[ University presidents have been hounded by pro-Israeli, often
Jewish trustees, to loudly and publicly condemn criticism of Zionism
or Israel, and take additional measures to quash protest.]
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WHEN ANTI, ANTI-ZIONISM BECOMES ANTI-SEMITISM  
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Stephen F. Eisenman
November 17, 2023
Couterpunch
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_ University presidents have been hounded by pro-Israeli, often
Jewish trustees, to loudly and publicly condemn criticism of Zionism
or Israel, and take additional measures to quash protest. _

Health care student Butheina Ghweir helps hold a 40-foot-long piece
of paper listing the thousands of names of Palestinians who have been
killed in the Israel-Gaza war, during a Nov. 10 silent ceasefire
protest at the University of New Mexico. , Chancey Bush/ Journal

 

My friends in academia tell me they are experiencing the most
repressive environment of their lives. The campuses of Harvard, Yale,
University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Northwestern (where I taught for
almost 25 years), and others have been riven by conflict over the
Mideast war. Faculty deemed too sympathetic to Palestine have been
tarred by trustees, senior administrators, other faculty, and some
students as naive at best and anti-Semitic at worst. A few professors
have lost their jobs or been subjected to student petitions demanding
their ouster. University presidents have been hounded by pro-Israeli,
often Jewish trustees, to loudly and publicly condemn criticism of
Zionism or Israel, and take additional measures to quash protest.

Pro-Palestinian student organizations have also come under fire,
either for insufficient zeal in condemning Hamas brutality on October
7, attributing the attack to a long history of Israeli provocations,
or demanding a ceasefire before the Israeli government is ready. A few
groups, including Jewish Voices for Peace, and Students for Justice in
Palestine have even been banned from campuses. Students from these
groups have been pilloried by trustees and administrators, doxed,
hounded, and in a few cases assaulted. Some Jewish students too have
been attacked or subjected to verbal abuse for their vocal support of
Israel. The hurt and anger on many campuses right now must feel
overwhelming.

To be called anti-Semitic is powerful and professionally annihilating.
That’s especially true for university professors whose stock in
trade is reason. Anti-Semitism arises from libel, trades in
stereotypes, and occludes independent thought. It is, as the German
Social Democrat August Bebel purportedly said, “the socialism of
fools,” meaning that it attributes the suffering of the working
class to a small and secretive cabal of wealthy and powerful Jews. For
that reason, anti-Semitism is especially reviled by a professoriate
that is often liberal or left in its politics and strives to achieve a
historical understanding of economic and political oppression.
Finally, anti-Semitism was central to the formation of the German Nazi
regime; it was the only consistent faith of Adolf Hitler, the greatest
criminal the world has ever known.

In an unusual intervention, President Isaac Herzog of Israel,
recently sent a letter
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American college presidents alluding to the Holocaust. By calling upon
them to “publicly and unequivocally” reject “calls for the
elimination of a whole country, Israel,” Herzog suggests that
current criticism of Israel, which sometimes includes expressions of
anti-Zionism, is both anti-Semitic and eliminationist, that is,
potentially genocidal. This goes far beyond even the overly capacious
definitions of anti-Semitism propounded by the International Holocaust
Remembrance Alliance (HRA), and the influential Anti-Defamation League
(ADL). The latter has written
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“While anti-Zionism is indeed antisemitism, anti-Zionism is much
more socially acceptable than classic antisemitism.” Both clauses
are lies, plus the comma in the middle. At its most expansive,
anti-Zionism is a rejection of the idea and reality of an exclusively
Jewish state on the land of historic Palestine. More commonly, it
signifies rejection of the radical expansionism of the current Israeli
regime, and its policy of secluding Palestinians behind walls and
checkpoints, a system that is plausibly called apartheid. Without
skipping a beat, the ADL repeats the demonstrable untruth that
anti-Zionism (as anti-Semitism) is widely endorsed. In fact, the
mainstream media and elected politicians generally endorse or accept
Israeli expansionism, and the HRA and ADL definition of anti-Zionism
as anti-Semitism. And they repeat the ADL canard that we are
experiencing a wave of anti-Semitism unequaled in U.S. history. Not
only is this historically blinkered, it overlooks the genuine danger
posed by far-right extremists and gun-rights advocates who have
perpetrated or enabled actual murderous violence against Jews and
others, such as at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, and in
Highland Park, Illinois.

