#bds is antisemitism

[ind1g3n0us-lev1t3]

BDS and the Nazis

This was in Nazi Germany back in the 30s. Do you think Humanity has learned anything from this?

No, no they have not.

This time, they're hiding their antisemitism under the guise of "Liberation for palestinians" and "Fighting apartheid" which is bullshit. They've disguised their antisemitism as "Antizionism" and replacing the word "Jew" with "Israeli" or "Zionist".

All over my city I've seen boycott Israel posters all around Jewish areas and businesses, most with no ties to Israel.

If you really want to help the humanitarian situation in Gaza, donate to a charity which won't give the money to Hamas, don't boycott businesses owned by Jews because some casual antisemites want you to.

If you actively choose to be part of the BDS movement, you are no better than the Nazis in the images above boycotting Jewish businesses. You are no better than the people who would label Jewish businesses and smash their windows in. It's vile.

#BDSisantisemitic <- Spread the word

[naipan]

Campaign against antisemitism and boycotts of Israel

Why BDS is antisemitic – David Hirsh

Posted by David Hirsh

BDS is a global campaign against Israel and only Israel. It seeks to foment sufficient emotional anger with Israel, and with only Israel, so that people around the world will want to punish Israel, and only Israel.

We are free to criticize whoever we want to criticize and people attracted by BDS are critical about other human rights abuses too; but this specific punishment, exclusion from the global community, is proposed only against Israel. BDS cannot be defended as free speech; it goes beyond speech into action. See this debate for more on the issues of singling out Israel; the debate continues here.

BDS says that it seeks to punish only Israeli institutions and not to silence or exclude Israeli individuals. This is not true. Israeli individuals, academics, athletes, artists, actors, film-makers, work inside Israeli institutions; where else could they work? If BDS demands that Israelis should not be part of institutions then it puts an eccentric demand on Israelis. Follow this link for what happened when the BDS movement tried to disrupt a Hebrew production of Merchant of Venice in London.

The BDS demand that for Israelis to be accepted in the global community they have to emigrate, and so not be part of Israeli institutions, is a claim about the essential illegitimacy of the Israeli state. See ‘The Myth of the Institutional Boycott‘ for more on this.

Sometimes BDS argues that there should be a political test rather than an institutional test. For example Israelis have been challenged to criticize Israeli ‘apartheid’ – and if they fail to do so in the terms required of them then they are excluded. But proponents of BDS never explain what kind of machinery would be set up in a university in Britain, say, or America, to test the political cleanliness of an Israeli. And they never explain why such a McCarthyite blacklist would only be set up for Israelis. For more on McCarthyism and BDS, see Steve Cohen here.

BDS is careful to remain ambiguous on the question of Israel’s legitimacy. It says that it is appropriate for people who oppose only the post 1967 occupation but it also refuses to make a distinction between Israeli institutions within Israel and within the West Bank. BDS refuses clarity on what it means by the Palestinian ‘right of return’ and it thinks about the creation of the state of Israel itself as the root of the problem.

BDS talks about Israel as a colonial settler state or an apartheid state but it allows no conception of Israel as a life-raft state, a haven for the un-dead of Europe, a home for Jews ethnically cleansed from the great cities of the Middle East, or as an asylum for the Jews who limped away from the carcass of the Soviet Union. For more on the progressive case for Israel, see this link.

BDS constructs Israelis as white foreigners, who came from outside to settle the land and it constructs Palestinians as indigenous, who have a natural right to the land. In truth many Jews and Arabs have always lived in Palestine; and both Jews and Arabs moved into the area as it became more developed in the late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. There is a historical connection between Jews and the land of Israel. In any case, the splitting of peoples into ‘foreigners’ and ‘indigenous’, the notion that some people have a natural right to land while others are impostors, is profoundly reactionary. Moreover the idea, put about by BDS that Israelis are ‘white’ is also highly misleading. About half of Israelis are descended from people who came from the Middle East; the other Israelis are descended from people who were defined and treated as a racial infection in white Europe.

