Anti-Zionism is Not Antisemitism
Some weeks ago, two bright pink billboards appeared on University Avenue with the words, “You don’t need to go to law school to know that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” As a practicing Jew who has been steeped in Zionism since I was a child, these billboards disturbed me. To conflate the condemnation of a nation-state with being prejudiced against Jews is a public relations maneuver by those who want to intimidate people from criticizing Israel. This is troublesome and dangerous.
Let’s take a step back and unpack this a bit.
Zionism emerged in Eastern and Central Europe in the late 19th century. Its purpose was to create a homeland for the Jews, where they could be safe from pogroms and other forms of violent antisemitism that had befallen the Jews for millenia. The founders of modern Zionism had their sights set on Palestine for the Jewish homeland, a place where Jews had thrived 2,000 years prior. It was also, according to the Old Testament, the G-d-given inheritance of the Jewish people. Similar to when the pilgrims arrived on the shores of the “New World,” the land known as Palestine was already inhabited when Israel was declared a state in 1948.
Over the almost 75 years of Israel’s existence, there has been an ongoing and often violent struggle between the original settlers and their descendants who came to settle the land and the people and their descendants who were already there. Israel is a nation-state, where any Jew is eligible for citizenship, though it is a country where more than twenty-five percent of the population is not Jewish. On the other hand, Judaism is a vast and beautiful thousands-years-old spiritual tradition, which continues to change and evolve.
Many Jews around the world vehemently oppose Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and many Jews around the world vehemently support Israel — no matter its policies. To accuse those who criticize Israeli policy and even the legitimacy of the state of Israel of being antisemitic collapses the very real and frightening age-old discrimination against Jews with a political opinion about a nation-state. Under this assumption, someone, like myself, who questions Zionism, would be considered antisemitic, or perhaps even a “self-hating Jew.” I am neither.
These provocative billboards are courtesy of JewBelong, a New Jersey-based nonprofit, whose stated mission is to “rebrand Judaism” and call out antisemitism with a hip, made-for-social-media bent. JewBelong’s co-founder, Archie Gottesman, is a prominent pro-Israel figure who, in a 2018 Tweet, wrote, “Gaza is full of monsters. Time to burn the whole place.” JewBelong also aligns itself with staunchly pro-Israel Twitter personalities.
A few weeks after the billboards went up, an anonymous anti-Zionist Jewish group made significant upgrades to them overnight. One billboard now reads “You don’t have to go to law school to know that anti-zionism is antiracism. End Israeli apartheid.” The other reads, “You don’t have to go to law school to know Jews4FreePalestine.”
JewBelong claimed the vandalism of their billboards to be a hate crime and Berkeley police believed them. The only way this qualifies as a hate crime is if you agree with the highly controversial premise of the billboard. We must set the record straight.
Please contact BPD at police@cityofberkeley.info or 510.981.5780 and explain that a difference in political perspective is not a hate crime.
This article first appeared in the Berkeley Times on February 9, 2023.
