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Position on Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism [1]

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Date: 2023-12-11 16:42:12+00:00

Position on Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism

NYU Faculty for Justice in Palestine stands against all forms of racism and colonialism. We abhor all expressions of antisemitism and unequivocally reject any role for antisemitism in the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Our commitments as educators compel us to denounce antisemitism wherever it appears and to educate our students and our publics about the genocidal horrors of antisemitism in the past and the violence of antisemitism in the present.

The Palestinian cause is an anticolonial struggle. There is nothing inherently antisemitic about demanding the decolonization of Palestinian land. The accusation of antisemitism against those who advocate for Palestinian causes is often used as a silencing and diversionary tactic to distract from Israeli state and state-sanctioned colonial violence. By the same token, criticism of Israel and of Zionism, which is a political ideology, is not an inherently antisemitic position. The conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is a potent weapon that the state of Israel and its allies use to silence and delegitimize criticism of Israel’s settler-colonial project of dispossession, occupation, and apartheid in Palestine. As educators, we work to undo this conflation, which scholars and activists of many religious and ethnic backgrounds have resoundingly critiqued.

In 2020, a large group of scholars with specializations in antisemitism studies, as well as Jewish, Holocaust, Israel, Palestine, and Middle Eastern Studies, came together to formulate the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA). The JDA aims to offer “a usable, concise, and historically-informed core definition of antisemitism with a set of guidelines.” According to the declaration, “Antisemitism is discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).” NYU Faculty for Justice in Palestine endorses this definition of antisemitism and urges its adoption by our institution.*

Importantly, the JDA was not formulated in a political vacuum. This undertaking, launched by over 200 distinguished scholars and since signed by many more, was a response to the serious conceptual shortcomings and troubling political consequences of the 2016 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Definition. The examples appended to the IHRA definition place disturbing limits on the ways in which Zionism as a political ideology and Israel as a state may be criticized. For example, while the text concedes that criticism of Israel “similar to that leveled against any other country” is not necessarily antisemitic, it goes on to declare that “claiming the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” is antisemitic. This delegitimizes critical analyses of Israel as both a settler-colonial state and an ethnostate (one that defines itself as belonging primarily to a particular ethnic group and treats citizens not belonging to that group as second class), neither of which are necessarily antisemitic as critical analyses. It also forecloses in advance any discussion of possible non-ethnostate futures in this land, such as a single democratic state for all “from the river to the sea.” Whether one agrees such a state is possible or not, envisioning it is not inherently antisemitic. Like the IHRA, the JDA also offers detailed guidelines on antisemitism as it relates to the Israel-Palestine conflict; however, as its preamble observes, it seeks to improve on the IHRA definition and specifically “to protect a space for an open debate about the vexed question of the future of Israel/Palestine.”

The IHRA is a self-described “working definition” and one of its own authors has publicly decried its widespread use as a tool for the suppression of freedom of speech and academic freedom. Other expert voices have also dissented: in fall 2022, the legal scholar E. Tendayi Achiume, who was then the UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, cautioned the UN against adopting the IHRA definition. The definition’s stifling of dissent would only contribute to the “harm done to human rights,” Achiume wrote, in a “period of heightened repression of Palestinians, including escalating, daily gross violations of their human rights.”

Despite its limitations, the IHRA definition has been adopted by governments and institutions of civil society, including many educational institutions. In many cases, institutions and agencies have adopted the definition as a result of organized pressure and intense lobbying by various pro-Israel interest groups. While NYU has adopted the IHRA definition it has not adopted the accompanying examples, which enact the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. NYU-FJP calls on NYU to reconsider its use of the IHRA definition and to adopt the JDA definition instead. NYU-FJP also calls on NYU to employ the JDA as “a tool for interpreting [the IHRA definition]” in the interim, as the JDA recommends in such instances.

One of the most pernicious aspects of the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is that it smears as antisemitic the multitudes of principled people who are opponents of both racism and Zionism. This uncouples the fight against antisemitism from its enduring and essential connections to the broader struggle against racism. The conflation also dangerously obscures the fact that the growing incidence of antisemitism today—including horrific acts of violence such as the 2019 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh—is largely driven by the rise of far-right and white nationalist ideologies that have gained ground in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere across the globe in recent years. To ignore this context and instead treat leftist antiracist and liberationist movements as a threat to Jewish safety only weakens the struggle against antisemitism. As the preamble to the JDA observes, “the fight against [antisemitism] is inseparable from the overall fight against all forms of racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and gender discrimination.” Indeed, the Jewish left has played a crucial role in articulating the critique of Zionism and in the long history of antiracist struggle.

As the rich history of Jewish anti-Zionism demonstrates, Zionism has no monopoly on Jewish politics or identity. The Jewishness of particular individuals or of Jewish organizations does not depend on supporting Zionism’s political project. Israel does not represent or speak for all Jews, and its colonial project is not perpetrated by “the Jewish people” but rather by the state of Israel. In fact, the repeated insistence by elected officials and journalists that Jewish people necessarily affiliate themselves and identify with Israel reproduces one of the most enduring and pernicious of antisemitic tropes: that of dual loyalty. Furthermore, Zionism is a political ideology with many non-Jewish adherents, including political conservatives, evangelical Christians, and white nationalists. As is evident in contemporary American political discourse, there are many antisemitic Zionists, whose insistence on an ethnostate for Jews in Israel undermines the history, rights, and safety of Jews in the diaspora who do not identify with Israel.

​​​​​​​As an organization based in New York City, NYU-FJP recognizes our city’s enduring history as home to a large and diverse population of diasporic Jewish peoples, many of whom have long inhabited their Jewish identities without connection to the state of Israel. Here in NYC and around the world, Jewish activists have been vocal and visible in their calls for a ceasefire, for an end to the occupation of Palestine, and for lasting peace. We reaffirm the important role Jewish voices play in resisting those who disingenuously mobilize allegations of antisemitism in order to silence and punish people of conscience from all backgrounds who speak up for Palestine.

NOTES

*In the accompanying guidelines, the JDA usefully expands on this definition, observing that “what is particular to classic antisemitism is the idea that Jews are linked to the forces of evil” and noting that antisemitism is a form of racism, since “it is racist to essentialize (treat a character trait as inherent) or to make sweeping negative generalizations about a given population.” It also notes the myriad ways in which antisemitism may be expressed, whether “manifested in words, visual images, and deeds” and in forms “direct or indirect, explicit or coded.” One pernicious form of antisemitism it singles out is “denying or minimizing the Holocaust.”

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[1] Url: https://facultyforpalestine.education/39-2/position-on-antisemitism-and-anti-zionism/

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