BDS remains unimpressed about Israel’s role as a potential haven for Jews around the world, if that should become necessary.

BDS says that Israel is an apartheid state. This analogy mis-states the key problem, which is a conflict between two peoples, not a racist state which seeks to exploit the black majority. This analogy again refuses to make a distinction between Israel itself, which is fundamentally a multi-ethnic democracy in which everyone is equal before the law; and the occupied territories, in which there are two different legal systems. Israelis and Palestinians need to find a peace agreement; we need to support those in both nations who recognise the independence of the other. The apartheid analogy is weaponized by BDS as a thought-free short-cut to the conclusion of boycott. See this piece by Alan Johnson on the apartheid analogy.

BDS does not impact much against Israel; it impacts hard against Jews around the world where BDS takes a hold. BDS constructs friends and enemies of the Palestinians in such a way that the overwhelming majority of democratic and antiracist Jews cannot be recognised as friends of the Palestinians. BDS sets up an assumption against Jews, on campus, amongst progressives and in the Labour movement, that they are enemies of Palestinians and therefore enemies of those who want to support the Palestinians. BDS sets itself up in opposition to the overwhelming majority of Jews. See this debate with Claire Potter on the question of antisemitism.

BDS situates itself in the tradition of the boycott of apartheid South Africa but it always remains silent about the other traditions in which it follows. The boycott of Israel organised by the Arab Nationalist States was formally established in 1945, within a year of the gas chambers in Europe going cold. Boycotts of Jews from universities and campaigns to ‘not buy from the Jews’ have been integral to antisemitic movements for centuries.

To teach people to relate to the overwhelming majority of Jews, that is Jews do not agree with BDS, as apologists for apartheid, Nazism or colonialism is to teach people to relate to those Jews in an antisemitic way. If BDS says that Israel is apartheid and that anybody who does not agree with boycotting Israel is a supporter of apartheid, then it is setting up a framework for Jew-baiting. If antizionists say that Israel is genocidal, is like the Nazis, that Zionism is similar to Nazism, then they are inciting people to treat Jews as though they were Nazis.

BDS operates as though there was no threat to the State of Israel. Yet in 1948, 1967 and 1973 there were military attempts by Israel’s neighbouring states to wipe it off the map. The Iranian state continues to argue for and to work for the elimination of Israel and it finances and arms Hamas and Hezbollah in their campaigns against Israeli civilians. Israel may be strong compared to the Palestinians, but in the world as a whole it is a small state surrounded by states and political movements which want it eliminated.

BDS is a campaign to make people angry with Israel and with Israelis and with those people around the world who are suspected of supporting Israel. It would be extraordinary if such a campaign did not sometimes bring with it antisemitic emotions and if it did not sometimes draw upon antisemitic tropes. Experience tells us that BDS does precisely that. Israel is portrayed as a blood-thirsty child-murdering state; it is said that it is racist because the Torah, with its talk of ‘chosen people’ is racist; it is said that Jews were behind the slave trade; it is said that the Rothschilds financed the state of Israel by stealing diamonds from South Africa; it is said that Israel steals and trades in body parts; it is said that Israel is genocidal like the Nazis; it is said that Israel controls politics and the media around the world. In these ways old antisemitic tropes, including blood libel and conspiracy, have a tendency to emerge, recycled, out of the BDS movement.

BDS is only thinkable for people who have no fear of antisemitism. But if we look at the political movements and the states and the militias which seek the destruction of Israel and if we look at the culture which BDS always brings with it into a social space, then having no fear of antisemitism is eccentric indeed. See this critique of Naomi Klein’s argument for more on this .

