On Israel and anti-Semitism

These Jews are not anti-Semites (Source: here)

Lately, it has become dangerous to criticise Israel, especially in the United States. Fear of being labelled an anti-Semite is so pronounced that politicians and large swathes of the media seem unable or unwilling to cover, let alone condemn, the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

This is truly remarkable, because senior Israelis are literally stating publicly that every Palestinian in Gaza is an enemy (see here). The government's policy, which has explicit US backing is to empty Gaza of Palestinians (see here). Is Israel going to kill or throw out - if so, where to? - some two million people in order to take over Gaza? We are looking at the prospect of one of history's Greatest Crimes Against Humanity, right up there alongside Pol Pot, the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, and Rwanda. And everyone is afraid to speak up, because they will be labelled an anti-Semite.

The treatment of Israel’s invasion of Gaza stands in sharp contrast to the coverage of Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. While Russia has been thrown out of international events ranging from chess to athletics, Israel still participates on par with other nations, the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest being the most recent example. 

Why is it so difficult for critics of Israel to escape being labelled anti-Semites? After all, the two things are entirely different concepts; harbouring prejudice against members of the Jewish culture is patently not the same as levelling criticism at the elected government of Israel.

The reason why anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel have become conflated is that very strong interests push for it to be so. These interests understand the political value of the great negative stigma associated with anti-Semitism; who, other than a crazy fringe, would ever want to lumped together with Adolf Hitler?

By labelling Israel’s critics as anti-Semites, the pro-Israeli lobby discourages legitimate criticism of Israel, including criticism of its ongoing genocide in Gaza as well as Israel’s many other war crimes from the past (see here). 

The purpose of this short note is to clear up the confusion surrounding the question of Israel and anti-Semitism. I will illustrate why directing criticism at Israel is entirely legitimate and, in the context of Gaza, why it is also orthogonal to anti-Semitism. 

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Let us start by clearing up some common sources of confusion.

First, Jewish people are not a distinct race. In general, there is no genetic basis for belonging to a culture and that includes the Jewish culture (see here). Historically, those who have sought to classify Jews along racial lines have either been deeply ignorant, have had very sinister intentions, or both, typically churches (see here) or dictators of which Adolf Hitler is the best-known example (see here). Hitler’s feeble-brained theories served to scapegoat Jews to ease his way to power, blaming them for the suffering of the German people in the aftermath of WW1.

Israeli Jews - one culture, many races (Source: here)

The second point – an extension of the first – is that being Jewish simply means belonging to the Jewish culture. Like members of other cultures, Jews are united by a shared set of values, the Hebrew language, and social practices, including, for the believers in their midst, practising a religion called Judaism. Not all Jewish values and cultural practices are fair or just, nor is Judaism above the kind of criticism one can level at any religion. Moreover, Jews are human beings, who discriminate against members of other cultures as much as members of other cultures do; on a visit to Israel I had the derogatory word goy levelled at me in public as have many other visitors, I imagine. Jewish culture, like any other culture, therefore can and should be open to criticism.

Ardent Culturalists may find the following statement almost blasphemous, but the truth is that Jewish culture, like any other culture, is largely an accident of geography and circumstance. If you happen to be born into a Jewish family you will almost certainly end up calling yourself Jewish as well. Jews struggle as much as members of other cultures to draw clear lines between where their own personal values end and where their cultural values begin. Indeed, it is this intimacy that makes our cultural attachments so vulnerable to political exploitation.

Which leads me to the final point, namely that Israel is a sovereign nation state with an elected government bound by the same rules as any other nation. We are all within our rights to criticise the government of Israel, just as we are within our rights to criticise any other government. In fact, I would argue that criticism of the Israeli government is particularly pertinent right now, when Netanyahu is knee-deep in genocide and the Israeli government, including its leader, are subject to rulings by International Court of Justice.

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It should be clear from the preceding discussion that race, Jewish Culture, and Israel are three completely different concepts, which should never be confused. Race has no place in the discussion at all, while Jewish culture and the government of Israel should not ever be used inter-changeably. Anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel are not the same thing.

What does that mean in practice? It means that the fact that most people in Israel regard themselves as belonging to the Jewish culture does not in any way free the Israeli government from its obligations under International Law. And the fact that Jewish people were targeted by the Nazis in WW2 does not in any way justify the atrocities the Israeli government is inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza today.

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We are born with brains and we should use them.

We should understand by now that conflating culture with politics are time-honoured and deliberate acts that serve clear political purposes (for more on the interplay between politics and culture see here).

By invoking anti-Semitism, the Israeli government is associating itself with the side that defeated Hitler’s anti-Semitism in WW2, which, by implication, associates the Palestinians with the Nazis. But this association is a false one. No Palestinian alive today participated in the Holocaust. Jews are not being annihilated by Palestinians. If anything, it is the other way around.

Our duty as thinking and moral people is to look past political ploys to recognise right from wrong. It is wrong for the Israeli government to expand its territory at the expense of Palestinians in breach of international law. It is wrong for the Israeli government to commit genocide against the Palestinians. And it is wrong to blame people of Jewish culture for what the Israeli government is doing.

It is not anti-Semitic to make these obvious points. In fact, I would argue real anti-Semitism would be to insist on a different set of rules for members of the Jewish culture than for members of other cultures.

The End