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‘The Guardian’ Turns ‘Zionism’ Into a Dirty Word in One-Sided Hit Piece
How do you turn 2,000 years of Jewish longing for a return to Zion into an insult and a slur? By mainstreaming extreme voices, distorting history, and placing the entire onus for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict solely on the shoulders of the Jewish state.
This is exactly what The Guardian did in its recently published piece, “How ‘Zionist’ became a slur on the US left.”
While this piece aims to analyze the use of the term “Zionist” as a slur by those on the far left of the political spectrum in general, and those taking part in the anti-Israel encampments at universities in particular, it is not a balanced and nuanced take on the subject.
Instead, it uncritically echoes the distortions and manipulations of those opposed to the movement for Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish peoples’ historical homeland.
Leave it to @guardian to publish a piece discussing how the word “Zionist” (someone who believes in self-determination for the Jewish people in their historical homeland) is an insult.
Naturally, one of the “experts” the Guardian consulted is pro-BDS, Israel-obsessed professor… pic.twitter.com/PuJdvmvhVt
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) May 13, 2024
Amplifying Anti-Zionists, Shunning Zionist Voices
For a piece aiming to answer such a thorny question, one would expect The Guardian to interview people with various viewpoints, including those who subscribe to traditional Zionism and those who oppose the Zionist movement.
However, aside from two brief references to a recent statement by Zionists at Columbia University and a quote by Bret Stephens on why he is a Zionist, this entire piece is filled with analyses and observations by those who are fully entrenched in the anti-Zionist camp.
While it is understandable that The Guardian quotes at length a representative for Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Simone Zimmerman, one of the founders of IfNotNow, in a piece about anti-Zionist student activists, the only two individuals interviewed are Peter Beinart and UCLA professor Saree Makdisi.
In typical Guardian fashion, Beinart’s fringe views are held up as evidence of supposed contradiction at the heart of liberal Zionism, while Makdisi is used to add context to the ongoing debates about Zionism on university campuses.
Aside from the fact that Saree Makdisi’s academic background is in literature and not Zionist philosophy, he is known for extreme anti-Israel views. As HonestReporting noted in 2016, he has a long history of questioning the Jewish State’s right to exist, spreading libels about Israel and the IDF, and demeaning those who express concerns about the extremes of anti-Israel activism.
Therefore, instead of offering readers what could have been a nuanced conversation about Zionism — that is, the movement for Jewish self-determination that has been weaponized into a slur — The Guardian offers nothing more than an anti-Zionist screed.
The Missing Context on Zionism and Zionist History
If The Guardian had included the opinions of Zionist academics or commentators, it is likely the piece would’ve taken a different tone. For one, readers might have been informed of the many distortions and manipulations expressed by both the writer and those interviewed.
First, this piece presents Zionism as a late-19th-century European ideology, ignoring the fact that one of the core precepts of Zionism (the return of the Jewish people to their historical homeland) has been a key element of Judaism for thousands of years.
By ignoring this historic continuation between Judaism and Zionism, this piece gives undue weight to the minority camp of anti-Zionist Jews who want to “reclaim Judaism from its association with Israel.”
It also means embracing the sheer absurdity of Saree Makdisi’s observation that he has no issue with a Jewish state in principle, just the issue of “where [the Jewish people] have this state.” This completely disregards the fact that the only just location for a Jewish state is in the land they have inhabited for thousands of years, which is the current location of the State of Israel.
In addition, the claims that Zionism “underpins the policies that drove their [the Palestinians’] mass displacement from what became Israel in 1948” and that the term “Zionist” is “emblematic of the violent state policies driving the war on Gaza” are ludicrous assertions that are unworthy of a serious piece of journalism.
Both claims are based on a superficial understanding of Israeli history, which apportions all blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Israel and Zionism, ignoring the fact that Palestinian dispossession in 1948 was the result of both the Arab refusal to accept the UN Partition Plan and the choice to engage in war against the budding Jewish state, while the current war in Gaza is the direct result of Hamas’ atrocities on October 7.
