[Salon] Anti-Semitism as a Weapon to terrorise people of conscience



Anti-Semitism as a Weapon to terrorise people of conscience

By Ali Kazak

While Israel continues to wage ethnic cleansing and a slow war of genocide against the Palestinian people, its lobby in Australia with the support of the Murdoch media and politicians, both Labor and Liberal, is waging a war against people of conscience to silence them, accusing them of anti-Semitism with the threat of criminalisation.

The lobby's strategy is to achieve its goal by distorting and misusing the term "anti-Semitism," falsely equating it with criticism of Israel and the Zionist ideology. They demand the government, and universities adopt the controversial IHRA definition, which has been rejected by Jews, academics, and human rights organisations. Even its author, Kenneth Stern, said IHRA has been weaponised to silence criticism of Israel.

This extremist and well-funded lobby use blackmail, intimidation, and psychological terrorism to scare people and force them to shut their mouths thus preventing them from taking a stand against Israel’s colonialism, apartheid, and crimes against humanity.

They aim to make Israel the untouchable, the exceptional, above international law, distinct from similar despotic regimes and ideologies and not subject to public and international opposition and accountability, on the pretext that opposing Israel’s crimes and violations is anti-Semitic!

While it is not surprising that this lobby of a foreign state works in the service of Israel’s interests, what is surprising is that there are politicians who put Israel’s and their party’s interests above Australia’s national interests, and international law to gain the lobby's blessing.

For decades, the Zionist narrative has been dominant through the influence of Israel and its lobby on Western media, obscuring the nature of the Zionist colonial regime and the crimes on which Israel was established in Palestine. However, the ease of travel and migration, and the development of communication technology and social media, have allowed societies to learn the truth about Israel, the Nakba and the Zionist ideology.

Since Israel and its lobby lack valid arguments and facts, to maintain their control over the narrative and protect their colonial project from punishment by the international community, they have resorted to using their detrimental influence over politicians to silence their opponents through this psychological terrorism in criminalising and prohibiting anti-Israeli and anti-Zionism under the claim of antisemitism, and to pressure social media to censor anti-Israeli materials.

The lobby’s intimidation tactic to stifle freedom of political _expression_ and debate, further reveals Israel and its lobby for what they are and isolates them more from society.

As for politicians who stand with Israel and defend its internationally condemned crimes against humanity, they show their true hypocritical face to the public and lose credibility with their voters.

Ali Kazak is a former Palestinian ambassador and head of delegation to Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific region. He is an expert in Australian-Arab relations and affairs, and author of “Australia and the Arabs”. (In Arabic).

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Here are some quotes on antisemitism and Israel:

 

  • “Is it anti-Semitic to say it is wrong to bulldoze apartment blocks and leave the tenants with nowhere to live? Then I swear on the head of my grandmother Rachel Larkman that I am anti-Semitic too. Is it anti-Semitic to say that killing 3,000 unarmed Palestinians in three years is wrong and a crime against humanity? Then I swear by the blood of my ancestors all the way back to Abraham that I am anti-Semitic too. Is it anti-Semitic to say that threatening to “remove” a democratically-elected head of state is wrong and a breach of international law? Then I too am anti-Semitic and I await my punishment. By helicopter gunship perhaps.”

Bob Ellis, Australian author, speechwriter and film director, a letter to the editor, The Australian newspaper, 29.10. 2003.

 

  • The occupation needs to end;
  • The Israelis are conning us by spreading settlements;
  • All of them are illegal under international law;
  • Israel is not a special state but a normal state which can be criticised;

Then there will be no cringing, no apologetics, no backtracking from me. … If you want to call me an anti-Semite for making the above criticisms, I will regret it but won’t be intimidated. Criticism of an Israeli occupation, the settlements and the chauvinism of its politicians is not anti-Semitic. Only Zionist zealots wish it so. The same thing was said by Israeli rightists of President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry.

And I persist. The Palestinians must have their state, and recognising it is the one course of action left to us.”

Bob Carr, former foreign minister and the longest continuously serving premier of the state of NSW, “Run for Your life”, Melbourne University Press, 2018, p.181-182.

 

  • “If demanding that Palestinians have equal rights with Israelis is anti-Semitic then yes I am an anti-Semite.
    If demanding that Israel end the occupation and allow a free and sustainable Palestinian civil society is anti-Semitic, yes I am an anti-Semite
    If calling out the Israeli government for its hypocritical values and standards, granting a liberal life style to its own and denying it to the Palestinians is anti-Semitic, then yes I am anti-Semitic.
    If saying that the policies of the Israeli government toward the Palestinians stand in sharp contrast with the values of righteousness and justice espoused in the Hebrew scriptures, which I honour, is anti-Semitic, then yes I am anti-Semitic.”

