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You Can’t Promote Hate Against the Majority of the World’s Jews and Just Call It Politics
“Show Your Jewish Pride” rally at George Washington University G Street Park on May 2, 2024. Photo: Dion J. Pierre
The recent decision by the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice v. MIT has been widely mischaracterized as a judicial declaration that “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.” It was not that.
The court did not issue any sweeping statement about the nature of anti-Zionism. Rather, it affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Jewish students and a pro-Israel group, focusing narrowly on the legal threshold for harassment under Federal civil rights law (Title VI).
The First Circuit held that campus protests and anti-Zionist rhetoric, however offensive, are generally forms of political speech protected by the First Amendment. It concluded that the plaintiffs’ allegations failed to show “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” harassment or “deliberate indifference” by MIT — emphasizing that the university had taken steps to address the situation. In doing so, the court avoided the broader debate over when anti-Zionism becomes antisemitism.
That legal restraint is understandable. But the case highlights an urgent cultural and moral failure: the persistent unwillingness of elites, including some in the Jewish world, to recognize and address anti-Zionism for what it is — the latest mutation of the world’s oldest hatred.
Anti-Zionism as the Heir to Older Hatreds
As the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks — the former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and one of the foremost moral philosophers of our age — warned, “The greatest mutation of antisemitism in our time is the denial to the Jewish people alone the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland.”
Antisemitism, Sacks wrote, never disappears; it mutates — from religion to race to nation.
Anti-Zionism borrows from each earlier form. From Christian antisemitism, it inherits the charge of Jewish moral corruption — the idea that Jews act with singular malice. From racial antisemitism, it takes the belief in a people collectively tainted and unfit to belong among others. From modern Henry Ford style antisemitism, it adapts the conspiracy that Jews secretly control governments and media — projected now onto Israel instead of individuals.
The same libels that once fueled pogroms — Jews poisoning wells, murdering children, or orchestrating global cabals — now reappear in “human rights” reports and social media threads. “Jews rule the world” has become “Israel controls Washington,” a trope embraced by overt Jew-haters like David Duke as “ZOG” (Zionist Occupied Government). The medieval libel that Jews “murder children for their blood” has become “Zionists murder children.”
The Globalization of an Obsession
The First Circuit’s failure to see how this ideological continuity operates in practice leaves Jewish citizens vulnerable in an environment where anti-Zionism functions as socially acceptable antisemitism.
Before 1948, antisemites were obsessed with Jews as a source of cosmic evil. Today’s anti-Zionists display the same fixation — only now it is directed at the one Jewish state. Israel, smaller than New Jersey and home to less than one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population, faces opprobrium with an intensity no other nation faces.
China can imprison a million Uyghurs without prompting global boycotts. Russia can annex Crimea and level Mariupol without igniting campus “divestment” campaigns. Yet Israel alone — the world’s only Jewish state — becomes the singular object of global condemnation. The United Nations has passed more resolutions against Israel than all other countries combined. That is not mere “criticism.” It is pathology.
A Movement Against the Majority of Jews
This obsession also targets most Jews themselves. Surveys consistently show that over 80% of Jews worldwide identify with Zionism — the belief that the Jewish people have the right to a national home in their ancestral land. Nearly half of the world’s Jews live in Israel.
To be anti-Zionist, therefore, is to oppose the national aspirations of most Jews and the existence of the state that is home to roughly half of them. The claim that anti-Zionism is merely “political” collapses under this reality. Imagine a movement dedicated to dismantling Italy while insisting it is not anti-Italian, or one demanding the abolition of Armenia while professing no hatred of Armenians. No other nation’s legitimacy is contested this way. Only the Jewish State — and by extension, the Jewish people — is told its existence is conditional.
Old Tropes in New Garb
Haviv Rettig Gur, senior political analyst at The Times of Israel and a brilliant commentator on Jewish history and identity, has written that antisemitism “does not persist because it hates Jews; it persists because it needs Jews — as a canvas on which societies project their anxieties and hatreds.” Anti-Zionism performs precisely this role today. It allows movements and governments to define their virtue by condemning Israel, recasting Jews once again as the world’s moral scapegoat.
The pre-1948 demand that Jews prove their loyalty and moral purity has been transferred to the Jewish state. Every Israeli act of self-defense becomes a test of Jewish worthiness. Every imperfection becomes proof of collective evil. It is no coincidence that antisemitic incidents spike worldwide whenever Israel is forced to defend itself. The emotional and rhetorical link between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is direct, measurable, and undeniable.
The Need for Legal and Moral Clarity
Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow at Jerusalem’s Shalom Hartman Institute and author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor (2018), writes that, “Zionism is the most audacious attempt in modern times to unite faith and peoplehood, memory and sovereignty.” To deny that attempt its legitimacy is to strip the Jewish story of coherence — to say Jews may exist only as victims, never as a nation capable of defending itself.
The US Supreme Court will likely have future opportunities to address cases like StandWithUs v. MIT. When it does, it should affirm that discrimination does not always come wearing a swastika or a white hood. Sometimes it arrives cloaked in the language of “social justice” or “anti-colonialism.” But its targets are the same, and its logic — denying Jews what it grants all others — is unchanged.
