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Why Those Fighting for the Jews Should Concede that Anti-Zionism Is Not Antisemitism
Rutgers University students holding an anti-Zionist demonstration on March 19, 2024. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect
Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, as the latter is typically conceived.
Anti-Zionism is its own libel-spewing hate movement targeting the Jews, and it’s time the Jewish people and their allies recognize this and change our tactics.
We have lost the battle over anti-Zionism on campuses and elsewhere because we have been fighting too hard to identify it with antisemitism. It is time to join the battle against anti-Zionism itself.
A new organization called the Movement Against Anti-Zionism has the mission to make all this clear. Here is just one example that illustrates the need to change tactics.
The widely-made claim that Federal investigations into campus Jew-hatred are “misusing civil rights law to squash political dissent,” as Jessica Corbett recently expressed it, rests on a deep misunderstanding of what that hatred looks like today. It assumes that Jew-hatred still wears its old “antisemitic” uniform: swastikas, slurs, caricatures, and conspiracy theories.
But Jew-hatred manifests differently in different times, and mutates and adapts. The operative Jew-hatred of our era is neither the anti-Judaism of Christian yore nor the antisemitism of late modern race science (though that is on the rise today as well). It is anti-Zionism, a moralized, intellectualized, and socially acceptable hatred of the Jewish collective that masks itself in the language of justice.
Whereas antisemitism treats the Jew as an alien within society, anti-Zionism treats the Jewish state as an alien among nations. The vocabulary has changed, but the underlying impulse remains constant: to mark the Jewish identity of the era as uniquely illegitimate. Anti-Zionism allows (on paper) that Jews may exist as individuals — but not as a people with collective rights, casting their sovereignty not as self-determination but as mortal sin. The hatred that was once expressed through the language of race and religion is now expressed through that of rights and resistance.
The AAUP (American Association of University Professors) and MESA (Middle East Studies Association) report cited by Corbett frames campus antisemitism probes as an effort to silence “criticism of Israel.” Yet its own rhetoric reveals a deeper prejudice. It begins by asserting that Israel is waging a “genocidal war” in Gaza, presented not as argument but as premise. This is not critique; it is anti-Zionist libel, the moral inversion by which Jewish survival is reframed as moral crime. The purpose is not to critique Israel but to isolate it, not to debate policy but to deny legitimacy. Anti-Zionism is not “critique of Israel” any more than antisemitism is “critique of Jews.”
To describe anti-Zionist accusations as “mere criticism” is to misunderstand how modern bigotry operates. Hatred no longer announces itself openly; it hides beneath the cloak of virtue. On university campuses, this takes the form of polite exclusion: the Israeli scholar uninvited from a panel, the Jewish student told that solidarity requires renouncing Zionism, the cultural institution that celebrates diversity except when it includes Jews who refuse to disavow their people’s homeland. Each act seems minor, even principled. Taken together, they constitute the moral architecture of contemporary discrimination.
Anti-Zionism is not identical to antisemitism, but is its direct descendant, a mutation adapted to the moral grammar of the 21st century.
The ongoing Federal civil rights investigations are not an assault on liberty, but an attempt to recognize how hate has changed its form. They do not criminalize dissent, but acknowledge that the boundary between political speech and ethnic animus has blurred — primarily, or only — with respect to the world’s one Jewish state.
To challenge anti-Zionism is not to silence dissent. It is to insist that equality includes Israelis and their supporters too. The refusal to grant Israel what every other nation takes for granted — the right to self-definition and security — is discrimination, whether clothed in theology, theory, race, or virtue. The tragedy of the AAUP and MESA report, and of the article that amplifies it, is that they mistake the exposure of prejudice for its creation. By defending exclusion as conscience, they do not protect freedom — they excuse its perversion.
Anti-Zionism is the hate that learned to pass as justice. To recognize it as such is not censorship. It is moral clarity — the refusal to let an old hatred hide under the banner of a fashionable cause.
If you agree then check out the Movement Against Anti-Zionism–and join the battle.
Andrew Pessin is Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College and founder of the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism.
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With a Kennedy Center honor under Trump, David Mamet enters his final, tragic act
There was a time when David Mamet being honored at the Kennedy Center wouldn’t have raised eyebrows.
His contributions to American theater and film transcend an affinity for four letter words (let’s call them “the F— Variations”). His tough-talking, desperate men gave splenetic voice to the indignities of a capitalist system in Glengarry Glen Ross, evolving sexual mores in Sexual Perversity in Chicago and, in a movie like The Verdict, the justice system.
Cut to 2026 and Mamet’s scripts are but an afterthought to his grievance. When he makes headlines now, it’s for his reactionary conservative streak and his role as a partisan in the culture war. Together with a run of flops, numbering a Harvey Weinstein #MeToo comedy and a Broadway show not even Al Pacino could save, his esteem has cratered among the liberal circles that once embraced him, and to which he once belonged but now prefers to eviscerate.
He has made the transition from dramatist to pundit, first at HuffPost, lately at The Free Press. Reading too much into Oleanna, perhaps, he has called teachers pedophiles on Fox News, written screeds on cancel culture and, a prerequisite for the Kennedys at this moment, praised President Donald Trump.
In the honor, there is a strain of tragedy. Mamet has strayed so far from where he started — what he called his “brain-dead liberal” era — that he makes perfect sense for this appointment, under a regime that tried to slap its leader’s name onto a tribute to a slain president meant as a bipartisan shrine to art. (Due to the Center’s closure amid turmoil and legal battles, the ceremonies will take place at the Capital One Arena, which is only too perfectly bleak.)
A younger Mamet would have looked askance at such a figure as our current Commander-in-Chief, a character who is on the make with all sorts of half-baked schemes. The Iran War may be his latest play on a Buffalo nickel.