BDSers sometimes say that there is nothing to fear from debate. This is not always the case. Sometimes there is much to fear from debate. Some debating questions are racist questions. For example we would fear a debate on whether the Holocaust really happened; we would fear a debate on whether women should remain in the kitchen; we would fear a debate on whether black people are more aggressive than white people. In the same way, I fear a debate on whether Israelis, and only Israelis, should be excluded from the global academic, sporting, artistic and economic community. Antisemitism and racism never opens debate, it always closes off free speech.

It is sometimes said that the claim that BDS is antisemitic is an ad hominem argument, aimed at smearing those activists who are in favour of it. The truth is the opposite. The truth is that antisemitism is not a characteristic of people who push BDS, but it is a characteristic of the movement itself. Antisemitism is not only a hatred of Jews; it is also norms, practices and discourses which discriminate against Jews.

The claim that Jews raise the issue of antisemitism as a dirty trick to silence the BDS movement is itself an antisemitic claim. It teaches people to recognize someone who raises the issue of antisemitism as being part of a Jewish conspiracy to play the antisemitism card or to mobilize the power of Holocaust victimhood in a disgraceful way. Usually when people say they have experienced racism or sexism or bigotry, we take that seriously. But BDS trains activists not to take that seriously when it comes out of the mouths of Jews or Jewish communities. BDS trains activists to assume that Jews lie. BDS refuses to teach activists about the history and tropes of antisemitism. BDS is happy to be in a global coalition with antisemitic movements which hate Israel, such as Hamas and Hezbollah. BDS treats people who worry about antisemitism as being more of a threat than people who are antisemitic. Follow this link more on the Livingstone Formulation, the counter-charge that somebody who says they experiences antisemitism is really lying for Israel.

It is understandable when Jews have a special connection to Israel. Sometimes this is manifested in a special horror or even shame concerning the crimes of Israel, both real and imagined. This becomes problematic when Jews export their own specifically Jewish obsession with what Israel does wrong into civil society, campus debate and the Labour movement. It becomes more problematic still when they offer guarantees to non-Jewish institutions and individuals that a focused hostility to Israel, and only to Israel, is not antisemitic. It is problematic when Jews educate non-Jews to think in antisemitic ways and to support antisemitic movements. Read more on antizionism, and particularly Jewish antizionism here.

Antizionism forms the intellectual and the emotional underpinnings of the culture in which antisemitic speech and actions are tolerated. Antizionism is not simply criticism of this or that policy or characteristic or Israel. It is a political movement which takes hostility to one particular state and it makes it into an ‘-ism’, a worldview; one which has a tendency to position the Jewish state as being central to all that is wrong with the world. Everything bad that happens in Israel is constructed, within this ideology, as the necessary result of the supposedly racist essence of Zionism. The aspiration to dismantle the state of Israel, against the will of its citizens, leaving them defenceless against military and political forces which threaten their lives, is part of the antisemitism problem.

Antisemitisms have always constructed ‘the Jews’ as being at the centre of all that is wrong in the world. […]

[notaplaceofhonour]

I’m honestly not surprised. JVP, SJP, and BDS are all scummy, but the Columbia chapters are some of their most consistently, openly, publicly ghoulish

[a-very-tired-jew]

Columbia University's Joint Anti-Israel Groups Go Mask Off

Hey, remember how Columbia University had students in encampments protesting for months? Remember how their SJP, BDS movement, and associated groups endorsed terrorism, violence, and "resistance by any means"?

I remember. Well their joint SJP and BDS group called CU Apartheid Divest just posted something to their Instagram that shows it has never been about Palestine or Palestinians.

Fig. 1. CU Apartheid Divest group, made of SJP, BDS, and other groups openly admits that they are anti-Western Civilization

Read that again.

"We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization."

That's a wild statement to make.

So what are they posting about suddenly that has them revealing their intent for their actions since October?

Bangladesh.

