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When antisemitism accusations are exploited for political purposes, especially to counter criticism of Israel, [1] it may be described variously as a weaponization of antisemitism, as instrumentalization of antisemitism or referred to as playing the antisemitism card. [2] Such accusations have been criticized as a form of smear tactics and an "appeal to motive". [3] [4] Some writers have compared this to playing the race card. [5] [6] When used against Jews, it may take the form of the pejorative claim of "self-hating Jew". [7] [8] [9] [10]
Suggestions of such actions have been raised during phases of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, [11] [12] [13] in the adoption of the controversial working definition of antisemitism by various organizations, [14] [15] [16] [17] the 2014–20 allegations of antisemitism in the UK Labour Party, [18] and the 2023 United States Congress hearing on antisemitism. [19]
Critics have argued that the charge of weaponization amounts to an antisemitic ad hominem attack whose use fails to address the issue at hand of antisemitism. [20] [21] The charge has also been criticized as a "testimonial injustice", rooted in presumption rather than evidence. [22]
According to Noam Chomsky in his The Fateful Triangle : "The tactic[ which? ] is standard", and can be traced as far back as 1943. [23] Chomsky writes that it is "in the post-1967 period that the tactic has been honed to a high art, increasingly so, as the policies defended became less and less defensible". [23]
In the early 1950s, American journalist Dorothy Thompson, who had been a strong critic of Adolf Hitler, was called antisemitic after she began to write against Zionism having witnessed Jewish terrorism against the British and the Nakba against the Palestinian Arabs, Allan Brownfield wrote in the Journal of Palestine Studies . [24] Israeli historian Benny Morris described John Bagot Glubb as having been subject to a "tendency among Israelis and Jews abroad to identify strong criticism of Israel as tantamount to, or as at least stemming from, anti-Semitism" (though Morris also said Glubb's anti-Zionism was "tinged by a degree of anti-Semitism"). [25] Glubb wrote in his 1956 memoirs that: "It does not seem to me to be either just or expedient that similar criticisms directed against the Israeli government should brand the speaker with the moral stigma generally associated with anti-Semitism". [26] [25]
In 1975, Harold R. Piety, associate editor of Dayton, Ohio's Journal Herald , wrote that the charge of antisemitism was levied in the early 1970s against organizations such as Christian Science Monitor, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning American Friends Service Committee, as well as U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright, and American columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Piety argued that this was solely due to their criticism of Israel, and that the "ugly cry of anti-Semitism is the bludgeon used by the Zionists to bully non-Jews into accepting the Zionist view of world events, or to keep silent". [27] [28]
According to Cheryl Rubenberg, in the 1980s, journalists Anthony Lewis, Nicholas von Hoffman, Joseph C. Harsch, Richard Cohen, Alfred Friendly, authors Gore Vidal, Joseph Sobran, and John le Carré, [29] and American politicians Charles Mathias and Pete McCloskey [30] were among those to be called antisemites by pro-Israeli groups. Rubenberg wrote of Mathias and McCloskey in 1989 that "The labeling of individuals who disagree with the lobby's positions as "anti-Semitic" is a common practice among Israel's advocates." [30] US politician Paul Findley, in his 1985 book They Dare to Speak Out , wrote: "In its latest usage, the term anti-Semitism stands stripped of any reference to ethnic or religious descent, signifying nothing more than a refusal to endorse all policy decisions of the government of Israel ... It has been a powerful factor in stifling debate of the Arab-Israeli dispute." [31] Journalist Allan Brownfeld wrote in 1987 in the Journal of Palestine Studies that "One cannot be critical of the Israeli prime minister, concerned about the question of the Palestinians, or dubious about the virtue of massive infusions of U.S. aid to Israel without subjecting oneself to the possibility of being called "anti-Semitic". [32]
In 1992, American diplomat George Ball wrote in his book The Passionate Attachment: America's involvement with Israel that AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups "employ the charge of 'anti-Semitism' so carelessly as to trivialize it", and that when doing so in order to stifle criticism of American policies in the Middle East, the user "implicitly acknowledges that he cannot defend Israel's practices by rational argument". [33]
Similar charges of antisemitism have been levied by international Israeli advocacy groups against prominent individuals expressing pro-Palestinian sentiment, including the Nobel Peace Prize winners US President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. [34] [35] [ according to whom? ]
