Don’t Equate Anti-Zionism With Anti-Semitism

On October 7, the Islamist militant group Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, killed more than 1,400 people in Israel. Israel responded with military operations that have killed several times that number of Palestinians in Gaza, a territory described by Human Rights Watch as an “open-air prison” as a result of an Israeli and Egyptian blockade. In both cases, most of the casualties are civilians. The conflict has reverberated into other areas of the world, including the United States, where anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim incidents have included the killing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy. The bloodshed has revived the perennial debates about anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

“Look, it’s clear that the hardened anti-Zionists from the far left are the photo inverse of the white supremacists from the far right,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt earlier this week. “There is no argument anymore that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, that is as plain as among supporters of Israel, including in publications such as and , which editorialized that “to deny the Jewish people, and only the Jewish people, a right afforded to all nations—is to discriminate against Jews.”