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Phyllis Chesler

Brava, Brava, Brava. I’ve waited for 54 years for such a group to arise. And here they are.

I am proud to be working with them.

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This year’s Robert Fine Memorial Lecture (hosted by the London Centre for Contemporary Antisemitism on 7th December, 2025) saw Dr Dave Rich deliver a compelling analysis of the symbolic power antisemitism has acquired in today’s political culture. Worryingly, as Josie Stein reports, it illuminated more than it reassured.

Feminism provides a further lens through which to understand this moment, particularly as feminist communities are deeply entangled in its tensions. Josie adds that lens here, shedding light on how these patterns appear within feminist spaces.

As Director of Policy at the Community Security Trust and an expert on antisemitism, Dave Rich advises government, law enforcement agencies and civil societies on tackling hate. So when he says Antizionism is at its root “a plot to kill a nation”, it should be taken seriously. Antizionism goes beyond ordinary criticism of a government or its policy: it is an eliminationist policy, pursued through missiles and boycotts, street chants and seminars, and a set of myths that elevate Israel from “a country” to the keystone of oppressive systems, so that its removal promises universal liberation.

“Antizionism is a campaign across decades and continents to kill the nation of Israel, erase its name and its national identity from history, and replace it with something non‑Jewish.”-Dave Rich

‘Freeing Palestine frees the world’

Rich explained how today, far-left, far-right, and Islamist movements are converging around Antizionism, a movement that shares the same core premise as antisemitism: that Jews exercise illegitimate power. They all believe that Israel is a uniquely malevolent state and a global menace, and they present this hostility as a respectable political stance. By seeking to abolish Israel as a Jewish state – and thus deny Jews the right to national self‑determination – Antizionism becomes inseparable from antisemitism. No other people is targeted in this way, and this logic inevitably turns Jews everywhere into targets.

His opening example laid this out clearly. The actress Denise Gough used a Star Wars metaphor to cast Palestine as the small weak spot in the “Death Star” – hit it and everything oppressive explodes. Rich’s explanation was clear: this imagery frames Israel not simply as a state among states, but as the hinge of global suffering, a civilisational obstruction whose defeat “ends imperial oppression everywhere.” Or put more starkly: “Freeing Palestine frees the world.”

Rich cited several recent and well-publicised examples to illustrate his point, ranging from what could be explained away as edgy musicians seeking popularity for crusading views, to politicians, to international bodies.

Among these, two of the musicians were Bob Vylan, whose famous “Death to the IDF” chant is in fact a call for Israel’s armed forces to be dismantled (leaving Israel vulnerable to attack like on October 7th), and Paul Weller, who described pro-Palestine activism as “the biggest spiritual quest of our time.” Conflicts do not routinely inspire spiritual language, but Antizionism offers purification: destroy Israel and redeem the world.

Among the political classes, he pointed to New York Mayor (then Mayor Elect) Zoran Mamdani’s claim that “when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF”, a claim without evidence but which makes Israel materially connected to everyday grievances.

And of course, the UN has its own examples to contribute: a UN-hosted report depicted a multi‑headed dragon with capitalism, imperialism, racism, and patriarchy drawn as Israel burning Palestine. Rich placed this in the tradition of antisemitic zoomorphism but emphasised that the message of the imagery is that to defeat Israel is to defeat every global evil. Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, linked Israel to harms done by industrialised agriculture and processed foods, claiming in a report that “the tools and techniques that will free the Palestinian people from occupation, oppression, and exploitation will ultimately be the same ones that can free us all… By fighting Israel’s starvation campaign against the Palestinians, people are in effect also fighting for their own freedom from hunger.”

The Death Star logic enters feminist spaces

These redemptive scripts are already operating inside feminist spaces, and they are reshaping whose suffering counts, whose testimony is believed, and which women qualify for solidarity.

A case in point is the denial or minimisation of sexual violence on October 7th. Many feminist organisations or advocates publicly cast doubt on rapes committed by Hamas against Israeli women, because acknowledging these crimes introduces moral complexity and undermines the idea that eliminating Israel is a universal emancipatory act. A few examples will illustrate this.

UN Women, for example, initially failed to acknowledge the sexual violence, issuing only generic statements about civilian protection. It was only weeks later, under pressure, that they explicitly condemned the October 7th attacks and the reports of gender-based atrocities. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch delayed or hedged their statements, questioning the evidence. Influential voices in the international women’s rights movement amplified narratives dismissing the reports as ‘propaganda’. And feminist networks, too many to mention – groups that normally insist “believe women” – suddenly applied caveats and warnings that complaints of rape were being weaponised. In response, the hashtag #MeTooUnlessYoureAJew began trending.

Sexual violence as a weapon of war is well-documented and recognised globally. It is used to terrorise populations and destroy communities. Yet when Jewish women were the victims, the world fell silent – unable to confront what this brutality meant for a narrative that equates Palestinian resistance with liberation.

Another example of Antizionism in action in feminist spaces comes from Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls – who also denied that any rapes occurred during the October 7th massacre in a conversation on X with one of our co-founders. She then went even further on a platform known for amplifying Antizionist voices, by claiming that Israel is “normalising state violence” globally. She blamed it for violence in countries like Iran and argued that this prevents her from holding those governments accountable:

“Tell me with what legitimacy can I now approach a government that has imprisoned? Let’s talk about, for example, Iran. Iran has executed two, three, 10 women. Horrendous, clearly violation of human rights, not to mention that the death penalty is something that we call for abolishing. But then how do you approach a government to remind them about the human rights obligation if another government (Israel] is killing tens and hundreds of women every single day for the last two years?  –Reem Alsalem.

