I think it’s also important to highlight how Zionist propaganda itself feeds into antisemitism. The argument that Israel is the “true” homeland for all Jews worldwide is saying, the antisemitic trope that wherever the Jew is, he is not really “of” that place, is true, he doesn’t belong where he is.

Last week, a French Jewish man and his five year old son were attacked in a gas station parking lot for wearing kippah in public. The attackers shouted ‘free Palestine’ and ‘go back to your country’. The man isn’t even Israeli, and nothing I’ve read points to him being a zionist or instigating the assault.

This kind of thinking and rhetoric needs to be shut down in no uncertain terms and with in the strongest possible way. There can be no room for antisemitism passing for antizionism or support for Palestine.

https://youtu.be/C_n_qtgUKnY

^ Lenin’s speech on antisemitism, this should answer your last 3 bullet points better than I ever could.

As for modern day, the institutional portion of anti semitism manifests itself as conflating Zionism with Judaism. This is done to protect imperialism.

As you noted in your post, the mainstream anti Israel voices are anti semitic, until a “left” political voice with prominence comes out and detangles peoples perceived associations between Israel and the Jewish people, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to get the average person to listen to you.

TL;DR: antizionist Jews must continue to fight back and speak up or I don’t believe the arguments of well intentioned non-jews will be enough to curb this wave of antisemitism.

The truth of the matter is that outside of places like nyc or LA the average person has a very low chance of ever interacting with a Jewish person and an even lower chance that they realize the person they just talked to is Jewish. A lot of us come from very secular backgrounds and don’t wear the garb outside of synagogue.

I volunteered with an organization in higschool that went to schools around the area and presented Judaism to students who have never met a Jew. There are a lot of such schools in my area (an area with a relatively big Jewish population) and not just the christian ones. IIRC Israel was not part of our normal lesson plan but it was something that often came up when students asked questions. Of course the 2010/2011 rhetoric/narrative resulted in many of my co-volunteers proliferating the conflation between Israel and Judaism.

Growing up in the Jewish community it’s what we were taught. That Israel was our greatest victory, our birthright and true homeland. But I remember the first time I went there in 2011 I saw shit that never sat right with me. I didn’t know how to describe it at the time but I certainty know now: apartheid. When I returned 3 years later on a “birthright” program I noticed it again. The way the former IDF “guards” on our trip referred to Palestinians was downright sickening. I could see that they were hurt by friends lost to military conflict but their rhetoric left no room for empathy, not for the children and not for civilians. It was simply “they support Hamas and therefore they made their bed.”

Anyway all that rambling to say: Jews will need to advocate for themselves just like I did in high school but this time for antizionism. That’s not to say we should be alone in this. I’m fairly confident anyone who knows me well enough would speak up against the conflation between Judaism and zionism. They know where I stand and so does my family. But many people in the world will only ever see the ghouls on TV and twitter and think that’s all there is to it.

It’s been ramping up the last few months but we must continue to not be silent and complicit in this genocide. I saw a great interview on the daily show recently where John Stewart interviewed an anti-zionist Jew. There it was, two Jews explaining their denouncement of israel, how israel’s actions spit in the face of Judaism and the victims of the holocaust. That’s what we need, more conversation and explanation so people understand that we were sold propaganda but regardless many of us are not blind to the atrocities.

This Saturday we’re going to my partners friends house for a BBQ and I’m planning to take the hosts aside to talk on this very subject. None in that friend group (including my partner) had ever met a Jew before I came into the picture, but (I hope) getting to know me has expanded their perspective of my people and allowed them to feel more confident in their antizionism.

I think of how if you have some kind of rash you might take a steroid cream to help with the inflammation. But inflammation is your body’s reaction to something. So if you use too much of the cream, the unintended consequence is that you might get a really nasty infection because you’re hampering your immune system. Same could be said if the immunocompromised because of chemotherapy. Even that might be too complicated! It’s the boy who cried wolf.

There are people who hates Jews for their inheritance and not Zionists for their intolerant ideas and actions. If you were a clever nazi you could even stoke resentment in the rebuked anti-zionist with some shit like “Hitler tried to stop this.” And if you weren’t already condemning the U$$'s internment of Japanese citizens, you would have to work double time to also condemn the concentration of Jews. You could get a really nasty “supply lines in Germany were destroyed by America so they couldn’t get food to the camps” infection where you think the concentration of Jews to figure out the “Zionist question” is permissible. It’s easily comorbid with questions about the official death toll numbers which leads the way to the rest of the Holocaust denial. Then they’re going full Palpetine mode on the next Anakin who would have led the revolution.

You’d start taking national socialism on its face because you haven’t read that much theory about an international worker’s movement. You’d be really good at muddying the water. “You’re really going to keep Zionists in the union?” And “some people don’t deserve to benefit from socialist production unless they bend the knee.” Then you’re in a proper mess and people are going to listen to you.

Thank you for this post comrade. Despite the cynical weaponization of antisemetism by Zionists, this is a real problem which demands investigation, and can be seen even here on Hexbear. Just last week there was a post where people were defending some ZOG guy’s tweet which said “it’s hard to care about antisemetism”

Pretty much like anything else, consider it within its real history and social impact rather than pluck it out and try to examine it in an isolated moral issue. When did Zionism emerge and what were the social conditions in which it emerged? How did it change over time? What was and is its relationship to the owners of production? Follow the money. Same with antisemitism.

It’s a lot of history to cover. The reason why it seems most people are misinformed or not very read is because they are. People often take shortcuts, but they are not lazy. Whenever you tackle a huge subject, you have to simplify it in order to quickly get your head around it. People use their common sense which is just a curated form of the propaganda background radiation that is media in the Western world. The relationship between that propaganda and Zionism or antisemitism is something to think about as well. Why are they conflated and who benefits from it? Why isn’t more effort put into separating them?

I have seen some pretty good material by American orgs on how not to repeat antisemitic tropes and why antisemitism is wrong, especially at the time when encampments were really popping. That could be a good starting step