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The Bitter Truth About Anti-Zionism
Journalist Michelle Goldberg. Photo: www.michellegoldberg.net.
JNS.org – Collisions are often unintentional. Bumping into someone as you walk down a busy thoroughfare with one eye on your cell phone or scraping a parked car as you reverse along a narrow street are experiences most of us have had at one time or another. And generally speaking, because these events are accidents, reasonable people can reach an understanding in their aftermath.
So my concern when I saw the headline above a March 11 opinion piece in The New York Times by columnist Michelle Goldberg—“Where Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism Collide”—was that readers would interpret the word “collide” here as an indicating an unintentional accident, thereby reinforcing the widely held view that while antisemitism is an unacceptable, intolerable phenomenon, anti-Zionism is a legitimate, morally founded viewpoint that deserves to be engaged.
Hatred of Zionism isn’t a self-contained phenomenon that just happens to collide on occasion with hatred of Jews: That would amount to an unfortunate accident. But anti-Zionism and antisemitism are intimately related. Like non-identical twins, they have a handful of unique features, but fundamentally, they are the same. Hatred of Zionism is a natural outgrowth of the hatred of Jews. Of course, not all of those who define themselves as anti-Zionists see it that way, but that’s because they lack the historical and intellectual grounding to make that determination. When anti-Zionism collides with antisemitism, it’s anything but an accident.
Goldberg, it should be said, doesn’t belong to that crowd. While there was much to disagree with in her piece, I respected her frankness in admitting that as a secular Jew enjoying “the great privilege of an American passport,” she doesn’t feel much of a personal connection to the State of Israel. What she does understand is that the core fixations of anti-Zionism—and particularly its goal of dismantling the Jewish state and replacing it with an Arab one “from the river to the sea”—sound discordantly antisemitic in the ears of the vast majority of Jews in America and around the world.
“I can’t fault Jews who see, in the mounting demonization of Zionism, the replay of an old and terrifying story,” she wrote. “After all, anti-Zionism isn’t always antisemitism, but sometimes it is. And right now, some opponents of Israel seem to be trying to prove that the mainstream Jewish community is right to conflate them.”
This statement is basically true, but it doesn’t reveal the deeper, underlying truth, which is why Goldberg’s piece is fundamentally unsatisfying.
I’ve written in past columns about what I regard as the critical difference between “anti-Zionism” with a hyphen and “antizionism” without one. In historical terms, “anti-Zionism” was a phenomenon of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that commanded the loyalty of many Jews, who mistakenly if honestly believed that a separate Jewish state was not the answer to centuries of Jewish persecution. Not all the early generations of anti-Zionists were free of antisemitism—the Bolshevik ban on Zionist organizations and the study of Hebrew in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution was clearly antisemitic, for example—but there was a greater willingness to critique Zionism on the basis of its claim to be the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, and less reliance on the conspiracy theories and crude memes that pass for critique on social media today.
“Antizionism” without the hyphen marks a new and far more dangerous phase, however. Essentially, it involves tearing up a complex reality in favor of an ideologically blinkered, implacably hostile caricature of what Zionism actually is.
Today’s “antizionists” have made their hatred of Israel’s sovereign existence the main focus of their antisemitism, which then uncomplicatedly imports older themes—Jews as disloyal to the countries where they are citizens, Jews as engaged in well-funded conspiracy to mask the malign effects of their actions—into its discourse. This explains, as Goldberg seems to realize, how a Lyft driver in San Francisco is moved to punch a passenger in the face upon realizing that he is Jew from Israel, or how a literary magazine in Brooklyn can abruptly remove an essay on Israel and cancel its Jewish author solely because of the pressure of a fanatical mob.
