Israel’s response to the October 7 Hamas rampage has led to an unprecedented increase in public hostility. This hostility has been directed not only toward Israel’s military strategy of urban warfare, which, like any such strategy, has led inevitably to widespread death and destruction, but also toward the Jewish State itself. Much of this hostility can be attributed to plain old antisemitism.
At Princeton, the Near Eastern studies department offers a course whose reading list includes a book that claims that Israelis systematically maim Palestinians to harvest their organs.
At the University of Michigan, benches in front of the Hillel House have been defaced with the Star of David, followed by the equal sign, followed by the swastika.
At Harvard, visibly Jewish students have been jeered at and physically assaulted walking to class.
There have been countless other incidents of such run-of-the-mill antisemitism. Still, it would be a mistake to conclude that antisemitism alone undergirds the current hostility toward Israel. After all, some of this hostility comes from Jews themselves.
One of the most visible organizations criticizing Israel has been Jewish Voice for Peace. Commentary Magazine’s Eli Lake has even identified what he calls the “AsAJew” phenomenon, to describe the many Jewish anti-Israel activists who cite their religion to legitimize their tactics. Some of these activists may be fairly described as “self-hating” Jews – but they are Jews nonetheless.
To those who would stand up for Israel, it is important to look beyond antisemitism, and to recognize that hostility toward the Jewish State is also based on something different: the settler-colonial paradigm. According to this conceptual framework, the State of Israel is an illegitimate entity designed and populated by Europeans colonizers who invaded a foreign territory to exploit the indigenous people, and to impose their culture and religion on them. This paradigm views Israelis as comparable to the British settlers in Kenya or the French in Senegal or the Belgians in the Congo.
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