The Anti-Zionism = Antisemitism Power Play
Program
#RaceClass
Episode
24
Episode Length
00:57:09
Media Type
Podcast
Release Date
12-7-2023
Publisher
WNHN
Language
en-US
Abstract
On Dec. 5, the U.S. House passed HR 894, which states that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” On the same day, House Republicans charged the presidents’ of Harvard, Penn and MIT with institutional “cultures” that “foster [antisemitism] because you have faculty and students who hate Jews, hate Israel and are comfortable apologizing for terror.” As Noah Zatz recently observed, both claims rely on a logical leap that requires “conflating the Israeli state with its Jewish residents in conjunction with metaphors of destruction.”
Building on Zatz’s analysis, we interrogate the claim that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Even recognizing that criticism targeting Israel can be antisemitic, the now-bipartisan claim that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism raises at least three serious concerns: (1) it is analytically fraught; (2) it is potentially dangerous for Jews and others (in part because it foments social division and can feed white supremacist ideologies like great replacement theory) and (c) it is a predictable and strategic effort to silence dissent and discredit antiracist movements in the United States and beyond and abroad.
Recommended Citation
Jonathan Feingold & Arnie Arnesen,
The Anti-Zionism = Antisemitism Power Play
(2023).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/raceclass/66
