These days, criticizing Israel
gets backlash like this.
When the ICC investigates Israel for fake war crimes,
this is
“From the river to the sea” is
Those calling for a ceasefire are
But here's the thing:
Investigating Israel for war crimes or demanding a ceasefire in Gaza
is not antisemitic, which is hatred of Jews.
It's criticism of the state of Israel.
And the two are not the same thing.
So how did criticism of Israel and charges of antisemitism
come to be interchangeable, and what have the consequences been?
I spoke to two Jewish experts who work closely on the issue.
This has become a well-worn strategy of the Israeli government
and its defenders to conflate all criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
- That’s Simone Zimmerman, who's with the Diaspora Alliance.
It's an organization that fights antisemitism and its misuse.
It's an insult to Jewish history.
And it cheapens the idea of what these words actually mean.
- And this is Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace
and a leading expert on Israel and Palestine.
So if you can't win the arguments over Israeli policy,
you're going to have to just shut down the criticism of Israel.
There's something so twisted about where we are today.
So how did we get here?
Well, if you listen to the pro-Israel establishment and its supporters,
you hear the conflation of two very distinct terms:
Anti-Zionism is antisemitism.
Period, full stop.
Anti-Zionism is the modern mutated form of antisemitism.
The high antisemitism now is anti-Zionism.
Okay, Let's first unpack the definition of these terms.
Antisemitism means hatred, prejudice, threats and violence against Jews
because they're Jewish.
It's very real and it exists.
Antisemitism in Europe is what led to the Holocaust,
during which 6 million Jews were murdered by Nazis.
Anti-Zionism, on the other hand, is the movement against Zionism.
Zionism is an ideology
that took root in the late 19th century among some Jews in Europe.
It's the belief that Jews should have their own separate Jewish ethno-state,
and it led to the creation of Israel in 1948
at the expense of the Indigenous Palestinian population that lived there.
Anti-Zionism challenges the very ideological basis of Israel
as a nation-state.
The movement existed decades before Israel, originally among
Eastern European Jews who opposed Zionism's objective of moving Jews out of Europe.
- The Zionist project to this day is built on an ideology of supremacy
that provides exclusive and superior rights only for Jews.
Anti-Zionism rejects that ideology of Jewish supremacy
and seeks to dismantle it.
Now it's important to note that not all Zionists are Jews.
In fact, evangelical Christians are some of the most fervent Zionists in the world.
It's a topic I reported on while in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.
And just as not all Zionists are Jews, not all Jews are Zionists,
although many are taught from a young age that supporting Israel
should be part of their identity.
For me, growing up,
being pro-Israel was a core part of my Jewish identity.
I saw attacks on Israel as a personal attack.
For decades, there's been a concerted effort
to collapse the distinction between the Jewish religion and Zionism.
And that significantly ramped up in the 2000s,
after it became clear that Israeli leaders
had abandoned all pretenses of seeking a political solution with Palestinians.
- You can no longer, with a straight face, say that Israel really wants peace,
they support a two-state solution,
they don't want to oppress the Palestinians.
That's where we saw the birth of this new definition of antisemitism.
That definition Lara is talking about
is at the crux of this growing trend
to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
It's known as the
IHRA stands for
Who could be against an organization that's trying to remember the Holocaust
and make sure people don't forget? That's a good thing.
You would think.
But in 2016, the definition IHRA published included 11 contemporary examples
of antisemitism, six of which relate to Israel, including that it's
antisemitic to claim
“that the existence of a state of Israel
is a racist endeavor.”
Side note: Israel was created as a Jewish ethno-state, treating Jewishness as a race,
violently expelling the Palestinian majority,
and enforcing what even Israel's leading human rights organization calls
an apartheid system.
But the IHRA definition won't have that.
- The argument was made that all or most criticism of Israel is antisemitism.
We're going to put this in a definition.
We're now going to take this definition and put it into law around the world,
and we're going to use this as a blunt instrument to shut down
once and for all these arguments.
And that's where we are today.
- At least 40 governments have adopted the IHRA definition,
as well as hundreds of universities and NGOs around the world.
Even as scholars and dozens of human rights groups like Amnesty International
decry its implementation.
That's because the IHRA definition has been weaponized to silence criticism
of Israel, curtail freedom of speech and foster anti-Palestinian racism.
A 2023 report found dozens of cases
where IHRA was explicitly used to target
those advocating for Palestinian rights throughout Europe,
even for something as simple as liking a social media post
that condemned Israel's actions.
And it's happening in the U.S. too.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution in late 2023
that equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism as defined by IHRA.
And the spirit of IHRA is guiding organizations like the pro-Israel
Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, in how they track antisemitism.
For instance, a recent ADL report found a huge spike
in antisemitic incidents in the U.S. after October 7th.