Whether it’s references to failed peace negotiations or the disappearance of the Jewish movement for a binational state before the creation of Israel, The Guardian seems intent on absolving the Palestinians of any responsibility for the violence that has wracked the region.
For a piece filled with one-sided bias and distorted facts, why did The Guardian present it as an objective news report instead of an opinion piece?
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post ‘The Guardian’ Turns ‘Zionism’ Into a Dirty Word in One-Sided Hit Piece first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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New York City Jews Targeted for Most Hate Crimes in March, NYPD Stats Show
Orthodox Jewish man waiting for the train in the New York City subway. Photo: Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect.
Jews in New York City were victims of more hate crimes in March than any other group even as crime across the Five Boroughs fell to “historic” lows, according to statistics issued by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) on Thursday.
39 hate crimes targeted Jews last month, the Algemeiner reviewed data shows, outstripping the combined total of all other groups combined — 28 — and constituting 58 percent of all hate crimes reported to authorities. So far, there have born 85 antisemitic hate crimes in New York City through the first three months of 2025, with the month of February seeing a 100 percent increase in them over the previous year and March seeing no improvement at all.
The data continues a trend that has persisted for several years and concurred with a rise in antisemitic incidents across the US.
Jews represented a disproportionate share of hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024 as well. Of the 641 total hate crimes tallied by the NYPD that year, Jews were victims of 345, which, in addition to being a 7 percent increase over the previous year, amounted to 54 percent of all hate crimes in the city.
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, antisemitic hate crimes have posed a major threat to the quality of life of New York City’s Orthodox Jewish community, which was the target in many of the incidents. In just eight days between the end of October and the beginning of November, three Hasidim, including children, were brutally assaulted in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. In one instance, an Orthodox man was accosted by two assailants, one masked, who “chased and beat him” after he refused to surrender his cellphone in compliance with what appeared to have been an attempted robbery.
In another incident, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. Less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking in Brooklyn. Days after the week-long antisemitic hate crime spree, three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the Crown Heights neighborhood.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post New York City Jews Targeted for Most Hate Crimes in March, NYPD Stats Show first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration
(Source: Reuters)
NYC Dyke March, a public demonstration held by members of the lesbian community in New York City, has banned self-proclaimed “Zionists” from its annual event, citing a desire to stand against the so-called “genocide” occuring in Gaza.
The group revealed in a statement that their decision to ban Israel supporters from their ranks came after multiple members dropped out of the organization due to differences in “political beliefs and values.” After engaging in discussions with frustrated members, the NYC Dyke March committee agreed to adopt “an explicitly anti-Zionist position.” The organization claims that it will “strengthen our commitment” to fighting against Israel and advocating on behalf of Palestinians.
Last year, the NYC Dyke March previously came under scrutiny after organizers settled on “genocide” as the theme of its 2024 event. In a statement, decrying “ethnic cleansing, violence, and dehumanization,” the organization compared the ongoing war in Gaza, to the mass slaughters occurring in Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Sudan.
The organization plans on recycling the same theme for this year’s march, titling it “Dykes Against Genocide.” The group released a statement clarifying that Jews are allowed to attend and condemned the Oct. 7 slaughters as a “senseless loss of life.” After an apparent uproar from its members, the organization deleted the post and wrote that the group “unapologetically stands in support of Palestinian liberation.” In addition, the group affirmed that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism and any language we put out which is not clearly opposed to a Zionist, imperialist agenda is harmful to us all.”
In the 17 months following the Hamas-led massacre of roughly 1200 people throughout Israel, the NYC Dyke March has produced numerous statements lambasting Israel and declaring “solidarity” with Palestinians amid their so-called “ongoing genocide.” The organization also accused Israel of engaging in supposed “pinkwashing” and “manipulative use of Jewish and queer identities,” with the aim of justifying its war efforts in Gaza.
