Criticizing Israel Without Being Antisemitic:
It can be done! And sometimes the Israeli government needs to be criticized, as all governments do. No government is or should be beyond criticism.
So why, when you criticize Israel, are you so often accused of antisemitism? Because frequently anti-Israel criticism is antisemitic or rapidly devolves into being so. So let’s go over some non-exhaustive general rules about how to criticize the Israel government without being antisemitic.
1) Don’t blame US foreign policy regarding Israel on “the Benjamins.”
Are there lobbyists that lobby Congress on Israel’s behalf? Of course there are. Most nations have such lobbyists to advocate their interests in the United States. Those lobbyists register with the feds as representing foreign interests, and then they go try and convince Congress to do things in their clients’ interests.
Note that the only money that exchanges hands there is between the client and the lobbyist. Not Congress. Because Congresspeople cannot take money from non-citizens. (This is a very simplified version of this process, for ease.)
So when you talk about the “Israel lobby” controlling Congress through money, you’re not talking about Israel itself. You’re talking about Americans and American lobbying groups who have an interest in US-Israel relations, the most famous being AIPAC. So, when you say “Congress’ support for Israel is all about the money,” what people (including Jews) hear you saying is “American Jews control the US government with money.”
Yeah, that has a very different flavor to it, doesn’t it? (It also ignores that plenty of financial backing for Israel in the US comes from the evangelical right.)
Jews controlling the world or a government with their money is an old, like Middle Ages old, antisemitic canard that has been used over the centuries to dispossess us of our belongings, any land we held, our money, and our lives. It persists to this day, and we hear it all the time (see e.g. “George Soros is funding immigrant caravans and BLM” bullshit). This is a bad, and for Jews scary, insinuation.
Critiquing Congress’ and US policy on Israel is fine, but don’t blame it on Jewish money. Few American Jews are single-issue Israel voters, and diaspora Jews have wildly varying opinions on Israeli policies (and some don’t have an opinion on Israel at all! Since we don’t live there.) Don’t accuse Congress of supporting Israel or US foreign policy regarding Israel because we Jews are paying them off.
2) Don’t say Israel is the same as the Nazi regime.
I’ll be honest, I don’t like the current government of Israel. Netanyahu is a racist, corrupt, militant tool. Some of the actions of the Israeli government have and do horrify me.
But the Israeli government has not created industrialized mass murder facilities and wiped out two-thirds of Palestinians in the Middle East in a three to six year span. They just haven’t. That is what the Nazis did to European Jews, and Israel has never done that to anyone.
When this rhetoric gets used, its entire purpose is to offend Jewish people (fun fact, we don’t all live in Israel) because it’s entire purpose is to conflate Jewish Israelis (many of whom also don’t support their government and speak out against it) with people who attempted to wipe them or their ancestors off the map in living memory. It’s not good. Avoid this.
3) Don’t use blood libel smears in your pro-Palestinian activism.
I cannot count the number of times I’ve seen accusations (hyperbolic or not) that Israeli soldiers kill and eat Palestinian children. Or the number of times I’ve seen signs/fliers saying “Palestinian children slaughtered according to religious rite” with a picture of Israel/the Israeli flag/a Magen David on them. And I’ve spoken to the people who put them up, who told me they’re pro-Palestinian or anti-Zionist.
Blood libel is one of the oldest antisemitic claims in the book. It dates at least as far back as the eleventh century, when Jews were accused of murdering Christian children to use their blood for matzo or other significant religious rituals. It’s been used as an excuse to murder us en masse ever since.
No one is saying if a specific Palestinian child was killed or murdered by the IDF it’s antisemitic to say so. But to make these statements that it’s being done so Jewish Israelis can eat them or otherwise use their deaths for Jewish ritual purposes is abhorrently antisemitic.
4) Don’t ask a diaspora Jew their opinions about Israel just because they mentioned they were Jewish.
Just over half of the world’s Jews live in diaspora (aka not in Israel). Being Jewish doesn’t mean a person has any particular opinions about Israel or that they have any opinions about it at all. When a Jewish person mentions they are a Jew, and someone’s first response is to ask about Israel, we know they’re only asking Because we are Jewish.
Also, unless there’s some external reason our opinion is relevant and required, you have no right to demand a Jewish person you know nothing about beyond them being a Jew share their opinion on Israel.
COROLLARY, if someone is talking about being Jewish/Judaism/Jewish things/Antisemitism don’t show up going “what about the Palestinians?” If you’re the only one talking about Israel in a Jewish space, it’s because Israel is irrelevant to the specific discussion. Demanding Jews focus every conversation about Jewish topics on Israel is inappropriate.
5) Do not use Zionist as a blanket word for Israelis or for Jews.
Zionism is the belief that Jews do or should have the right to self-determination in the land to which they are indigenous. No more, no less. There are many different types of Zionism, which have diverging opinions on how to achieve that, because that belief itself is pretty broad and non-specific.
Not all Jews are Zionists under the above definition. Not even all Israelis are. When we see you come at us, often when not discussing Israel at all, saying “okay Zionist” we know you mean “okay Jew.” Because you don’t know if we’re a Zionist, you just know we’re a Jew. And we know you’re an antisemite. Further, assuming we are loyal to Israel because we are Jews? Is a classic dual-loyalty antisemitic trope.
Additionally, “Zionist” has been used in place of “Jew” in some pretty antisemitic screeds against us (Farrakhan comes to mind) to try and insulate the perpetrators from accusations of antisemitism. It is a loaded word as a result, so use with caution.
6) Don’t hold Israel to a higher standard than you hold other governments to.
Only you can truly answer if you hold Israel to the same standards you hold other governments to. I don’t know your mind. But many Jews are (understandably) nervous with someone who is passionately anti-Zionist and doesn’t have a personal connection to the issue. That’s not to say that educated people without a personal connection can’t or shouldn’t care about the Palestinians and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it gets us nervous because it is frequently a cover for genuine antisemitism.
If you care about the plight of Gaza (which is indeed a humanitarian tragedy), and only care about Israel’s role in that to the exclusion of the concurrent Egyptian blockade it bears asking Why? Why would one result in seething rage against a foreign nation and the other result in utter indifference to a foreign powers’ actions? Ask yourself why you are focused on Israel and if you have singled Israel out for your critical eye.
Not because you can’t criticize Israel without being antisemitic, but the reason the two so often go hand-in-hand is that we all in the West live in antisemitic societies and have internalized antisemitism (even us Western Jews are not immune). If you only pay attention to and devote your energy to criticizing Israel, to the exclusion of other horrifying human rights abuses both in the Middle East and other parts of the world, ask yourself if it’s because of Israel’s actions or because it is the only majority-Jewish nation. If you support the Palestinian Right to Return, do you support Land Back to Indiginous groups in the Americas? Why or why not? Do your sources have an antisemitic bias? Not all do, but some do (just as some have a pro-Israel bias). It is entirely possible to have pure motives in your criticism of Israel. Israel is not perfect and has committed serious wrongdoings. But ask what Your motivation is.
This list is not, and will likely never be, exhaustive. Antisemitism finds new and sneaky ways into the pro-Palestinian cause all the time. But hopefully this can be a starting point for those critical of Israel who genuinely do not want to harm Jewish people as a whole.
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