Academics John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein have said accusations of antisemitism rise following aggressive actions by Israel: following the Six-Day War, following the 1982 Lebanon War, the First and Second Intifadas and the Israeli bombardments of Gaza. [11] [12] [13] Chomsky argued in 2002: "With regard to anti-Semitism, the distinguished Israeli statesman Abba Eban pointed out the main task of Israeli propaganda (they would call it exclamation, what's called 'propaganda' when others do it) is to make it clear to the world there's no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. By anti-Zionism he meant criticisms of the current policies of the State of Israel." [36]
Matthew Abraham, professor of rhetoric at the University of Arizona, wrote that accusations of antisemitism against those criticizing Israel's violation of Palestinian human rights increased since the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000. Abraham wrote that "Israel’s supporters have sought to make the argumentative leap that criticism of Israel as the Jewish state is anti-Semitic precisely because Israel is the home of all Jews for all time. However, this argument does not work since there are many anti-Zionist Jews who reject Israel’s attempts to speak in the name of Judaism. The traditional response to this problem has been to label anti-Zionist Jews as “self-hating Jews,” which requires a suspension of rationality and sound judgement." [8]
Philadelphia Inquirer opinion writer Abraham Gutman wrote in 2021 that claims by Israel's leaders to represent all Jews worldwide had equated criticism of Israel to prejudice against all Jews. He wrote that this had led to weaponization against pro-Palestinian voices "sometimes in ridiculous ways", including by Marjorie Taylor Greene. [37] Nick Riemer of the University of Sydney wrote in 2022 that anti-Semitism "provides the excuse for a heavy-handed and highly irrational assault on fundamental democratic liberties". [38] During the Israel-Hamas war, Bernie Steinberg, a former executive director of Harvard Hillel, wrote a 2023 opinion essay in The Harvard Crimson that pro-Israeli activists should stop "weaponization" of charges of antisemitism against pro-Palestinian activism and that "It is not antisemitic to demand justice for all Palestinians living in their ancestral lands." [19] Marshall Ganz, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, criticized in The Nation the "weaponization" of antisemitism, writing the "tactics are remarkably similar to those used by Senator Joseph McCarthy". [39] Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator, said at the Palestine Expo conference that "the accusation of antisemitism is being weaponised and abused". [40]
Various writers have argued that charges of antisemitism raised in discussions of Israel can have a chilling effect, [41] [42] deterring critical commentary on Israel [41] due to fear of being associated with beliefs linked to antisemitic crimes against humanity such as the Holocaust. [43] Mearsheimer and Walt wrote in 2008 that the charge can discourage others from defending in public those against whom the charge of antisemitism has been made. [44] Campaigns which redefine anti-Zionism as antisemitism aim to shift criticisms of the actions of the Israeli government "beyond the pale of mainstream acceptability", according to Joshua Leifer, an editor of Dissent magazine, in 2019. [45] In his 2005 work Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History , Finkelstein wrote that use of "the anti-Semitism card" attempts to displace "fundamental responsibility for causing the conflict from Israel to the Arabs, the issue no longer being Jewish dispossession of Palestinians but Arab 'opposition' to Jews". [46]
Rhetorical accusations of antisemitism put a burden of proof on the person against whom the charge is raised, putting them in the "difficult" position of having to prove a negative, according to Mearsheimer and Walt. [47] They wrote that accusations of antisemitism are resonant with many Jewish communities, "many of whom still believe that anti-Semitism is rife". [48] They argued that by stifling discussion the weaponization of antisemitism allows myths about Israel to survive unchallenged. [49]
Norman Finkelstein wrote that some of what is claimed to be antisemitism is in fact "exaggeration and fabrication" and "mislabeling legitimate criticism of Israeli policy". [50]
A presumption that all Muslims are antisemitic has been "increasingly deployed by Zionist groups to eliminate critical debate inclusive of Palestinian experiences", according to Mitchell Plitnick and Sahar Aziz. [51] Ronnie Kasrils in 2020 compared claims of antisemitism in Britain to rhetorical strategies employed against the anti-apartheid movement by supporters of the South African government. [52] Finkelstein noted the parallels with how during the Cold War, Communist parties would denounce principled criticism as “anti-Soviet”. [46]
Atalia Omer of the University of Notre Dame wrote in 2021 that weaponization of antisemitism is negative for all involved, including Israel and the broader Jewish community. [53]