Israel offers an expansive set of rights for members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transngender (LGBT) community, including recognition of same-sex marriages. Every year in June, Tel Aviv holds one of the largest LGBT Pride celebrations in the world. Meanwhile, members of the LGBT community are routinely imprisoned or murdered in other parts of the Middle East, including the Palestinian territories.
The NYC Dyke March’s announcement was met with widespread condemnation.
“You cannot exclude the majority of Jews and call yourself inclusive,” said the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in a post on X/Twitter, adding that the group “essentially equates Zionism with racism” in their announcement.
The post NYC ‘Dyke March’ Bans Zionists From Participating in Annual Demonstration first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with journalists onboard Air Force One en route to Miami, Florida, U.S., April 3, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
The Trump administration reportedly plans to terminate $510 million worth of federal contracts and grants awarded to Brown University, according to media reports.
Brown University’s failure to mount a satisfactory response to the campus antisemitism crisis, as well as its embrace of the diversity, equity, and, inclusion (DEI) movement — perceived by many across the political spectrum as an assault on merit-based upward mobility and causing incidents of anti-White and anti-Asian discrimination — prompted the alleged pending action by the federal government, according to the right-leaning outlet The Daily Caller.
The announcement comes as Brown scrambles to cover a $46 million budget shortfall and other universities across the country have faced similar funding cuts.
Brown University officials, however, denied that the university had received any directives from the Trump Administration.
“We have no information to substantiate these rumors,” Brown University provost Francis Doyle issued a statement. “We are closely monitoring notifications related to grants, but have nothing more we can share as of now.”
Meanwhile, Brown’s Jewish community rushed to the university’s defense, issuing a joint statement with the Brown Corporation which said that the campus is “peaceful and supportive campus for its Jewish community.”
The letter, signed by members of the local Hillel International chapter and Chabad on College Hill, continued: “Brown University is a place where Jewish life not only exists but thrives. While there is more work to be done, Brown, through the dedicated efforts of its administration, leadership, and resilient spirit of its Jewish community, continues to uphold the principles of inclusion, tolerance, and intellectual freedom that have been central to its identity since 1764.”
Brown Divest Coalition — an anti-Zionist group which recently saw its campaign for the university to adopt the boycott, divest, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel defeated by the Brown Corporation — weighed in too, denouncing the reported cut as “a means of suppressing all forms of popular dissent to the renewed violence of the US war machine abroad.” US Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) also criticized the move, accusing the administration “of a broader pattern of behavior…that will negatively impact communities across the country and lead to layoffs, restrict research, and more.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the Trump administration is following through on its threats to inflict potentially catastrophic financial injuries on colleges and universities deemed as soft on antisemitism or excessively “woke.” The past six weeks has seen the policy imposed on elite universities including Harvard and Columbia, rattling a higher education establishment that has for better and worse operated for decades with little interference from the federal government even as it polarized the public and contributed to a growing sense that elites are contemptuous of Americans who live outside of their cultural enclaves.
In March, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal contracts and grants for Columbia University, a measure that secured the school’s acceding to a slew of demands the administration put forth as preconditions for restoring the money. Later, the Trump administration disclosed its reviewing $9 billion worth of federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard University, jeopardizing a substantial source of the school’s income over its alleged failure to quell antisemitic and pro-Hamas activity on campus following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. Princeton University saw $210 million of its federal grants and funding suspended too, prompting its president, Christopher Eisgruber to say the institution is “committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination.”
Additionally, 60 universities are being investigated by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights over their handling of campus antisemitism, a project that will serve as an early test of the administration’s ability to perform the essential functions of the agency after downsizing its workforce to increase its efficiency.
One of those universities, Northwestern University, on Monday touted its progress in addressing campus antisemitism, noting that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool which aids officials in determining what constitutes antisemitism, and begun holding “mandatory antisemitism training” sessions which “all students, faculty, and staff” must attend.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Trump Administration Planning $510 Million Cut to Brown University Budget, Report Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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