This challenge is not only legal but cultural. It demands that we gain the moral and intellectual clarity to recognize anti-Zionism for what it is: the latest mutation of an ancient hatred.
If Jewish history teaches anything, it is that ideas matter — especially poisonous ones. The Supreme Court now has a chance to affirm that civil-rights protections apply to Jews too — even, and especially, when the hatred against them pretends to be virtue.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, antisemitism, and Jewish history and serves on the board of Herut North America.
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Israeli citizen Michael Mizrahi killed in Montreal shooting
(JTA) — Michael Mizrahi, an Israeli citizen and longtime member of Montreal’s Jewish community, has been identified as the civilian killed in Monday’s shooting involving a gunman and Canadian police officers in Montreal’s Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood.
The suspected gunman was killed during the incident, the investigation of which is ongoing. Police have not publicly released the suspect’s identity or provided details about a possible motive. They also have not confirmed who shot Mizrahi.
The Israeli Consulate in Montreal confirmed Mizrahi’s death, saying in a statement that he was an Israeli citizen and extended condolences to his family “on behalf of the people and the State of Israel.” The consulate said his family “knows all too well the horrors of terror and violence, making this tragic loss even more painful.”
Montreal police Constable Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, 34, was also fatally shot responding to the incident, according to police.
The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal said Benredouane died in the line of duty while protecting the public during an intervention in Côte-des-Neiges, a heavily Jewish neighborhood. He had served with the force since 2021.
A second officer, who is female, was also shot and remains in critical condition, police said.
Quebec’s Bureau des enquêtes indépendantes, the province’s police watchdog, has opened an independent investigation into the use of a firearm by a police officer in a fatal confrontation.The Quebec police watchdog group states that it is “mandated to fully investigate the facts surrounding police interventions. The BEI investigates all cases where a person, other than a police officer on duty, dies, suffers serious injury, or is injured by a firearm used by a police officer during a police intervention or while in police custody.“
A number of Canadian Jewish groups published statements assuring the Jewish community that they were not in danger. The UJA-Federation of Toronto put out two statements explaining that the Jewish community did not appear to be a target.
The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the advocacy arm of Canadian Jewish Federations, also put out a statement mourning the loss of a community member.
“We mourn the tragic loss of Michael (Michel) Moshe Mizrahi z”l, a beloved member of Montreal’s Jewish community, an innocent victim of today’s events,” the group posted on X on Monday night. “Our thoughts and our deepest condolences are with his family, friends, and loved ones during this time of unimaginable pain.”
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar wrote on X that he had called the Chabad Rabbi of Montreal Mendel Raskin to extend his “deepest condolences to the families of the victims, to the Jewish community of Montreal, and to all Canadians mourning this terrible loss.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Israeli citizen Michael Mizrahi killed in Montreal shooting appeared first on The Forward.
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Supreme Court reinstates murder conviction in Etan Patz disappearance case
(JTA) — The Supreme Court on Monday reinstated a murder conviction for the man convicted of killing Etan Patz, the 6-year-old Jewish boy whose 1979 disappearance riveted the nation.
In a 6-3 vote, the justices reimposed the conviction of Pedro Hernandez, who was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Patz in 2017 and was serving a 25-year sentence until a New York federal appeals court ruled last year that he was entitled to a retrial.
The justices granted an appeal from New York prosecutors who urged them to overturn the decision last year, writing in an unsigned opinion that the lower court “exceeded its authority in holding that Hernandez is entitled to relief.”
“Today the Supreme Court agreed with the findings of multiple lower courts and upheld the trial conviction of Pedro Hernandez for the horrific murder of Etan Patz, which changed a generation of New Yorkers,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement Monday. “This office has remained steadfast in its pursuit of justice for Etan and the Patz family and will continue to stand by this important conviction.”
Harvey Fishbein, a lawyer for Hernandez, told the The New York Times Monday that the Supreme Court’s order meant Hernandez would not get a new trial, adding that his team was “terribly disappointed.”
“We firmly believe that an innocent man is in jail for a crime that he did not commit,” Fishbein said.
Patz vanished in May 1979 while walking to his school bus stop in New York City for the first time. The 6-year-old became one of the first missing children whose photograph appeared on milk cartons nationwide, but despite years of searches and public appeals, he was never found.
Patz’s parents, Julie and Stan, spent decades seeking an arrest for his disappearance, helping to establish a national missing-children hotline. The anniversary of Etan’s disappearance, May 25, also became National Missing Children’s Day.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Supreme Court reinstates murder conviction in Etan Patz disappearance case appeared first on The Forward.
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Some of Mamdani’s Jewish allies criticize his use of ‘monsters’ to describe AIPAC
(New York Jewish Week) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday defended his use of the word “monsters” to describe AIPAC at a rally Friday for progressive candidates, as some of his Jewish supporters expressed concern that the term may connote an antisemitic trope.
