We Are All Zionists Now

By Rabbi Sanford Olshansky (Times Of Israel, Blogs)

“Haman then said to King Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people…” (Esther 3:8, JPS 2000 translation)

We all know the story from childhood: Wicked Prime Minister Haman persuades King Ahasuerus of Persia to order the killing of all the Jews in his empire. Queen Esther courageously gains permission for the Jews to defend themselves and they survive.

Just as the king was persuaded, by a trusted advisor, that the Jews didn’t belong in his empire and should be eliminated, today, a lot of impressionable college students are persuaded, by professors whom they trust, that Jews – all Jews — are oppressive colonizers. On college campuses in the US and elsewhere, Jews who wear a kippah or a Star of David are attacked as “Zionists,” regardless of how they feel about Israel’s democratically elected government and its conduct. Even students who don’t wear Jewish symbols but attend events at Hillel or Chabad are attacked as “Zionists.”

In 2003, Dr. Phyllis Chesler, a lifelong liberal feminist, published The New Anti-Semitism (San Francisco, Josey Bass). She said that liberal intellectual “elites,” in the US and overseas, often react viscerally to any mention of Israel, calling it an apartheid state and oppressor of local Arab Muslims. Some try to say they aren’t antisemitic, only anti-Zionist. Chesler quoted Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “When approached by a student who attacked Zionism [King] responded, ‘When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.’” Dr. King was murdered in 1968. Apparently, “the new Antisemitism” isn’t quite so new. Chesler called it “the last acceptable prejudice.”

Today we see a rise in antisemitism among “progressives,” especially at elite universities, as Chesler predicted. She said it would result from the narrative of Jews being white European colonizers oppressing indigenous “people of color” – not Jews of all skin tones returning from exile to their ancestral homeland. This would resonate with the “intersectional” grievances of all oppressed racial or sexual groups – no matter how many Israeli Jews are “people of color,” and no matter how badly some of these groups, such as LGBTQ people, are treated in majority Muslim societies. Many returning Jews, since 1948, were expelled from Muslim countries where their families lived for centuries.

Chesler wrote, “What’s new about the new anti-Semitism is that…it is being perpetrated in the name of antiracism, anti-imperialism, and anticolonialism…. The new anti-Semites do not view themselves as anti-Semites or racists because they view themselves as speaking out on behalf of all oppressed people.” Chesler said, “there’s no question that today’s new anti-Semite hides behind the smoke screen of anti-Zionism.” Thus, this new anti-Semite uses anti-Zionism to express his/her actual Jew hatred. These words are as true today as 22 years ago. Today’s anti-Semites, including “progressive” college faculty and administrators, really do hate Jews and have found that “anti-Zionism is a popular and politically respectable way” to express their hatred.

While Dr. Chesler said she was neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the future of anti-Semitism, I find it hard to be optimistic. Before a recent visit to London, England, I already knew not to wear Jewish symbols and to be careful when going to synagogue. An American Jewish friend, who has lived there for 20+ years, told me not even to wear a ball cap, from any US college or sports team, because it would identify me as an American – meaning a citizen of the country that most supports the “Zionist colonial enterprise.” I seethed with anger but complied, knowing that we are all Zionists now.