In other words: Iran oppresses women, and somehow, that’s Israel’s fault. In Reem’s narrative, Israel is not just one state among many, but it is the central node of global brutality.

A final example of this reckoning was found in the closing call to action of author Rahila Gupta’s keynote opening at FiLiA2025, which crystallised the issue of Palestine as the singular moral test. She said: “And that is why I want to end my talk with Palestine, the issue that is dividing us. This conference is taking place in the shadow of a genocide… As a feminist who has campaigned against religious fundamentalism, I will take no lectures about the evil of Hamas. Nor will I allow that evil to eclipse the evil of the fascist government that is running Israel… I say, there must also be a Palestinian state between the river and the sea. Sisters, stand with me. Free, free Palestine.”

Leaving aside the meat of her comment for another time, why must she end her talk with Palestine? And why repeat the Genocide Libel? How does this feed the Antizionist movement Rich described, rather than stand as “legitimate criticism”?

Feminism encompasses a vast movement. It spans struggles across continents and cultures, tackling every form of male dominance and systemic injustice. At the opening of a global grassroots feminist conference, an event designed to hold space for the sheer breadth of women’s experiences and emergencies worldwide, with delegates from over 75 countries, Gupta chose to elevate one cause above all others. Does Gupta believe Palestinian women suffer more than our sisters in Afghanistan (ranked the most dangerous country for women by the Women, Peace and Security Index), or in Yemen, the Central African Republic, Syria, or Sudan, the rest of the top five most dangerous places to be a woman? Probably not. Her urgency seems to arise less from a judgement about comparative suffering and more from the conviction that Palestine is the keystone issue, the one that purifies all others.

Gupta spoke on 10 October 2025, two days before the hostages were due to be freed under a ceasefire. It was a moment that should have signalled hope. Instead, she deployed the Genocide Libel to turn feminism into a weapon for Israel’s destruction.

The Genocide Libel isn’t just the claim that Israel’s recent actions amount to genocide; it’s the deeper belief that Israel has been a genocidal project from its inception. Genocide is the ultimate crime against humanity, marking a state as fundamentally evil and beyond redemption, so whether her words pointed to the war in Gaza, Israel’s founding, or both, the effect is identical: in that framing, no ceasefire or peace deal can ever make Israel legitimate. Every Israeli act of survival becomes proof of guilt, making Israel’s eradication seem morally necessary. For those who hold this view, peace and ending Palestinian suffering aren’t the goals; delegitimising Israel is. A ceasefire disrupts the narrative that justifies elimination.

But Palestinian suffering and particularly Palestinian women’s suffering cannot be reduced to this narrative. It is complex and multidimensional: it arises from militarisation, displacement, restrictions on movement, corruption, failed governance, religious fundamentalism, poverty, and deeply entrenched patriarchal norms, all forces that often intersect and amplify each other. Many of these oppressions mirror what feminists fight globally. Framing the struggle of Palestinian women purely through the eliminationist logic of Antizionism is futile. It will never deliver justice or liberation. And while that approach fails, Palestinian women will remain trapped in the same cycle of violence and oppression, with their own needs sidelined by a movement that claims to speak for them but does not serve them.

“This is no longer just the flag of Palestine – It’s the universal flag of those fighting for humanity”

Words under pressure: “Zionist” and “Feminist”

A questioner in the room asked whether we need the word “Zionist” at all, which struck a chord with me because, since the TERF wars, feminism has met the same problem.

Rich suggested perhaps not: “Israel exists… I don’t think we need this quite impenetrable, weird ideological word to describe the fact that we think… like every other country on earth… it’s there.”

There are many parallels here with feminism. Just as some Jews avoid calling themselves “Zionists” because Antizionists have perverted the actual meaning and turned a basic principle of Jewish self‑determination into a pejorative loaded with fantasies of control and supremacy, some feminists avoid calling themselves “Feminists” because the term has been stretched into something unrecognisable. For some, it now includes ideologies that erase sex as a political and material category or subordinate women’s rights to broader identity coalitions.

When a word is refashioned to mean what its opponents say it means, people step back from the label even if they still hold the underlying belief.

It is tempting to discard these words to escape distortion. But words are names we fight under. If we abandon “Feminist,” we risk leaving women’s sex‑based rights unnamed, and therefore undefended. Similarly, if we abandon “Zionist,” we risk leaving Jewish self‑determination unnamed, and therefore undefended. My plea is: don’t let opponents own our names. We must reclaim them unapologetically. Zionism is a mainstream political movement advocating for Jewish self-determination and protection in the state of Israel**. Feminism is a mainstream political movement advocating for women’s liberation from male supremacy.

We can acknowledge how badly these words have been misused while refusing to surrender the ground they name.

Leave no woman behind

Rich’s argument was not that antisemitism is “back” as prejudice alone, but that it is being put back to work as a worldview under the guise of Antizionism; a grand explainer of everything wrong in the world. That logic turns Jews everywhere into targets, as we saw starkly in Bondi when people with no connection to Israeli policy were singled out, targeted, and punished.

As Rich argues, Antizionism frames Zionism as extreme and masquerades as a respectable political movement, yet it revives the same antisemitic obsession that has resurfaced across centuries.

I share that view and urge feminists to reject that seduction, whether in its classic form or its latest incarnation – or for that matter, any form of racism – as the entry price for joining the struggle for women’s liberation. The fight against patriarchy is global but never abstract; it lives in the bodies and lives of real women, Jewish women included.