The CU Activists are attempting to liken October 7th attack by Hamas with the Bangladesh student protests. Bangladesh had a quota based employment system that students were protesting, the government responded violently, and everything escalated from there due to years of government corruption, violence, and economic turmoil. This was a protest turned revolution within a country by its own people. This was not a government run by a recognized terrorist group attacking another country, killing civilians, and taking them hostage.

However, the differences and reasons between Hamas's actions and the actions of the students in Bangladesh do not matter to the anti-Zionist Activist.

We've seen this repeatedly from these activists that they will try to liken their movement and/or attach it to other conflicts around the world. Many of these conflicts differ greatly from the Israel/Hamas war as they are internal issues with internal actors being involved.

Bangladesh is students protesting against their government.

Sudan is going through a civil war between various factions.

The Congo has been experiencing decades long violence as various militias fight each other for control.

Yet I've see anti-Israel protestors tag their posts with Free Bangladesh, Free Congo, Free Sudan even though these conflicts differ in origin and parties involved.

If you continue through the IG post you'll see very little information as to the cause of the protest/revolution in Bangladesh and continued attempts to coopt the actions for their movement.

Fig. 2. CU Apartheid Divest group tries to liken its student movements to the student protests in Bangladesh and calls to escalate.

I can't help but think that the CU student activists yearn to be oppressed in a way that would allow them to respond like revolutions and protests around the world. The way they speak and write exudes a yearning for violence. In Fig. 2. they detail the actions taken by students against an authoritarian government that has actively shot and killed protestors. Whereas here in the USA the students were forcibly removed from campuses, experienced some police violence, were arrested, and then released. No curfews with a shoot on sight policy were imposed here in the USA in response to college campus protests.

Fig. 3. CU Apartheid Divest classifies this as an Intifada and likens it to Hamas's attack.

Notice in Fig. 3. that they're trying to call the actions in Bangladesh an Intifada. Not an intifada, but an Intifada which is a proper noun with its own connotation. I know I may be a stickler here, but if I see that word capitalized then I know it's referencing the First and Second Intifadas, and I know that these student groups have been calling for a Third one under the guise of "Global Intifada". They also say that Westerners need to escalate and are "obligated" to do so.

Fig. 4. CU Apartheid Divest uses tankie terminology, refers to Bangladeshis as martyrs, and calls this part of the Global Intifada.

The terminology in Fig. 4. also shows how much the Free Palestine student movement in the USA is not actually about Palestine, Palestinians, or any other movement it tries to attach itself to. These are tankies as indicated by the use of "comrades" and they are wholly opposed to Western Civilization. They genuinely state that their movement should violently escalate here in the USA and that they should be prepared for "sacrifices". This language when coupled with the use of Intifada is alarming as it appears that these student activists are preparing to follow in the footsteps of the Second Intifada, or at the very least calling for others to do so.

These students, whom call themselves the Militants of Hind's Hall (seen in the IG post, but not pictured here), are coopting, or attempting to coopt, movements and conflicts from around the world for their own ideals. As these are students in the USA who are arguably experiencing the least amount of oppression when compared to these other conflicts, and are actively attending Ivy League or R1 universities, it can only be assumed that they're yearning to live out their Glorious Revolution fantasy.

I am under no illusion that I understand their reasoning. Are things perfect here in the USA? Of course not, but when compared to the countries that these student protestors are attaching themselves to, we are leaps and bounds better. And if you disagree, then I have to ask, when was the last time we had a curfew with a shoot on sight policy?

Anyone attempting to call this movement and group "peaceful" is naive. They've been telling you for months that they're not peaceful, that their goals are not peaceful, and that the only peace they want is after they commit violence.