Joel Beinin wrote in 2004 that the "well-established ploy" of conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism exposes Jews to attack by suggesting they are responsible for the actions of the Israeli government. [54]
Kenneth L. Marcus, while warning in 2010 against denying or minimizing antisemitism, also cautioned against the rhetorical overuse of the "anti-Semitism card", paralleling concerns raised by Richard Thompson Ford with the broader misuse of "the race card": that it can be dishonest and mean-spirited, risks weakening legitimate accusations of bigotry, risks distracting socially concerned organizations from other social injustices, and hurts outreach efforts between Jewish and Arab or Muslim groups. [6]
Some scholars have said that the charge of antisemitism is becoming less effective, as a greater number of people are now aware of its political usage. [55] [56]
In the 1970s, the concept of "new antisemitism" emerged, with cultural critics identifying a novel form of antisemitism disguised as critique of Israel and Zionism. [57]
Sociologist David Hirsh has criticized the charge of weaponization in discourses about Israel, arguing that accusations of 'playing the antisemitism card' are often made in bad faith. [58] [22] [21] Hirsh coined the name the Livingstone Formulation, after Ken Livingstone, to refer to the charge of weaponizing claims of anti-semitism. In 2005, Livingstone made the argument that he was being subjected to weaponized charges of antisemitism after he compared a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard. Hirsh criticizes the rhetorical formulation as containing within it "a counter-charge of dishonest Jewish (or 'Zionist') conspiracy". [21] He also observes an inversion within the argument, in which antisemitism that has nothing to do with Israel is rhetorically defended with the claim that charges of antisemitism are misapplied to all criticisms of Israel. He terms this 'crying Israel', as opposed to 'crying antisemitism'. [59] He writes: "The Livingstone Formulation does not allege that Jews often misjudge what has happened to them, it alleges that they lie about what has happened to them. It is not an allegation of error, or over-zealousness, perhaps explicable by reference to the antisemitism of the past. It is an allegation of conspiracy." [60] He later compared the concept's invocation in discourses about antisemitism, writing that "The Macpherson principle says that if a black person says they have experienced racism you should begin by assuming that they are right. The Livingstone principle says: if Jews complain about antisemitism on the left then you should begin by assuming that they are making it up to silence criticism of Israel or to smear the left." [61]
Kenneth L. Marcus wrote in 2010 that although Mearsheimer and Walt described such accusations as "the Great Silencer", they had not themselves been silenced and had instead received a wide audience through their book and appearances. Marcus also wrote that many pro-Israel commentators who had condemned what they viewed as antisemitism in anti-Zionist rhetoric had also taken pains to say that many criticisms of Israel were not antisemitic. [62]
Dov Waxman, Adam Hosein, and David Schraub write that people—generally Jews—who raise charges of antisemitism are frequently accused of being disingenuous, and that charges of antisemitism are bound to be contested because "antisemitism today is not always easy to identify or even define". [10] They write further that charges of bad faith may be dissipated by clarifying, when antisemitism is alleged or denied, which of the many potential understandings of antisemitism is being invoked. They also write that "it is reasonable to insist that persons who encounter a Jewish claim of antisemitism at least adopt a presumptive disposition towards taking that claim seriously and considering it with an open mind. Jewish claims of antisemitism are not themselves sufficient to determine whether or not something actually is antisemitic, but these claims should not be ignored or dismissed out of hand. Thus, when a Jewish person experiences an incident as antisemitic this incident should be investigated as potentially antisemitic. A claim of antisemitism does not need to be the end of a conversation, but it should be the start of one". [10]
Hadar Sela, writing for the Jerusalem Post in 2019, criticized the BBC for "amplification of antisemitic tropes" in alleged use of the Livingstone Formulation. [63] Lesley Klaff in 2016 called the charge a "denial of contemporary antisemitism [that is] commonplace in Britain." [64]
Jon Pike argued in 2008 that the charge of weaponizing antisemitism is an ad hominem attack that does not address the allegation of antisemitism levied: "Suppose some discussion of a 'new antisemitism' is used in an attempt to stifle strong criticism. Well, get over it. The genesis of the discussion and the motivation of the charge [don't] touch the truth or falsity of the charge. Deal with the charge, rather than indulging in some genealogical inquiry." [65]