The other overarching issue that troubles Goldberg is the unresolved Palestinian question. Again correctly, she understands that a binational state is a pipe dream, arguing that if the Walloon and Flemish nationalities in Belgium can’t get along, how could Israelis and Palestinians possibly do so? Yet what she seems unable to perceive is that the Palestinian vision of what such a state would look like for its Jewish citizens was provided on Oct. 7 last year, when Hamas terrorists executed a bestial pogrom against defenseless Israelis and opinion polls in its immediate wake indicated overwhelming support for the atrocities among ordinary Palestinians. Indeed, it made a mockery of the notion of a binational state. From the river to the sea, a “free” Palestine will be a place where Jews are brutally subjugated as a prelude to their eventual expulsion or even elimination. The stream of statements from Palestinian politicians—not just Hamas, but also Fatah, and notably Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas—describing Israel as a colonial interloper, the Holocaust as a fabrication and the Oct. 7 pogrom as an act of noble resistance are all the evidence we need here.
Acknowledging this ugly reality doesn’t, it is true, automatically suggest how the Palestinian question can be resolved humanely. And for most Israelis, frankly, that is not a priority right now, as they understandably are more concerned with preventing another Oct. 7 from occurring. If that outcome could be secured through a political solution, then few would object. But such a solution is only possible if two conditions are satisfied: Firstly, that the Palestinians recognize Israelis as human beings with a right to self-determination in their historic homeland; and secondly, that any solution focuses on the physical separation of the two peoples, rather than attempts to bring them closer together.
For American liberals and progressives, among them many Jews, such a viewpoint is distasteful and jarring, to say the least. For Israelis, though, this is literally a matter of survival. Stop trying to kill us, let us live in peace, they are saying, and our guns will fall silent, and we’ll make a deal. That is the message the Palestinians refuse to hear, in large part because their political culture is saturated with antisemitism. For as long as the outside world mollifies them in this regard, nothing will change for the better.
The post The Bitter Truth About Anti-Zionism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US House Members Ask Marco Rubio to Bar Turkey From Rejoining F-35 Program
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 10, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard
A bipartisan coalition of more than 40 US lawmakers is pressing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to prevent Turkey from rejoining the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, citing ongoing national security concerns and violations of US law.
Members of Congress on Thursday warned that lifting existing sanctions or readmitting Turkey to the US F-35 fifth-generation fighter program would “jeopardize the integrity of F-35 systems” and risk exposing sensitive US military technology to Russia. The letter pointed to Ankara’s 2017 purchase of the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system, despite repeated US warnings, as the central reason Turkey was expelled from the multibillion-dollar fighter jet program in 2019.
“The S-400 poses a direct threat to US aircraft, including the F-16 and F-35,” the lawmakers wrote. “If operated alongside these platforms, it risks exposing sensitive military technology to Russian intelligence.”
The group of signatories, spanning both parties, stressed that Turkey still possesses the Russian weapons systems and has shown “no willingness to comply with US law.” They urged Rubio and the Trump administration to uphold the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) and maintain Ankara’s exclusion from the F-35 program until the S-400s are fully removed.
The letter comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed during a NATO summit in June that Ankara and Washington have begun discussing Turkey’s readmission into the program.
Lawmakers argued that reversing course now would undermine both US credibility and allied confidence in American defense commitments. They also warned it could disrupt development of the next-generation fighter jet announced by the administration earlier this year.
“This is not a partisan issue,” the letter emphasized. “We must continue to hold allies and adversaries alike accountable when their actions threaten US interests.”
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US Lawmakers Urge Treasury to Investigate Whether Irish Bill Targeting Israel Violates Anti-Boycott Law
A pro-Hamas demonstration in Ireland led by nationalist party Sinn Fein. Photo: Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne
A group of US lawmakers is calling on the Treasury Department to investigate and potentially penalize Ireland over proposed legislation targeting Israeli goods, warning that the move could trigger sanctions under longstanding US anti-boycott laws.
In a letter sent on Thursday to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, 16 Republican members of Congress expressed “serious concerns” about Ireland’s recent legislative push to ban trade with territories under Israeli administration, including the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.
The letter, spearheaded by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), called for the US to “send a clear signal” that any attempts to economically isolate Israel will “carry consequences.”