The IG link for reference

[spot-the-antisemitism]

Reading this book, which the pro-Palestinian movement championed and a quick search of the author showed he's Israeli OK, so I decided to see what "myths" he decided to counter

Ok sure, yeah, I dont think anyone really think Israel before its establishment was empty. From other blogs Ive seen, it's already pointed out that there were Arabs in present Israel. But the entire chapter just skates over Ottoman/Arab imperialism of the Holy Land and then just say: all of sudden, Palestine was a prosperpus Muslim land

This is going off the wrong footing, I say. The chapter seems to suggest that Christianity invented Judaism and the idea of the Jewish people. In a way, this entire chapter seems to propagate the idea Zionism is the idea of Christians, not the Jewish people. Ironically, it just makes out the Jewish people as mere pawns of Christianity and that the entire Zionism project is Christianity's idea. The chapter generally omits Jewish indigenity to Israel and other archaeological evidence.

Im skipping over the other myths like "Zionism is Judaism", "Zionism is Not Colonialism", "the Palestinians left voluntarily", "the 1967 war was a war of no choice".

"Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East" - the first half mainly covers and claims how Israel is actually an authoritarian state just because it has military conscription and the everyday IDF soldier can overlord over an ordinary Palestinian

On the chapter: "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East" - the first half mainly covers and claims how Israel is actually an authoritarian state just because it has military conscription and the everyday IDF soldier can overlord over an ordinary Palestinian

"Israel is not a democracy because it actively kills Palestinians during its existence" - Er, Im not sure how that argument holds because, well, the US is still a democracy but also kills people so well. So do they expect a democracy *not* to kill people? Yeah, I know there are issues about Israel's treatment of Palestinians as an occupier of the West Bank, but that does not in any way demote Israel's status as a democracy

Oslo chapter: I take more issue with the claim that Egypt and Jordan were willing to "legitimise the Israeli's takeover of Palestine" because its just fluff to say: they invaded Palestine to prevent Israel from being established and they lost

"The idea to partition is a Zionist idea and the Arabs boycotted partitioned efforts" - the Arabs has zero intentions of allowing Israel to exist. To them, Palestine is Arab

Im dead. The author, as "an Israeli historian" claims Hamas is a legitimate resistance organisation. Im so done with this book

...Were there even Jewish settlers in Gaza before the withdrawal? And oh look another "Gaza is a concentration camp" claim

Curious to note how the Palestinian struggle is actually 150 years. Not 76 years as the mainstream Palestinian movement claim. And yeah, pushing the idea that Israel should change it mind

The last chapter on the Two-State solution (and its conclusion) just go on to rant about how Israel is a settler state and we should recognise that Israel is evil (and imply Israel should be destroyed) as we toss the two-state solution into the bin

In all, the book is a nothingburger really. Just pedalling various pro-Palestinian myths about Israel (ironically, for a book claiming to dispel myths about Israel) and throwing any nuances out of the window. And this is supposedly written by an Israeli

Well, an Israeli leftist. But perhaps have gone so far down the spiral and became a self-hating Israeli

Two things, 150 years ago there was a movement by Muslim arabs to separate from Ottoman Turkey so yes the struggle is longer than “when the Jews came”.

there were NO jews in Gaza before the six days war war because Gaza was Egypt then and Egypt forbid Jews there. Occupying the Sinai was seen not as s strategic buffer zone but elaborate revenge and abuse by inflicting Egyptian arab Muslims with having to not only live WITH Jews but be temporarily ruled by them

also love the infantilizing of “Jews have no power, they are Christian pawns against Muslims”, his tankie students in exeter must Looove to hear that he has no power and they control him snd other jews

He’s an ex-pat.

while you did an excellent breakdown on the book, I looked up the author

Did he flee or was exiled? The tankies that run Wikipedia won’t tell me

Womp womp womp

let’s see what landed him here. I bet it’s the book

It’s not?! Huh so he’s a BDS shill that moonlights for SJP. Wonder which one of his two patrons commissioned the book. Remember this guy sees himself as nothing but a pawn for goyim

HE WAS EXILED FOR ATROCITY PROPAGANDA!!!!

case closed, propaganda dismissed. He does not speak in my name

[elder-millennial-of-zion]

Overheard at work:

“My post got me crucified on social media. Apparently we’re boycotting Starbucks.”

