Let’s start with something very simple: Israel is committing a genocide is Palestine, and the Israeli state was founded by terrorists and has always been based on ethnic cleansing.
After World War II there was a huge backlash against anti-semitism: prejudice against Jews, because we had seen it end in Germany’s gas chambers. The Zionists used that in their project to take another people’s land for their own: to stand against a Jewish country after the Holocaust seemed wrong.
But this is a case of kindergarten ethics: two wrongs not making a right. The Zionists (not the Jews, the Zionists) stole another people’s land and did so violently.
Then, especially from the 67 on, they engaged in vicious apartheid, and continued to steal the land and homes of Palestinians.
After the first Intifada they started routinely killing Palestinians, along with other atrocious behaviour.
I have stated and firmly believe that the current death toll from the Gaza war is in the hundreds of thousands. You can check out the methodology here. They are certainly nowhere near as low as the official death count of something over 40K.
This is the result of deliberate starvation; attacks on hospitals till there is only one left slightly operating; cutting off medicine and water; herding refugees into high density camps then attacking them; shutting off water, and policies intended to lead to plague. All of these policies are entirely deliberate and done with knowledge of their certain effect.
Now let’s talk about anti-semitism v.s. anti-Zionism.
One is ethnic hatred: “Jews are evil.” The other opposes a political movement, “there should be a Jewish apartheid State on land taken from other people.”
Zionism started with ethnic cleansing and has moved on to genocide. To not be anti-Zionist is to be, at best, a moral imbecile and more commonly is a depraved political stance. That stance starts at “I’m OK with genocide” and ends with “I support genocide.”
The next issue is that accusations of anti-semitism have been weaponized. I lost my patience when they were used to take out Corbyn, who was in no way anti-semitic and if there were a Holocaust would be one of the people willing to die to try and stop it. We’ve seen how every protest against the Gazan genocide has been labelled anti-semitic.
So ordinary, moral people, have stopped having a default belief in accusations of anti-semitism because the vast majority of such accusations are now attempts, in effect, to use the Holocaust and people’s repugnance at what led to it to justify ethnic cleansing and another genocide.
Further if there is a rise of anti-semitism in the world, it can be laid 99% percent at the feet of Israel, Zionism and those who cover for the Gaza genocide. When a country wrapping itself in the fig-leaf of “we’re the Jewish nation” undeniably commits a genocide then accuses those who protest of hating Jews and Judaism, some people will fail to make the Zionist/Jewish distinction. “They say they’re Jews, and that Judaism permits this, so Judaism is bad,” such people will think.
The greatest enemy Jews and Judaism have and the greatest creator of anti-semitism in the world is Israel. And anyone and any nation supporting them is helping create more anti-semitism.
All ideologies aren’t bad, though all can go bad, but Zionism was born with ill will: it was always the project to steal the land and homes of another people.
To Sum Up
Zionism is an ideology which starts with ethnic cleansing as its base. Evil.
Judaism is a religion, which, like almost all religions, can be used to justify evil, but is pointed more towards the good. Hillel’s “Whatever is hateful and distasteful to you, do not do to your fellow man” would have prevented this entire sickening mess, and is far more representative of Judaism than the Zionist perversion.
Jews are an ethnic religious group (there are lots of secular Jews), who are no more intrinsically evil or good than any other group.
Anti-semitism is bad, like all racism.
Anti-Zionism is good, like all opposition to ethnic cleansing and genocide.
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