But when you dig deeper into the numbers, you find that 40% of those incidents
were simply pro-Palestine rallies,
many of which, by the way, were led by Jewish organizers.
- An organization like the ADL, have no qualms in
just calling thousands of Jews antisemitic.
The whole thing would be laughable if it weren't so insulting.
And the IHRA definition is finding its way into laws.
As of 2024, four U.S. states
explicitly have the IHRA definition of antisemitism
in their hate crime laws, with many more attempting to do so.
There's a reason why the people who want to shut down
Palestine voices, Palestine protesters, want the IHRA definition
in the hate crimes law.
It's being used to attack Palestinian voices,
or pro-Palestine voices, pretty much across every part of society.
And that's especially true on college campuses.
U.S. universities have always been a place where anti-Israel speech
has been curtailed.
But in 2019, this practice of silencing pro-Palestine voices was legitimized
when former President Donald Trump signed an executive order
that enforced the IHRA definition on college campuses.
The biggest problem is a chilling effect.
We see lawsuit after lawsuit
and complaint after complaint
targeting activists on campus,
targeting administrators, targeting professors.
We literally have cases based on somebody [that] had a sign
that said “river to the sea.”
So you're claiming it's a hate crime.
By the way, it's worth noting that the guy who drafted the IHRA definition
later spoke out against how it's been weaponized by the right-wing
Jewish community, writing that using IHRA to define hate speech on campus
is an attack on free speech, and will not only harm
pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students.
Do you see this effort to silence any sort of criticism of Israel as antisemitic
as harmful to Jews, and dangerous?
Absolutely.
I have no problem saying, absolutely, clearly, it is antisemitic
to conflate Israel and Jews.
And the ADL and I agree on that.
The problem is that the ADL also say,
“If you don't conflate Israel and Jews, you're an antisemite.”
And that's incredibly dangerous.
Because my argument,
which says you shouldn't go out and target a Jewish kid
because they're Jewish and hold them accountable for what Israel is doing,
but you're simultaneously insisting that every Jewish kid on campus,
support for Israel and Zionism is intrinsic to their identity,
you're effectively conflating every Jewish person with the state of Israel.
That is incredibly dangerous.
- And in the midst of all this,
you have Israeli leaders promoting nationalist interests
over fighting actual antisemitism around the world.
- There's a history of Israeli government leaders actually playing down
very dangerous forms of right-wing antisemitism,
because some of the very same people that promote that
are allies of the Israeli government,
who they see as part of building a world of racism and fear and division.
- Take, for example, the far-right, xenophobic prime minister of Hungary,
or the Italian prime minister,
who herself was a member of a neo-fascist movement as a teenager,
who have both found a friend in Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
And, of course, former President Trump, who courted white supremacists
and his base and called neo-Nazi protesters "very fine people."
But Israeli leaders like Netanyahu give all of them a pass
because they have the “right” view on Israel.
And in the face of the very real threat of antisemitism perpetrated
by white supremacists,
we've also seen some Israeli leaders implicate Palestinians
as a similar threat to Jews.
In 2018, a white supremacist killed 11 Jewish worshippers
at a Pittsburgh synagogue in what was the worst attack on Jews in U.S. history.
But listen to how this Israeli leader, speaking to that congregation a few days later,
seemingly equated the white supremacist perpetrator with Palestinians,
who had nothing to do with the attack.
From Sderot in Israel, to Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania,
the hand that fires missiles
is the same hand that shoots worshippers.
We will fight against the hatred of Jews and antisemitism
wherever it raises its head.
- He drew a direct line
from the Pittsburgh shooter to Palestinian militants.
There are real reasons why so many Jews are afraid
for their own safety.
And very often we see Israeli government leaders
weaponize that fear and misdirect it at Palestinians.
Palestinians are not responsible for the Holocaust.
And yet the state of Israel repeatedly uses
the memory of the Holocaust to stoke anti-Palestinian racism
and to justify its actions against Palestinians.
And to shield itself from international law.
When Israel was recently on trial for genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,
at the International Court of Justice –
a court set up in the wake of the Holocaust
to prevent the atrocities that Jews had experienced –
many Israeli leaders accused the court of antisemitism.
The Hague hearing ... it's a show of shame,
hypocrisy and
- The idea that the Israeli government is weaponizing
the legacy of these international institutions
to evade any consequences for the atrocities in Gaza,
it's just, it's such a tragedy of history.
Antisemitism is a very real threat to the millions of Jews around the world.
But advocating for a free Palestine,
holding a pro-Palestine rally,
or demanding Israel be held accountable for war crimes,
are not antisemitic actions.
Saying they are only leads to dangerous trends – suppressing free speech,
allowing Israel to evade accountability and obscuring actual antisemitism.