Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism: Same Idea, New Cloak

Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser | JCPA | Jan 27, 2025

Alisdare Hickson from Woolwich, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed each year on January 27 as a solemn reminder that the Holocaust was not an isolated atrocity but the result of incremental decisions and actions by individuals. These choices culminated in the largest genocide in human history, driven by waves of antisemitism, intolerance, and hatred.

Comparing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and showing that the latter is the modern form of the former may be easy if we simply use the U.S. State Department 2010 definition of anti-Semitism that states that “Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” (This is based on the Working Definition of Anti-Semitism by the European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia).

The State Department then provides a list of contemporary examples of anti-Semitism, many of which are performed by anti-Zionists:

1. Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews (often in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion).
2. Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as a collective especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.
3. Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, the state of Israel, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.
4. Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
5. Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interest of their own nations.

And finally the State Department clarifies what anti-Semitism is relative to Israel and provides examples of the ways in which anti-Semitism manifests itself as Anti-Zionism in this regard:

1. Demonizing Israel:
   1. Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism to characterize Israel or Israelis.
   2. Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
   3. Blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions.
2. Employing double standards for Israel:
   1. Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
   2. Multilateral organizations focusing on Israel only for peace or human rights investigations.
3. Delegitimizing Israel:
   1. Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist.

However, the State Department clarifies correctly that criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitism.

This correlation is substantiated in the findings of the AMCHA initiative report of 2016 about U.S. colleges. That report shows:

1. Strong correlation between anti-Zionist student groups such as “Students for Justice in Palestine” (SJP) and anti-Semitism,
2. Strong correlation between the presence of faculty who have expressed public support for an academic boycott of Israel and anti-Semitism,
3. BDS activity strongly correlates with anti-Semitic activity,
4. Presence of SJP, faculty boycotters and BDS are strong predictors of anti-Semitism,
5. Anti-Zionism permeates and is inseparable from contemporary campus anti-Semitism.

Yet, a deeper analysis of the similarities and the differences between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism requires thorough understanding of the broad perspective and context of the effort to delegitimize the existence of the nation state of the Jewish people in its ancestral homeland, which is the purpose and the realization of Zionism. The complex DNA and the ideological and political substructure of this delegitimization campaign, one of whose expressions is the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement, is constituted on the one hand in the Palestinian leadership’s 100 year old terror and ideological warfare against Zionism and its realization in the state of Israel and on the other hand in the extreme radical thinking and the ongoing anti-Semitic feelings in certain radical groups in the West.

As a matter of fact, delegitimization of Israel represents two ideas which are not mutually exclusive. First, it is a manifestation of a modern form of anti-Semitism. In the past hatred of the Jews and their discrimination and persecution were justified by false religious and later on racial argumentations, which are totally inconceivable today. Nowadays this attitude is justified by national argumentation claiming that the Jews should be treated differently from all other nations and that their state represents evil because of both the injustice embedded in its creation and prolonged existence and the horrible nature of the Jews who live there, and therefore its existence is unjustified and illegitimate.

Secondly, it is one of the arrows in the quiver of the Palestinian ongoing effort to bring about the end of Zionism. Palestinian and Arab boycotts of Zionism and attempts to delegitimize any international contact with Israel were used throughout the century of the conflict over the right of the Jews to have a state on any piece of the land of Israel\Palestine. But whereas in the past they were overshadowed by the bigger arrows such as Arab military interventions, Palestinian terrorism or even Palestinian political and diplomatic activity, in recent years its relative importance and visibility grew to the extent that the discussion it creates has gained traction in circles closer to the mainstream.