The Washington murders of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky should bring clarity. True, wokesters claiming “words are violence” exaggerate. But without illiberal liberals constantly demonizing and dehumanizing Jews, Judaism, Israel, Israelis, Zionists, and Zionism, Sarah and Yaron would be in Israel this week, planning their wedding.
The terrorist apparently didn’t know their Israeli embassy connection, just as he didn’t care whether they were pro-Palestinian activists or, horror of horrors, right-wing Zionists. All he knew was that this lovely couple left a Jewish event at a Jewish museum. Yelling “Free Palestine,” brandishing a keffiyeh, he admitted, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”
That’s made him the academic intifada’s Luigi Mangioni – suspected of shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan Hotel in December – with Jew-hating, Hamas-loving suburbanites justifying his “act of resistance.”
Accusations of weaponizing antisemitism
The next time Jewish studies professors or Palestinian apologists say anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitic, while accusing others Jews of “weaponizing antisemitism,” remember Sarah and Yaron. Talk about blaming the victim. Haters weaponize Jew-hatred, turning it lethal – as they have for millennia.
Somehow, intellectuals didn’t get the memo on October 7, even though the Hamas mass-murderers boasting about slaughtering “the Jews” exposed the Jew-hatred fueling their rampage. Intellectuals didn’t get the October 8 memo either, as pro-Palestinian enablers worldwide, every day since, blur Jew-hatred and Israel-bashing. They target synagogues, Jewish schools, Hillels, and Jews wearing Jewish T-shirts, kippot, or other signs affirming their Jewishness.
Jew-haters understand something that some Jewish studies professors miss. Unlike a small group of rabbis and professors who are trying to undo the core consensus linking Zionism, Judaism, and Jewish peoplehood, even antisemites recognize Zionism and Israel as central to modern Jewish identity.
So most who hate Israel hate Jews. Those who don’t have to “do the work,” distinguishing their own anti-Zionism from the usual Jew-hating anti-Zionism.
Anti-Zionism is the new antisemitism. That term emphasizes Jew-hatred as the longest hatred – stretching back millenia – forever updating, morphing. Why is the burden on Jews, targeted by these haters, to sift through their motivations? Moreover, even irrational anti-Zionism is illegitimate. Hate is hate, bigotry is bigotry.
Prof. Judea Pearl, the father of Daniel Pearl, whose 2002 beheading showed how the new and old antisemitism were merging and spreading then, provides moral clarity. Labeling today’s trendy loathing of Israel and Zionism, “Zionophobia,” Pearl emphasizes that, by targeting Israelis, anti-Zionism is a detestable enough prejudice.
It fails what I call the TEST test: It’s Totalizing – calling Israelis, Zionists, evil, essentially perverse; in Exaggerated ways – the more extreme the criticism, the closer it comes to bigotry; in Sweeping terms – throwing in any Israel missteps to reject what Israel is completely, then rejecting anything Israel does right as devious; and is riled up with hysterical Tones, because the more intense the criticism, the closer it approaches bigotry.
From prejudice to violence
America’s 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination “on the ground of race, color, or national origin.” In its obsessiveness, imagery, and hatred of the Jewish state rather than the Jew, anti-Zionism rests on historical foundations of Jew-hatred.
In The Nature of Prejudice (1954), Harvard’s social psychologist, Gordon Allport, tracked anti-black bias ballooning from “verbal violence” to lynching. His five-point scale graduated from talking, to snubbing, to discriminating, to wounding, and finally to killing. Many anti-Zionists are escalating in similar ways.
For years, Palestinians have put Jew-hatred at the center of the Palestinian movement, not Jews. Nevertheless, many Jewish dupes insist on ignoring the connection too many Palestinians keep making.
Although words aren’t violence, they can stir violence. This spawns two other conclusions. The 31-year-old, university trained, progressive activist and English major turned murderer – whose name I won’t publicize – was an anti-Zionist, Jew-hating Frankenstein. This monster was created by an ideology dominating the university that hates most hatreds except Jew-hatred (and hatred of Trump, Evangelicals, and others whom Progressive deem unworthy).
While denouncing this academic intifada that has demonized Israel, it’s taught some extremists that it’s ok to hunt Jews to “free Gaza,” (although Yaron was Christian), perhaps Israel’s fanatics, Left and Right, can start watching their words, too.
Left-wingers harm democracy by condemning the right-wing hate machine without excusing the statements of Yair Golan, Ehud Olmert, and others. Similarly, right-wingers hypocritically denounce left-wing rants while tolerating the brutal rhetoric of Zvi Sukkot and others.
Left should police Left while Right should police Right. Yair Golan dithered five days before amending his libel alleging our soldiers kill babies “as a hobby.” Will any of his fellow “Democrats” protect our soldiers’ honor by demanding that he resign as party leader? Meanwhile, the demonstrations should pause, taking responsibility for how their rhetoric helped poison the atmosphere.
And these protesters: Do they know what they want? Obviously, they denounce anything Benjamin Netanyahu supports. But who cares more about hostages: those accepting a deal for ten live ones – abandoning the other ten – or those pressuring Hamas militarily to free everyone?
Similarly, the way Netanyahu lets coalition members threaten Gazans wildly, without chiding them, is attempted political murder – trying to kill Israel’s soul and reputation. Which is more treasonous: maligning our soldiers directly or emboldening those who malign our soldiers, by using irresponsible rhetoric that implicates a silenced, bullied Netanyahu?
Eighty-four percent of Israelis want “ahdut,” the unity our soldiers embody. It’s a premeditated crime when a prime minister, his rivals, and his flunkies undermine the solidarity that saved us on October 7 – which we still desperately need.
The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest books, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath, were just published.