Speaking not just of antisemitism but regarding "bad faith" claims responding to discrimination allegations more broadly, David Schraub in 2016 called the charge "a first-cut response that presents marginalized persons as inherently untrustworthy, unbelievable, or lacking in the basic understandings regarding the true meaning of discrimination." [22]
The formulation was described by Terry Glavin in 2016 as a device deployed to shield left-wing antisemites from scrutiny. [66]
In 2020, the EHRC investigated antisemitism in the UK Labour Party and found that agents of the party had committed "unlawful harassment" by "suggesting that complaints of antisemitism are fake or smears," asserting in their report that "this conduct may target Jewish members as deliberately making up antisemitism complaints to undermine the Labour Party, and ignores legitimate and genuine complaints of antisemitism in the Party." [61]
Zionism is a nationalist movement that emerged in late modern Europe in the 19th century to enable the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition. Following the establishment of the modern State of Israel, Zionism became an ideology that supports the development and protection of the State of Israel as a Jewish state.
Israel Shahak was an Israeli professor of organic chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a Holocaust survivor, an intellectual of liberal political bent, and a civil-rights advocate and activist on behalf of both Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews). For twenty years, he headed the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights (1970–90) and was a public critic of the policies of the governments of Israel. As a public intellectual, Shahak's works about Judaism proved controversial, especially the book Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years (1994).
New antisemitism is the concept that a new form of antisemitism developed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, typically manifesting itself as anti-Zionism. The concept is included in some definitions of antisemitism, such as the working definition of antisemitism and the 3D test of antisemitism. The concept dates to the early 1970s.
Gilad Atzmon is an Israeli-born British jazz saxophonist, novelist, political activist, and writer.
The terms "self-hating Jew", "self-loathing Jew" and auto-antisemite are pejorative terms used to describe a Jew whose viewpoints on any specific matter are perceived as antisemitic.
The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy is a book by John Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Walt, Professor of International Relations at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, published in late August 2007. It was a New York Times Best Seller.
Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History is a book by Norman Finkelstein published by the University of California Press in August 2005. The book provides a critique of arguments used to defend Israel's stance in the Israel-Palestine conflict, including the use of the weaponization of antisemitism to deflect criticism of Israel. The book also compares Alan Dershowitz's earlier book, The Case for Israel, with the findings of mainstream human rights organisations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. It includes an epilogue entitled Dershowitz v. Finkelstein: Who’s Right and Who’s Wrong? by Frank Menetrez, a former Editor-in-Chief of the UCLA Law Review.
The Israel lobby are individuals and groups seeking to influence the United States government to better serve Israel's interests. The largest pro-Israel lobbying group is Christians United for Israel with over seven million members. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a leading organization within the lobby, speaking on behalf of a coalition of pro-Israel American Jewish groups.
The Jewish lobby are individuals and groups predominantly in the Jewish diaspora that advocate for the interests of Jews and Jewish values. The lobby references the involvement and influence of Jews in politics and the political process, and includes organized groups such as the American Jewish Committee, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, B'nai B'rith, and the Anti-Defamation League.
James Petras is a retired Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada who has published on political issues with particular focus on Latin America and the Middle East, imperialism, globalization, and leftist social movements.
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—a region partly coinciding with the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way.
Antony Lerman is a British writer who specialises in the study of antisemitism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, multiculturalism, and the place of religion in society. From 2006 to early 2009, he was Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, a think tank on issues affecting Jewish communities in Europe. From December 1999 to 2006, he was Chief Executive of the Hanadiv Charitable Foundation, renamed the Rothschild Foundation Europe in 2007. He is a founding member of the Jewish Forum for Justice and Human Rights, and a former editor of Patterns of Prejudice, a quarterly academic journal focusing on the sociology of race and ethnicity.