The Irish measure, introduced by Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Simon Harris, seeks to prohibit the import of goods and services originating from what the legislation refers to as “occupied Palestinian territories,” including Israeli communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Supporters say the bill aligns with international law and human rights principles, while opponents, including the signatories of the letter, characterize it as a direct extension of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel as a step toward the destruction of the world’s lone Jewish state.
Some US lawmakers have also described the Irish bill as an example of “antisemitic hate” that could risk hurting relations between Dublin and Washington.
“Such policies not only promote economic discrimination but also create legal uncertainty for US companies operating in Ireland,” the lawmakers wrote in this week’s letter, urging Bessent to determine whether Ireland’s actions qualify as participation in an “unsanctioned international boycott” under Section 999 of the Internal Revenue Code, also known as the Ribicoff Amendment.
Under that statute, the Treasury Department is required to maintain a list of countries that pressure companies to comply with international boycotts not sanctioned by the US. Inclusion on the list carries tax-reporting burdens and possible penalties for American firms and individuals doing business in those nations.
“If the criteria are met, Ireland should be added to the boycott list,” the letter said, arguing that such a step would help protect US companies from legal exposure and reaffirm American opposition to economic efforts aimed at isolating Israel.
Legal experts have argued that if the Irish bill becomes law, it could chase American capital out of the country while also hurting companies that do business with Ireland. Under US law, it is illegal for American companies to participate in boycotts of Israel backed by foreign governments. Several US states have also gone beyond federal restrictions to pass separate measures that bar companies from receiving state contracts if they boycott Israel.
Ireland has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel on the international stage since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza, leading the Jewish state to shutter its embassy in Dublin.
Last year, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, a decision that Israel described as a “reward for terrorism.”
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US Families File Lawsuit Accusing UNRWA of Supporting Hamas, Hezbollah
A truck, marked with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) logo, crosses into Egypt from Gaza, at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, during a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah, Egypt, Nov. 27, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
American families of victims of Hamas and Hezbollah attacks have filed a lawsuit against the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, accusing the organization of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing material support to the Islamist terror groups behind the deadly assaults.
Last week, more than 200 families filed a lawsuit in a Washington, DC district court accusing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) of violating US antiterrorism laws by providing funding and support to Hamas and Hezbollah, both designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
The lawsuit alleges that UNRWA employs staff with direct ties to the Iran-backed terror group, including individuals allegedly involved in carrying out attacks against the Jewish state.
However, UNRWA has firmly denied the allegations, labeling them as “baseless” and condemning the lawsuit as “meritless, absurd, dangerous, and morally reprehensible.”
According to the organization, the lawsuit is part of a wider campaign of “misinformation and lawfare” targeting its work in the Gaza Strip, where it says Palestinians are enduring “mass, deliberate and forced starvation.”
The UN agency reports that more than 150,000 donors across the United States have supported its programs providing food, medical aid, education, and trauma assistance in the war-torn enclave amid the ongoing conflict.
In a press release, UNRWA USA affirmed that it will continue its humanitarian efforts despite facing legal challenges aimed at undermining its work.
“Starvation does not pause for politics. Neither will we,” the statement read.
Last year, Israeli security documents revealed that of UNRWA’s 13,000 employees in Gaza, 440 were actively involved in Hamas’s military operations, with 2,000 registered as Hamas operatives.
According to these documents, at least nine UNRWA employees took part directly in the terror group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
Israeli officials also uncovered a large Hamas data center beneath UNRWA headquarters, with cables running through the facility above, and found that Hamas also stored weapons in other UNRWA sites.
The UN agency has also aligned with Hamas in efforts against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), an Israeli and US-backed program that delivers aid directly to Palestinians, blocking Hamas from diverting supplies for terror activities and selling them at inflated prices.
These Israeli intelligence documents also revealed that a senior Hamas leader, killed in an Israeli strike in September 2024, had served as the head of the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon, where Lebanon is based,
UNRWA’s education programs have been found by IMPACT-se, an international organization that monitors global education, to contribute to the radicalization of younger generations of Palestinians.