloodlessly dismantle themselves. As always, it’s innocent civilians that will pay the highest price. Palestinian terrorist groups like Hamas are well-aware of this, which is why they not only advocate for “jihad” and “armed resistance,” but insist that the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are a “small price” to pay for their “liberation.”
Calling for the destruction of Israel is not criticism. It’s calling for violence, which will affect innocents the most.
Some important takeaways...
(1) In most cases (at least that I’ve personally seen), the phrase “but criticism of Israel is not antisemitic!” is a red herring, because what most Jews object to is not actually criticism of Israel, but rather, antisemitic rhetoric or behavior loosely disguised under the facade of “anti-Zionism” or “criticism of Israel.”
(2) That’s not to say some Jews can’t weaponize accusations of antisemitism to silence legitimate criticism of Israel, because of course it happens sometimes. But any member of any minority or marginalized group can weaponize accusations of bigotry (for example, though rare, it is possible for a woman to lie about being raped by a man); Jews aren’t unique in that regard. That doesn’t mean the bigotry in question doesn’t exist or that all accusations of said bigotry shouldn’t be investigated seriously.
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