WHO’S A JEW?

One of the things Jew take pride in — no offense to Catholics — is
that they have don’t have a pope. No Jew can excommunicate another
Jew: Not your local rabbi, not the President of Israel, not even Sarah
Silverman. Though Jews have historically described themselves as
“the chosen people” – meaning chosen by God to receive the
covenant of Moses – Jewishness today is far less exclusive. (I set
aside Hasidic Judaism, which like all fundamentalism, is
ethnocentric.) In fact, bars to membership in the Jewish faith are
low, especially in the U.S. I’ve had several conversations here in
rural Florida like the following:

Him: [Whispered] “So, your name is Eisenman? Odd to meet a Jew here,
of all places!”

Me: “Don’t get excited, I’m not very observant.”

Him: “Oh, but you celebrate the Sabbath, no?”

Me: “Nope.”

Him: “The High Holy Days?”

Me: [I shake my head]

Him: “Keep kosher?”

Me: “Sorry.”

Him: “Um, well, do you like bagels?”

Me: “Pumpernickel, garlic, onion – all good.”

Him: It’s always good to be with a _Lantzman_!

Me: [I nod in agreement.]

The rule that to be a Jew, you must have a Jewish mother is only
followed by the Orthodox. For the rest of us, fathers count. And even
if no parents are Jewish, and you say you are a Jew, who am I to tell
you otherwise? If you are brave or stupid enough to want to join
perhaps the most historically oppressed minority in the world, mazel
tov!

So, to hear a prominent Jew like Herzog of Israel or Jonathan
Greenblatt of the ADL, tell Jewish protestors, (like the kids in
Jewish Voices for Peace), that they are anti-Semitic – essentially,
that they are not Jews — is not only _chutzpah_, it’s un-Jewish,
the actions of a _shonda_. Since when is fervent Zionism a litmus
test for being Jewish? What pope made that rule? Who the ___are you to
tell me I am or am not a Jew?

WHEN ANTI, ANTI-ZIONISM BECOMES ANTI-SEMITISM

Anti, anti-Zionism becomes anti-Semitism:

1) When it denies the Jewishness of any Jew opposed to Israeli policy
or the existence of Israel as Jewish state.

2) When it describes the one-state solution – Jews and Palestinians
living together in a single, democratic state – as un-Jewish or even
eliminationist.

3) When it ignores or denies the anti-Zionism of great Jewish thinkers
and writers, including Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Walter
Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, and Philip Roth.

4) When it conceives of Judaism as a tradition of agreement rather
than of dissent. Why do we ask the Four Questions at the Passover
seder? To argue over the answers!

5) When it denies the opportunity of young people to struggle, make
mistakes, forge new understandings, and challenge their elders. The
meaning of the story of David and Goliath is not that a smaller man
defeated a larger one, but that a young, hippie musician was forced to
take up arms (a slingshot) when his father-in-law Saul, was too
cowardly or lazy to take on a bully.

A Jew who in the face of an onslaught of cruel and offensive attacks,
challenges Israel’s war of retribution in Gaza, is a _mensch_, a
righteous person of any gender. A non-Jew who similarly demands a
ceasefire and negotiations for a permanent settlement, should be
considered צַדִּיק_ (Tzadik)_ the Hebrew word for a righteous
person who sublimates base instincts, such as revenge, to strive for
peace and reconciliation.

_Stephen F. Eisenman is Professor Emeritus of Art History at
Northwestern University and the author of Gauguin’s Skirt (Thames
and Hudson, 1997), The Abu Ghraib Effect (Reaktion, 2007), The Cry
of Nature: Art and the Making of Animal Rights (Reaktion, 2015) and
other books. He is also co-founder of the environmental justice
non-profit, __ Anthropocene Alliance_
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He and the artist Sue Coe have just published _American Fascism,
Still_ for __Rotland Press_ [[link removed]]_. He
can be reached at:_ [email protected]

* Israel-Gaza War
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* Anti-Zionism
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* anti-Semitism
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* false history
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