Racism in the Palestinian territories encompasses all forms and manifestations of racism experienced in the Palestinian Territories, of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, irrespective of the religion, colour, creed, or ethnic origin of the perpetrator and victim, or their citizenship, residency, or visitor status. It may refer to Jewish settler attitudes regarding Palestinians as well as Palestinian attitudes to Jews and the settlement enterprise undertaken in their name.
Criticism of Israel is a subject of journalistic and scholarly commentary and research within the scope of international relations theory, expressed in terms of political science. Israel has faced international criticism since its declaration of independence in 1948 relating to a variety of issues, many of which are centered around human rights violations in its occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The "three Ds" or the "3D test" of antisemitism is a set of criteria formulated by Israeli human rights advocate and politician Natan Sharansky in order to distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from antisemitism. The three Ds stand for delegitimization, demonization, and double standards, each of which, according to the test, indicates antisemitism.
This timeline of anti-Zionism chronicles the history of anti-Zionism, including events in the history of anti-Zionist thought.
There have been instances of antisemitism within the Labour Party of the United Kingdom (UK) since its establishment. Notable occurrences include canards about "Jewish finance" during the Boer War and antisemitic remarks from leading Labour politician Ernest Bevin. In the 2000s, controversies arose over comments made by Labour politicians regarding an alleged "Jewish lobby", a comparison by London Labour politician Ken Livingstone of a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard, and a 2005 Labour attack on Jewish Conservative Party politician Michael Howard.
Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany occur frequently in some veins of anti-Zionism in relation to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The legitimacy of these comparisons and their potential antisemitic nature is a matter of debate. Historically, figures like historian Arnold J. Toynbee have drawn parallels between Zionism and Nazism, a stance he maintained despite criticism. Scholar David Feldman suggests these comparisons are often rhetorical tools without specific antisemitic intent. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a pro-Israel group, sees them as diminishing the Holocaust's significance.
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA) is a document meant to outline the bounds of antisemitic speech and conduct, particularly with regard to Zionism, Israel and Palestine. Its creation was motivated by a desire to confront antisemitism and by objections to the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism, which critics have said stifles legitimate criticism of the Israeli government and curbs free speech. The drafting of the declaration was initiated in June 2020 under the auspices of the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem by eight coordinators, most of whom were university professors. Upon its completion the declaration was signed by about 200 scholars in various fields and released in March 2021.
Zionist antisemitism or antisemitic Zionism refers to a phenomenon in which antisemites express support for Zionism and the State of Israel. In some cases, this support may be promoted for explicitly antisemitic reasons. Historically, this type of antisemitism has been most notable among Christian Zionists, who may perpetrate religious antisemitism while being outspoken in their support for Jewish sovereignty in Israel due to their interpretation of Christian eschatology. Similarly, people who identify with the political far-right, particularly in Europe and the United States, may support the Zionist movement because they seek to expel Jews from their country and see Zionism as the least complicated method of achieving this goal and satisfying their racial antisemitism.
In 2013, the Committee on Antisemitism addressing the troubling resurgence of antisemitism and Holocaust denial produced two important political achievements: the "Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion"...and the "Working Definition of Antisemitism"....The last motion raised much criticism by some scholars as too broad in its conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The exploitation, the instrumentalization, the weaponization of antisemitism, a concomitant of its de-historicization and de-textualization, became a metonymy for speaking of the Jewish genocide and of anti-Zionism in a way that confined its history to the court's benches and research library and its memory to a reconstruction based mostly on criteria of memorial legitimacy for and against designated social groups.
I do not doubt that antisemitism exists across German society, including among Muslims, but the politicization of the definition of antisemitism—for example, the way that the IHRA definition is used to stifle criticism of Israeli policies—makes it very difficult to reach consensus on what is and what is not antisemitic."&"The far-right instrumentalization of antisemitism and solidarity with Israel is one of the most disturbing developments of recent years.
