OPINION: If you hate Israel, you hate Jews. Own it
Anti-Zionism is not a protest, it’s a pathology — a deep, deranged hatred disguised as politics, infecting the left and much of the Muslim world, aimed squarely at the soul of Judaism itself
I knew it in my guts to be true, long before 7 October. Now the Chief Rabbi’s gone and said it. Out loud. In public. Good on him. If you are anti-Zionist, then yes, you are anti-Jewish. And not just a bit anti-Jewish, either. You hate – for whatever sinister motive – not just the idea of a Jewish state but Judaism itself.
The anti-Zionist movement that’s metastasised like mould across the left and much of the Muslim world is not some noble stand against colonialism. It’s grubby pound-shop Jew hate.
Being a campaigning anti-Zionist – that is, opposing Israel’s right to exist ‘From the river to the sea’ – is not a political stand like campaigning for lower taxes and a better-funded NHS. It’s loaded, venomous, visceral and oozes from a very dark place.
Where does this darkness often start? In vast swathes of the Middle East and campuses worldwide, anti-Zionism isn’t a reasoned evidence-based judgment. It’s baked in. Inculcated. Handed down. In textbooks, in sermons. On BBC Arabic. A steady drip-feed from childhood casting Jews as horned demons, blood drinkers and well poisoners. It’s a horror show.
Children deserve formative years, not deformative years. Then we wonder why some of those same communities here in Britain call for a global intifada on Oxford Street.
You still think it’s just about Gaza? Grow up.
The left is even worse. At least with Islamists we know the origin of their pathology. Corbynistas camouflage theirs in noble concern for human rights that somehow isn’t noble enough to extend to Iranian hangings, Sudanese slaughter, Taliban woman hating and Chinese Uyghur concentration camps. Their selective indignation is as treacherous as it is transparent.
And what’s their actual argument? That Israel’s a brutal occupier? A racist state? That it shouldn’t exist because it was born after war and in partition? There’s barely a country on Earth that wasn’t. But who’s calling for the dismantling of India or Pakistan or Jordan or Syria or Iraq or Poland or Turkey or Taiwan or Estonia or Latvia or Lithuania or Lebanon? Or bloody Belgium?!
The anti-Zionist movement that’s metastasised like mould across the left and much of the Muslim world is not a noble stand against colonialism. It’s grubby pound-shop Jew hate
When it isn’t fighting for its life, here’s what Israel’s doing. It’s giving the world drip irrigation systems that prevent crops dying in drought. It’s pioneering cancer treatments. It’s inventing the Pillcam to make internal exams as simple as swallowing. It’s making your phone battery last longer and helping you avoid traffic jams on Waze.
Last September, Israeli company Epitomee Medical received FDA approval for its next-generation weight loss treatment, a pill offering an improved alternative to Ozempic-style injections. The sooner its staff can stop defending their families from Hamas and get back into their lab coats, the sooner you’ll find it on sale at your local chemist.
Despite being currently saddled with a government whose failings are numerous and well documented in Jewish News, Israel is among the most innovative, open, vibrant societies on the planet in one of the most closed and repressive regions on the planet. With Arab judges, professors and doctors, Jewish-Arab universities and the only free elections for thousands of miles in every direction. Tel Aviv Gay Pride is celebrated a mere 600 miles from Iran, where they happily hang homosexuals from cranes.
To brand Israel uniquely evil, uniquely illegitimate – is deranged, malevolent and steeped in blind hate that defies, history, evidence and sanity
It’s surrounded by regimes that jail journalists and erase women from public life. To single out Israel in this context – to brand it uniquely evil, uniquely illegitimate – is deranged, malevolent and steeped in blind hate that defies, history, evidence and sanity.
The Chief Rabbi has exposed the obvious. When the two other Abrahamic faith have a multitude of countries (130 Christian states, 55 Muslim states) but you fiercely, even violently, opposed one for the most murdered and maligned religion in history, you’re not progressive. You’re pathologically prejudiced. You’re not right in the head.
The Chief Rabbi has told the truth, bluntly and without dressing it up. And it’s about time someone with his gravitas did. Because what we’re facing isn’t a disagreement about borders or a plea for peace. It’s a sinister, sustained, coordinated effort to erase the Jewish people.
If that’s not antisemitism, what is?
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