“Why?”

“Cuz they’re ‘supporting genocide.’”

“I like Starbucks, so I’d totally go anyway. You could always go and just not post about it?”

“No, cuz then you’re like, ‘complicit.’”

“I could never be an influencer. You get canceled for everything.”

“Everyone wants to be an influencer. Not everyone should be an influencer, some people just aren’t interesting enough.”

“Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with admitting you’re not that interesting.”

[chanaleah]

BDS does literally nothing to help Palestinians.

I think the best example of this is Ben & Jerry’s, because it’s relatively harmless. If you didn’t know, Ben & Jerry’s decided to stop selling ice cream in the West Bank/Judea & Samaria to protest the settlements.

However, they actually achieved the opposite of what they wanted. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is still sold in Israel proper. This means that the only people who are prevented from getting Ben & Jerry’s are Palestinians who live in the West Bank/Judea & Samaria.

If you’re an Israeli living in a settlement, you can simply drive into Israel proper to buy yourself some ice cream. However if you’re a Palestinian, it’s much more difficult.

This move, pushed by the BDS movement, does nothing to help Palestinians. Ice cream isn’t the biggest deal, considering everything else going on, but it’s the perfect example of how the BDS movement does not care at all about Palestinians, but rather only cares about the goal to destroy Israel.

[captain-casual]

Germany: We need a list of Jewish people’s names and addresses. For reasons.

Literally everyone:

[ind1g3n0us-lev1t3]

Defund Israel movement in a nutshell

[girlactionfigure]

diplo.act

More proof that #BDS is not just a #boycott but a movement to attack and isolate #Jews, incite violence, and dismantle the only #JewishState. We must see them for who they are and put an end to their #antisemitism

[humanbeanvitaminsea]

What are you achieving when you post extremist, strongly anti Israel, anti Zionist comments and content on social media? What is your purpose? What do you hope to achieve?

You might think your strong, angry opinions are going to "save" or "help" the Palestinian people.

They're really not. They're not going to change anything outside of the circle of people you know in your own daily life.

What you're actually doing is isolating people, causing distress to people who, before you started your hate campaign, felt a little safer around you. Now they're scared of you. Is that what you wanted to achieve?

You want peace in the Middle East? I don't think so. I don't think you give two shits about anyone in the Palestinian territories.

Feels to me like you just care about what other, perhaps more influential haters think about you.

If you did, you'd understand that you don't achieve that by posting hate on Facebook.

Don't you think the Israelis and Palestinians would have made peace already if they could?

You honestly think your hate comments are going to help anyone?

They're not. They just destroy friendships, make people frightened and isolate people.

I think you're too arrogant to stop stirring up more and more hatred in the town where you live.

Stayon your soapbox as long as you want, but be aware that no one likes a bully.

You're hurting people who don't even live in the Middle East. You're hurting people who live in your own town.

You are a bully.

Stop it.

[hero-israel]

Has BDS ever done anything remotely successful towards Palestinian liberation, or has every chapter just harassed diaspora Jews and targeted businesses that aren’t even in Israel?

Your instincts are correct: no impact on "liberation," a good deal of impact on otherizing Jews. If you recognize BDS as the abstinence-only sex education of the Left, it makes a lot more sense. More detailed commentary below.

[gay-jewish-bucky]

post: *detailing someone's fear that their friend is being indoctrinated into jvp and wont listen to evidence about how it's a hate group and not actually jewish or for peace and how it feels like losing someone to qanon or some other cult*

person fully indoctrinated in the comments who knows absolutely nothing about the anon's politics:

yall keep writing insane fanfic about every jew who simply doesn't want israel blown off the map and its population ethnically cleansed, regardless of their actual politics, even if they're a pro-palestinian zionist, a zionist who supports peace in general but isn't dedicated to activisim, or even just an antizionist who dares call out antisemitism/holocaust denial in your movement, because you have to make jews the villain so you can sleep soundly at night as if you're doing anything at all to help palestinians while making the world a hell of a lot more dangerous for jews

but yeah, this time you're totally different than every other group who thought this time they were right vilifying the majority of jews, this time the jews are totally evil

i'll be over here with the people actually working for palestinian liberation

[xclowniex]

So I have been doom scrolling on YouTube shorts those days,,, a video of someone buying/eating something that the pro palis are boycotting pop up.

