The US House passed a resolution which decried a rise in anti-semitism and declared in the text that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” Which is to say any criticism of this form of blood and soil nationalism can be misconstrued as a hatred of Jewish people. If you think that the displacement of the indigenous people living in the West Bank by settlers coming from New Jersey is immoral and wrong? Well, congratulations, because you are now an anti-Semite!
It’s an absolute absurdity.
But it is also part of a general strategy of using Jewish people, as a whole, as a human shield for a supremacist ideology that many Jews entirely reject. And, furthermore, this conflating Jewish identity with the Zionist state is contributing to a rise in actual anti-Jewish sentiment around the world. It is very disturbing to see a vile ideology trying to avoid the rebuke that it most certainly deserves by wearing Jewish identity as a mask for what it truly is.
Zionism is just blood and soil nationalism using ancient history as a cover story no different than those who called themselves the third Rome.
Zionism is not the same thing as Judiasm and thus taking an anti-Zionist position is not hatred of Jews. Just like we can both be opposed to a political party and still not be unAmerican, we can oppose a Zionist state of Israel in favor of a country where all people of all faiths have the same rights—where indigenous people are not harassed or killed so settlers can steal their land. It is okay to hate a regime of rape, theft, murder and collective punishment. It is also okay to hold those accountable who perpetrate war crimes calling it defense.
What this conflating is is the Motte-and-bailey fallacy (also a strategy) where you pair a position that is defensible with one that is not. In other words, you say something like “Israel has a right to defend itself,” which everyone will generally agree with, and then use this statement to defend the IDF knowingly bombing children in Gaza. The two things are not the same. Defense and killing babies are two vastly different things. If a neighbor, from an apartment complex near me, assaulted me, and then I go burn down his whole building in response, nobody will accept that this is a defensive action—it is just murder.
This strategy of hiding Zionism behind the Jewish ethnicity and faith comes 100% at the expense of innocent Jews who have no connection to the modern state of Israel. Merging Jewish identity with Zionism and Zionist atrocities only serves to feed anti-Jewish sentiment. Decoupling the two words is separating a hostage from a hijacker and focuses our critique on the bad actors who falsely claim to speak for all Jews. The best way to protect from riding anti-Jewish sentiment is to hold Zionists to account rather than allow them to hide behind Jewish suffering.
Four Ways To Fight Anti-Semitism:
1) Apply opposition to anti-semitism to all Semitic people. The word Semite is derived from the language people use. Specifically Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic. The rights of all people, indigenous Muslim or Christian, as well as Jews, should be protected. It is anti-semitic to argue Palestinian lives and the lives of Arab neighbors, are worth less than that of European settlers. The Zionists have not only hijacked Judiasm and the land, but the word Semitic as well—we need the term to be returned to original use.
2) Make the Holy Lands a safe refuge for all good people again. All Abrahamic religions have significant ties to the territory where a modern state of Israel is formed. Christian and Muslim communities which existed for centuries are under threat by the invading settlers. The first Christians were Semites—Jewish coverts—so why are we privileging only one religious group on a land home to Christians and other Semitic people?
3) Stop protecting the bad people simply on the basis of religious identity. This applies just as much to any religion, but especially to a country that regularly shields evil people on the basis of their Jewish-ness and loyalty to the apartheid regime.
Jonathan Pollard, a US Citizen, who stole nuclear secrets and gave them to Israel (who, in turn, sold them to the Soviet Union), was a traitor to the degree that would be hanged for treason in times past. But he got life in prison and was released after thirty years due to the lobbying pressure of the Israeli government. He arrived in Israel, on the private jet of Sheldon Adelson (the late husband of the Trump mega-donor Miriam Adelson) to a hero’s welcome under “right to return.” In fact, Pollard was greeted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after kissing tarmac in Tel Aviv.
There are also similar stories of corrupt men fleeing to Israel from Ukraine. Pedophiles and rapists, of Jewish identity, are granted this same escape from justice by “right to return” and an Israeli policy of protecting all Jews regardless of if they are good or evil. This undermines the trust in Jewish people worldwide. It contributes to the othering of Jews and breeds resentment and contempt. Sure, two separate standards may be okay for a racial supremacist, but it is totally unacceptable for those who reject all identity politics and tribalism.
I would stand shoulder to shoulder with a good person who happens to be a Jew, Muslim or any other religion over a person who claims to be a Christian and yet does not love their neighbors. To me, those who confuse genetics with goodness or their own tribal identity with innocence are the problem. A truly good person cares about genuinely good character—and not skin color or religious costume.
Jews are safer when Zionists abusers are made accountable. The world is a better place when nobody puts tribe over a commitment to justice for all people. We don’t need the Holy Lands to be a haven for the world’s traitors, pedophiles and identity thieves.
3) Treat AIPAC as a foreign lobby and trim back the Zionist control over our political institutions. If Congress were taking the same amount of money from supporters of any other country in the world that they did from AIPAC they would be in jail. How is it not collusion? However, you’re not going to hear about this scandal on CBS News, after it was bought by Zionist billionaires, with a new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. Nor will the truth be told on TikTok after it was scooped up by the same people—now moderated by a former IDF soldier searching for ‘antisemitic’ content which could be anything that tells the truth about Israel.
Frankly, the US desperately needs a policy of de-Zionization after years of our Middle-East mayhem. When we have US ambassadors to Israel, like Mike Huckabee, meeting with a man convicted of treason, and Presidents unable to act independently from a foreign regime—even when that foreign regime kills more children than it foes true combatants—drastic measures need to be taken. We can’t simply vote this out. When then the candidates for mayor of NYC show fealty to a foreign nation this goes beyond normal corruption. There truly needs to be more prosecutions for actual treason.
A Better Jewish Defense Strategy
The current Zionist strategy—the fusing Jewish identity with an apartheid regime, shielding war criminals and traitors behind the label “Jew,” and branding every critic an anti-Semite—has sadly produced the most dangerous environment for Jews in decades: surging street-level hatred, synagogue shootings, and a global resurgence of real anti-Jewish bigotry fueled by rage at Israel’s actions. The four steps above break that fuse.
When Judaism is decisively decoupled from Zionism, when “Semitic” again and protects Palestinians and Lebanese as fiercely as Israelis, when the Holy Land is a shared home rather than an ethnic fortress, and when Jewish criminals no longer enjoy impunity under “right of return” or AIPAC protection, the primary pretext for hating Jews evaporates. Jews become what most already are: Just ordinary citizens judged by their character, and not scapegoats for a supremacist project most never voted for.
Paradoxically, the safest future for Jewish people is not more tanks, walls, or lobbying billions—it is the complete dismantling of the ideological human shield that today places them in the line of fire.
Irregular Ideation 