It’s enough to make one wonder if we’ve been misreading Mamet all along. Are the men breaking-and entering to steal the Glengarry leads meant to be admired? Are the Hollywood sleazes in Speed-the-Plow aspirational? Is Al Capone the real hero of The Untouchables?
Perhaps the evening, which tends to include career retrospectives, will elucidate. But if the Kennedy Honors could once be said to be for closers, it may now be only for a particular kind of sellout.
The post With a Kennedy Center honor under Trump, David Mamet enters his final, tragic act appeared first on The Forward.
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Why is Britney Spears studying Hebrew?
It’s Britney, Yitz!
Continuing a curious social media trend that has previously seen appreciation for the beards of chess-playing Chabadniks and the Zohar hidden among baby clothes, Britney Spears took to Instagram Sunday to post a Hebrew Book of Psalms and the Lekutei Amaraim, or Tanya, a Hasidic book of sayings.
The caption reads: “I’m extremely bored !!! Learning Hebrew reading right to left !!! Beautiful language !!!” (A previous caption, posted Sunday, was more cryptic, concluding “God speed little man !!! I love u !!!,” perhaps indicating the presence of a havruta or someone in her life who keeps his mitzvot.)
What exactly is happening here? Is Spears, like Marilyn before her and Sydney Sweeney now, about to dip her toe into the mikveh?
The best clue we have isn’t from Spears’ page, but from Israeli model Natalie Dadon, who tagged the “Hit Me Baby One More Time” singer in a selfie with the Tanya. “Finally, it’s possible to tell,” Dadon posted, in a gallery with Hebrew language news coverage of the posts. Dadon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dadon’s social media presence involves Tanya study, which itself is a cornerstone to Lubavitch philosophy (so perhaps is connected to the Chabad chess players whose beards Spears so admired) and adjacent to Kabbalah.
Spears is no stranger to Jewish subjects. Around the time she locked lips with Madonna at the 2003 VMAs, she started, like so many others, to look into Kabbalah, as this handy timeline from Hey Alma notes. She has a Hebrew tattoo of letters that signify healing in kabbalistic texts and was apparently once attached to star in a Holocaust-time-travel-romance film called The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton, which now that I’ve heard of it I will never shut up about.
She has credited Kabbalah with helping her through a difficult time in her life and has been spotted wearing a star of David.
But we should approach Spears’ dalliance with Judaism, now sandwiched on her Insta page between a call-out of her sister Jamie Lynn and a NSFW video of her dancing with a rose Emoji as a fig leaf, with some healthy skepticism.
Her Instagram bio currently reads “Pray Every Day” with a prayer hands emoji next to a Bible emoji with a cross. She’d still appear to be Christian — or, at the very least, waiting for the new iOS update with the Tanya emoji.
The post Why is Britney Spears studying Hebrew? appeared first on The Forward.
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Haley Stevens cheered at Jewish day school after endorsing GOP Senate candidate
(JTA) — Democratic Michigan U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens was given an extended ovation at a fundraising gala for a Detroit-area Jewish day school Sunday, hours after her endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers for Senate.
Stevens, a longtime pro-Israel stalwart, was celebrated at the Yeshiva Beth Yehudah annual dinner as many members of her party across the country spoke out against her decision to break with Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed.
Video of Stevens’ minute-long standing ovation was shared on social media by representatives of Agudath Israel of America, a major Orthodox advocacy group. Strongly pro-Israel Jews have largely lauded her move to Rogers, which she said came about in part because of her objections to El-Sayed’s past relationship with anti-Israel streamer Hasan Piker.
Also on Sunday evening, Stevens struggled to explain the timing of her decision in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. One consistency in her response was her belief that she was helping Democrats beat back antisemitism within their own party.
“I’m trying to help the Democratic Party. I felt the same way about Graham Platner and his Nazi tattoo,” Stevens said, referencing the Maine Senate candidate who ultimately stepped down from the nomination. Asked if she believed El-Sayed is antisemitic, she responded, “I think some of the actions have certainly been antisemitic, Anderson, but I’m just sick of who he stands with.”
She named Piker and “the uncle,” referring to Piker’s uncle Cenk Uygur, whose PAC produced an ad supporting El-Sayed that blamed Israel for the price of groceries. After Stevens publicly pressured El-Sayed to condemn the ad’s contents, the candidate appeared to do so on Saturday night, which Stevens celebrated in a statement — hours before endorsing Rogers.
To Cooper, Stevens suggested that many other Democrats felt the way she did.
“I’ve been hearing from a ton of Dems, Anderson, who have said, ‘Thank you. This is how we felt.’ They haven’t liked this campaign. It’s painful,” she said. A growing number of Michigan Jewish Democrats have pledged to vote for Rogers, though more than 1,000 have also signed a letter pledging to vote for El-Sayed.
Yeshiva Beth Yehudah is spread across multiple suburban Detroit campuses and is the largest Jewish day school in the state. Its annual fundraising dinner, “An Evening of Unity,” is known for drawing big national names in politics and the media, usually from both major parties.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, was the evening’s keynote speaker, and the gala program also featured personal letters from President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
But it was Stevens, a regular supporter of the school, who turned the most heads. She was also presented with what the emcee called “a specially designed, illuminated book of the five scrolls of our prophets, which remind you all of our heartfelt esteem and appreciation for who you are.”
The yeshiva’s leadership also extended warm wishes to Stevens’ Jewish fiancé, Democratic megadonor Jason Turkish, whom the yeshiva’s emcee described as “our dear friend.” Turkish’s own endorsement of Rogers came days before the congresswoman’s.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Haley Stevens cheered at Jewish day school after endorsing GOP Senate candidate appeared first on The Forward.