The war of words came as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee is increasingly a target of the progressive movement — including in acts of attempted violence — and as progressive Jews have accused some Israeli right-wing figures of dehumanizing liberal pro-Israel lobbying groups.
“Calling AIPAC and its backers ‘monsters’ casts them as less than human, rather than as human beings who are one’s political opponents,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, head of the progressive rabbinic human rights group T’ruah, wrote in a Substack post Monday.
“I was taken aback,” Rabbi Misha Shulman, a Mamdani supporter who leads the progressive Brooklyn synagogue The New Shul, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the mayor’s comments. “I didn’t like those remarks. It was a little bit of a flag for me.”
At a press conference, Mamdani said he had been quoting Italian anti-fascist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, whose quote ending “Now is the time of monsters” the mayor had cited at the top of his speech. The rally was intended to boost the mayor’s preferred progressive candidates, including Jewish congressional candidate Brad Lander, ahead of New York’s closely watched Tuesday primaries.
“I used the term to describe all those who are preventing the birth of a new world,” Mamdani told a reporter who asked about the word. He continued, “My use of the term is a broad use that speaks to the untenable nature of a status quo that is quite literally starving people in this city, all in the name of sustaining something that we simply cannot defend any longer.” He did not explain how he saw AIPAC as connected to poverty in New York.
Mamdani insisted he was referring to “not solely AIPAC,” but he singled out the organization again in his Monday remarks to reporters, saying the lobbying group was backing “a status quo for immorality.”
During the rally last week, Mamdani had stated that Gramsci’s “monsters take many forms today,” including “AIPAC, for whom the only thing more frightening than democracy being allowed to run its course is an end to genocide and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s wars.” He added that AIPAC’s “goal” is “to turn us against one another.”
For some of the progressive Jews who have supported the mayor, his comments sounded alarms about the use of dehumanizing or sinister rhetoric to describe Jewish groups.
But Shulman said it was actually Mamdani’s remarks in the same speech painting AIPAC as a “dark money” group that was most alarming to him. AIPAC, a lobbying organization that also operates a political spending arm, does not conceal its donors, unlike the traditional profile of a so-called “dark money” campaign finance operation.
“For me, the question of dark money was the tougher knot,” Shulman said, calling Mamdani’s remarks a “tactical mistake.” In the context of rising antisemitism, he added, “For a left-wing leader to use that phrase, and invite traditional antisemitism into this conversation in that way, was not smart.”
Shulman is a member of Israelis For Peace, a New York-based ad-hoc group of progressive Israelis who broadly back Mamdani. While not speaking on behalf of the group, he told JTA their internal group chat lit up with debates over the appropriateness of Mamdani’s speech.
Jacobs of T’ruah said Mamdani’s remarks were part of what she described as a “disturbing trend” of recent left-wing attacks on the lobbying group, including Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner accusing his GOP opponent of being “bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu” because of AIPAC’s donations to her campaign.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who has aspirations of higher office, also recently became the first sitting member of Congress to sign a pledge from Track AIPAC, a purported AIPAC watchdog that also targets donations from more liberal pro-Israel groups, including J Street.
Over the weekend, a cafe posted on Instagram that it had rejected a payment from liberal Jewish New York Rep. Dan Goldman, whom Lander is challenging in the primary, because the money was “probably coming from AIPAC.” (Goldman has been endorsed by both AIPAC and J Street.)
While noting that AIPAC “absolutely deserves to be criticized, sidelined, and rejected for its decades of negative influence on American foreign policy,” Jacobs wrote that such critiques should be done “without dehumanizing language, and without hinting at a grand Jewish conspiracy.”
Such pushback from Jews who have worked with Mamdani is rare. JTA reached out to representatives for several of the mayor’s most visible Jewish allies on Monday, including Lander and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who spoke at the same rally. Sanders also criticized AIPAC. Neither returned requests for comment by press time. On social media after the rally, Lander celebrated the event, calling it “a tremendous honor” to rally alongside Mamdani.
IfNotNow and Jews For Racial and Economic Justice, two Jewish activist groups that endorsed Mamdani, similarly did not respond to requests for comment by press time. A spokesperson for Rep. Jerry Nadler, the retiring liberal Jewish Democrat who had endorsed Mamdani’s mayoral bid, also did not respond by press time.
J Street, the liberal pro-Israel lobby that positions itself as a foil to AIPAC, declined to comment on Mamdani’s remarks. Last month, hundreds of Jewish leaders criticized Yehuda Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, after Leiter called J Street a “cancer within the Jewish community.” Nadler was among the signatories of an open letter that said Leiter “dehumanizes fellow Jews.”
Centrist Jewish groups and figures, already no fans of Mamdani, also bashed his AIPAC comments. “Referring to fellow New Yorkers as ‘monsters’ is outrageous and dangerous, and the impact of your words extends far beyond politics,” American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch wrote on X, addressing Mamdani.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Jewish Democrat representing New Jersey, wrote, “Swap ‘AIPAC’ for ‘Jews’ and it’s the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theory in the books.”
Both posts were reposted by AIPAC, which otherwise did not comment.
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