Increasingly, however, those canards coexist with right-wing actors — above all those in power — increasingly labeling Jews as perpetual victims who must be protected, even as these same actors invoke well-worn antisemitic tropes elsewhere. By and large, these charges of antisemitism — especially as they relate to Israel — are made in order to gain political currency, even if the controversy at hand has no bearing on actual threats to Jews. Using the antisemitism label so vaguely and liberally not only stunts free speech, but also makes actual threats to Jewish people harder to identify and combat. This weaponizing of antisemitism is not only "cancelling" Palestinian rights advocates and failing to make Jews any safer; it's also using Jews to cancel others.
...when the waves of hatred spread and appeared on all the media networks around the world and penetrated every home, the new-old answer surfaced: anti-Semitism. After all, anti-Semitism has always been the Jews' trump card because it is easy to quote some crazy figure from history and seek cover. This time, too, the anti-Semitism card has been pulled from the sleeve of explanations by the Israeli government and its most faithful spokespeople have been sent to wave it. But the time has come for the Israeli public to wake up from the fairy tale being told by its elected government.
Omer Bartov: "You can call me a self-hating Jew, call me an antisemite. People use those terms to cover up the reality, either to deceive themselves or to deceive others. You have to look at what's happening on the ground."; Barton's comments also referenced at "'Accusing Israel of apartheid is not anti-Semitic': Holocaust historian". Al Jazeera .
Whenever Israel faces a public relations debacle such as the Intifada or international pressure to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict, American Jewish organizations orchestrate this extravaganza called the 'new anti-Semitism.'
Mr. Ben-Gurion described Maj. R. B. Verdin's much-discussed address to the court, in which, acting as counsel, he sought leniency for his two British soldier clients on the ground that they had been ensnared by the gun-running ring, as "characteristic of the lowest type of anti-Semitism." Many find it hard not to consider such a description exaggerated, especially when the Nazi excesses in Berlin and Warsaw are borne in mind. There are many, too, who feel that any charge of anti-Semitism in its accepted sense is most noticeably incompatible with the military court proceedings against the Jewish defendants, which are carried out with a scrupulousness and courtesy designed to preclude any such castigation, and where every consideration is accorded to the defense, even to the point of one judge's offering his cushion to one of the defendants, who looked uncomfortable on the hard wooden bench.
This provoked Ben-Gurion, understandably exasperated by the publicity organized by British information services, to a violent counterattack in which he asserted that the court had acted under anti-Semitic influence. In keeping with the new spirit of absolute uncompromise, he opened a new phase in Zionist propaganda which lasted to the end of the mandate: henceforth to be anti-Zionist was to be anti-Semitic; to disapprove of Jewish territorial nationalism was to be a Nazi.
Over the decades there has been a tendency among Israelis and Jews abroad to identify strong criticism of Israel as tantamount to, or as at least stemming from, anti-Semitism. Zionists routinely branded Glubb an 'anti semite', and he was keenly aware of this.
It is this conflation between Israel and Judaism, one that is baked into the foundation of Israel and perpetuated by its leaders, that leads to a problematic tautology: Israel's leaders represent all Jewish people, and thus by definition any criticism of Israel must be criticism of all Jewish people — and hence antisemitic.
The impact of the silencing of debate about Israeli policy on Jewish life has been devastating.
Today, the Israeli hasbara apparatus's most active front is the attempted redefinition of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, with the goal of rendering any opposition to the occupation, Zionism – or even simply Israeli policies themselves — beyond the pale of mainstream acceptability.
Attempts to rearticulate antisemitism to encompass opposition to Israel's "right to exist" or its character as a Jewish state date back to the 1970s, when the Anti-Defamation League first popularized a discourse on "the new antisemitism" (see Forster and Epstein 1974; on the subsequent development of that discourse see Judaken 2008). The identification of anti-Zionism with antisemitism has long been de rigueur in Jewish communal and broader pro-Israel circles, but only in the last two decades have Israel advocacy groups endeavoured to establish it as a principle of United States anti-discrimination law. The earliest step in this direction was taken in 2004, when Kenneth L. Marcus, the Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) under President George W. Bush, issued a game-changing policy guidance letter empowering OCR staff, for the first time, to investigate complaints under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act alleging pervasive antisemitism on college campuses.