Comment by dclowd9901
6 days ago
Do we really believe there is a rooted undercurrent of antisemitism at Harvard of all places? Or is this just anti-zionist expansion straw manning? I'm sorry but the continuously faithless positioning of the Trump administration right now makes me believe the antisemitic accusations are a pretext.
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I'm not an expert, but definitely there were Jewish thinkers who opposed the idea of rebuilding Israel (Mt Zion and all) and argued that living as a diaspora is a better way. A quick web search / AI inquiry gives a variety of examples.
Yes, they are called Neturei Karta, and there are maybe 100 of them out there.
But it doesn't matter who is espousing the idea: just because a Jew says something doesn't make it _not_ antisemitic. I have yet to hear an argument that convinces me that it is not bigoted to selectively deny the Jewish people a right to a state from which to defend themselves.
Depends on what you mean by anti-Zionism. It's not a natural congregation point -- even those that don't think Israel should exist don't generally call themselves anti-Zionist. As a label from the outside, it's thus very flexible. A lot of mere criticisms of Israeli actions gets labeled anti-Zionist.
Zionism to me means that the Jews are entitled to self-determination, and that the modern state of Israel is the fulfillment of that promise.
Anti-Zionism is the negation of that idea; namely that Jews are not entitled to self-determination and therefore should live at the whims of the countries where they are a minority for their security.
Merely objecting to an Israeli policy or even a Jewish value is not intrinsically antisemitic. But if you criticize only Israel about some issue, and grant a free pass to everyone else on that same issue, that's when things become problematic.
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