Is anti-Zionism the PC form of antisemitism?

One article, lots of notes

‘Jews against Zionism and antisemitism’. Behind, a pro-Israel demonstrator, ‘Freedom stands and falls with the struggle against antisemitism. Solidarity with Israel’. Berlin demonstration.

University of California board weighs statement on antisemitism

By Steve Gorman, Reuters
March 17, 2016

LOS ANGELES–The governing board of California’s flagship public university system is to vote next week on a statement condemning anti-Zionism as a form of anti-Jewish bigotry, a proposal sparking sharp faculty debate over the line between free speech and intolerance.

The controversy playing out at the University of California reflects a broader clash between pro-Israel groups and Palestinian rights activists over what constitutes legitimate criticism of Israeli polices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Pro-Palestinian protest in Melbourne.

The UC’s Board of Regents is slated to act next Wednesday on a draft document produced by a working group to address the issue. Both sides in the debate say they believe that if adopted it would be the first such policy statement by the leadership of a major U.S. public institution of higher education.

The University of California is considered one of the most prestigious public university systems in the country, comprising 10 campuses, among which are the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Supporters say the document grew out of a recent rise in antisemitism on UC campuses stemming from heated anti-Israel protest frequently expressed as anti-Zionism, which supporters define as calls for Israel’s destruction or denials of its right to exit.

According to proponents of the draft, such rhetoric constitutes a contemporary brand of antisemitism that is often accompanied by or escalates into more explicit forms of anti-Jewish hatred.

Foes of the proposal say it would trample on academic freedom. Some call it a thinly veiled attempt to squelch political criticism of Israel, including student movements pressing for divestiture or boycotts against the Jewish state.

IJAN banner in London demonstration, July 27, 2014. Photo by speters17

A letter of opposition signed by more than 250 UC faculty members argued that anti-Zionism is a “loose term and is often deployed against any number of political positions” that should “not to be conflated with anti-Semitism.”

“We urge you not to adopt a position that will censor political viewpoints that are rightly considered to be constitutionally protected speech,” the letter said.

A separate letter from 130 other faculty insisted the proposal was necessary to address “a lack of understanding of when healthy debate about Israel and the Middle East ends, and antisemitism begins.”

Demonstration in Berlin September 14, 2014. The slogan in German means ‘Together against Zionism Antisemitism’. Photo by Oren Ziv/Activestills.org

Critics, however, says the draft’s very formulation is ambiguous.

As currently written, references to Zionism are confined to a brief introduction stating: “Anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California.”

But the term is omitted from the 10 “Principles Against Intolerance” that follow, with antisemitism condemned, along with forms of bigotry based on such factors as race, national origin, religion and gender.

It remained unclear whether the regents would vote on the principles alone or adopt the entire document as enforceable policy.

The idiosyncratic group Neturei Karta, present on every dewmonstration, here in London 2014. See Notes and Links for who they are.

NOTES AND LINKS

from JfJfP Who We Are

(JfJfP) is a network of Jews who are British or live in Britain, practising and secular, Zionist and not.

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Neturei Karta (NK) pop up at every demonstration on Israel. This small ultra-Orthodox group split off from the Haredim in Jerusalem in 1938. They believe they are the only true Jews . They are anti-Zionist because they believe no state for Jews, viz. Israel, should be created until the coming of the Messiah. Most of their estimated 5000 members live in Jerusalem, the rest in London and New York.

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Those who advance the idea of a New Antisemitism argue that antisemitism is progressing through Europe in the name of anti-Zionism.

from Interview with Manuel Valls, French Prime Minister, WSJ

But in the 1970s, a new type of Jew-hatred emerged among elites, one that expressed itself primarily as hostility to Zionism and Israel. This new bigotry, the prime minister says, has “all the components of anti-Semitism, the old ones,” including a “plot”-based view of imagined Jewish conspiracies. “Step by step,” the elites’ anti-Semitism “followed a migration and impacted young people in the poor neighbourhoods,” Mr. Valls says.

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And of course well-known expert on the new antisemitism Denis Macshane argues that ‘today’s use of the word “Zionist,” … in Britain and continental Europe is always a derogatory term for the kind of Jew you shouldn’t like.’ Haaretz, Mar 11, 2016

from their website International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN)

IJAN is an international network of Jews who are uncompromisingly committed to struggles for human survival and emancipation, of which the liberation of the Palestinian people and land is an indispensable part. We are committed to the right of return for Palestinian refugees and to ending Israeli colonization of historic Palestine, which is reinforced by US economic and military power. We support full Palestinian self-determination and the right to resist occupation. We look to the Palestinian grassroots and Palestinian-led organizations as our primary points of reference in this struggle.

The State of Israel betrays the long histories of Jewish struggles for liberation and traditions of participation in collective struggles for liberation more broadly. We protest Zionism’s exploitation and debasement of histories of Jewish persecution and genocide to justify the unjustifiable – the colonization of Palestine and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, the theft of their land and destruction of their families, communities and way of life.

IJAN is part of the international movement against Zionist militarism and repression. We have active chapters in the United States, Argentina, the UK, Spain, Canada, and France. We also organize by sector, and currently maintain labor and campus sectors. Our work is funded largely through the contributions and volunteer labor of our members and through grassroots supporters.

IJAN organizes from a Jewish location, which we understand as social and historical, but our members hold a range of relationships to the religious, spiritual, and cultural expressions of Judaism. IJAN’s members come from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and cultural lineages (including Ashkenazi, Mizrahi and Sephardic). We view “Jewish Anti-Zionism” as a political orientation rather than an identity, a politics which acquires meaning through practical organizing.

A core tenet of the way IJAN organizes is joint struggle — recognizing the particular stakes of different communities and sectors in the general struggle against Zionist repression, militarism, and imperialism. The stake of each movement is specific, but we share a commitment to principles of universal liberation, justice, equity, never sacrificing any aspect of one community or movement’s struggle for freedom for the sake of advancing another’s. We recognize that our struggles are bound together, and that we must find ways of organizing together that strengthen all of our movements.