It’s a simple innocent video, the comments are full of “boycott (brand name)” and watermelon emojis and “free Palestine” some even calling the YouTuber names and stuff.

This is harassment, this is full on harassment of someone who crime is buying from a brand they are boycotting.

Not going to lie but they started to sound like a cult at this point.

Instead of focusing all their energy on harassing random YouTuber and Jews and destroying properties, they could focus it on more useful and important things that will help stop this war.

Like idk, helping with the release of the hostages? Not supporting Hamas?

100%

The BDS movement is majorly problematic. They celebrated the shut down of a soda stream factory in the west bank a few years back yet they didn't do anything to help the palestinian workers who lost their jobs find new jobs so they can, ya know, feed their families.

BDS also claims that you should listen to all palestinian voices, yet is telling people to boycott standing together, an org which uplifts Palestinian and Israeli voices.

In regards to non BDS boycotts, it also a cult mentalility especially with that clip of that Australian Hasan fan who said "just don't drink coke on stream, just drink it in private as we are boycotting coke" like ah yes, only boycott a product in public and still give them your money in private, totally how a boycott works.

Like giving BDS some credit (which i hate to say) at least they focus on only a few things which is achieveable. Some of those long ass boycott lists (like that 300+ German list) is just unachieveable.

The whole reason for the boycotts is to make the Israeli government have less money so war cannot happen and to punish the Israeli economy. Essentially civilian created sanctions, however it will not work unless the majority of the population does so. Israel will also always defend themselves when they are attacked. So like you said nonnie, unless Hamas is gone and peace is achieved, Israel will continue to have wars with breaks in between until they are no longer attacked. And obviously war and after after war is bad for everyone on all sides as both Israeli's and Palestinians should not have threats to their safety due to their respective governments actions.

[odinsblog]

“If you say, I'm not anti-Jews, I'm anti-Zionists, who do you think Zionists are?”

Hi, I'm Quinn, and I'm an anti-Zionist Jew.

Zionist Jews have gotten really, really good at making this conflict and this crisis an issue of antisemitism.

That's not what it is.

The way they spin it, if you don't support Israel, if you don't support the right of Jewish people to establish an ethnostate on currently occupied land, you're a Nazi, you're antisemitic, you're blowing dog whistles, you want Jewish people to die. Not true.

This conflict, this crisis is not about religion.

It's about land.

Before Zionism had ever come into the mainstream political sphere, before Israel was ever created, before the Holocaust, before all of it, Jews, Muslims and Christians all lived in Palestine. Palestine was not a Muslim country.

The land is spiritually relevant to almost all major religions.

And up until the proliferation of Zionism, and the establishment of the Israeli state, all major religions with ties to the land were represented in the population of Palestine.

The issue arose after the Holocaust.

There was a mass immigration of Jews from Europe to Palestine, and eventually it became a mainstream political party and political ideology to believe that Jews were owed ownership of the land. It didn't matter what other religions were spiritually connected to the land, the land should be owned by Jewish people.

When Zionists make this about antisemitism, they are forcing you to pick either antisemitism or Islamophobia.

It's inherently violent.

It's an inaccurate portrayal of the conflict, and it's a bastardization of Judaism.

Using Judaism and the atrocities of the Holocaust to justify and inform settler colonial violence is a slap in the face to the entire faith, and a perversion of what Judaism teaches us.