Bishop George Browning, “accusations of anti-semitism”, “In service of the common good Blog”, 2.12.2017.

 

  • “Calling out China for its persecution of Uighurs is not to be a Sinophobic racist. Calling out Myanmar for its crimes against Rohingya people is not to be anti-Buddhist. Calling out Saudi Arabia and Egypt for their murder and suppression of dissidents is not to be Islamophobic or anti-Arab. And calling out Israel for its sabotage of the two-state solution and creation of a de facto apartheid state is not to be anti-Semitic

Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister, letter to the editor “Not anti-Semitic”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 14.6.2021.

 

  • We must not allow the weaponisation of antisemitism to crush legitimate criticism of the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. To criticise the Israel genocide is not antisemitic.

John Menadue, Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations, and former Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, “The weaponising of ‘antisemitism’ is to hide the genocide”, Pearls and Irritations, 7.2.2025.

 

  • “As a leader in the Jewish community, I am particularly alarmed by today’s McCarthyist tactic of manufacturing an antisemitism scare, which, in effect, turns the very real issue of Jewish safety into a pawn in a cynical political game to cover for Israel’s deeply unpopular policies with regard to Palestine. (A recent poll found that 66 percent of all U.S. voters and 80 percent of Democratic voters desire an end to Israel’s current war, for instance.)

What makes this trend particularly disturbing is the power differential: Billionaire donors and the politically-connected, non-Jews and Jews alike on one side, targeting disproportionately people of vulnerable populations on the other, including students, untenured faculty, persons of color, Muslims, and, especially, Palestinian activists.”

Bernie Steinberg, executive director of Harvard Hillel from 1993 to 2010, “For the Safety of Jews and Palestinians, Stop Weaponizing Antisemitism”, The Harvard Crimson, 29.12.2023.

  • “In this country (UK), we have seen a very, very unfortunate phenomenon of the weaponizing of anti-Semitism to prevent free speech in order to protect Israel. The government has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. It tries to impose this definition on universities and local authorities and it's a very flawed definition because it doesn't distinguish clearly enough between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. So there is nothing at all anti-Semitic in calling Israel an apartheid state.”

Avi Shlaim, distinguished historian, “Probably the world’s last anti-colonial war”, Arab Digest org, 6.12.2023.

 

  • “Let me speak plainly: It is not antisemitic to demand justice for all Palestinians living in their ancestral lands.”

Bernie Steinberg, executive director of Harvard Hillel from 1993 to 2010, “For the Safety of Jews and Palestinians, Stop Weaponizing Antisemitism”, The Harvard Crimson, 29.12.2023.

 

  • “Once again Netanyahu, echoed by his apologists, has imposed a false, binary choice that can only fuel antisemitism. His demand: either back Israel’s genocide in Gaza or expose yourself as a Jew hater.

Palestinians, solidarity activists and human rights organisations are used to this. But now even the judges of the International Criminal Court are being tarred as antisemites. Could there be a quicker path to making antisemitism respectable?”

Jonathan Cook, “Biden and Starmer are destroying international law to protect Israel’s genocide”, Meddle East Eye, 4.12.2024.

 

  • “The prevention of humanitarian assistance, the targeting of aid workers and even of the workers of this [the UN] institution, the attacks on the bodies that uphold the law, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. All while claiming the moral high ground and making specious accusations that somehow to be held to the law is motivated by antisemitism, it cheapens that very real and dangerous phenomenon of antisemitism.”

Daniel Levy, President of the U.S./Middle East Project, a speech to the United Nations Security Council, “We are all people, we are all born equal”, 1.3.2025.

 

  • “Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.”

Dr Hajo Meyer, 86, who survived 10 months in the Nazi death camp, “Auschwitz survivor: ‘Israel acts like Nazis’”, Scotland’s Sundy Herald, 24 Jan 2010.

 

  • “I simply observe the obvious reality which is that Israel is an apartheid state. For me, it's not a matter for debate, or a matter of dispute. …from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, there is one regime. It's an apartheid regime. It's a Jewish supremacist regime with second class citizens. That's the Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel and third class citizens, if you can call them that, who are the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, who have no political rights at all. So I think it's obvious that Israel is an apartheid state.

To the people who say that to call Israel an apartheid state is anti-Semitic, I say about criticisms of the State of Israel, this is not anti-Semitic. I make a very, very clear distinction between anti-Semitism on the one hand, which is hatred of the Jews and anti-Zionism on the other hand, which is criticism of the State of Israel. Israel, and its friends, and it has many friends, very strong friends throughout the world, has deliberately, I repeat, deliberately conflated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, in order to silence legitimate evidence-based criticisms of the State of Israel.”

Avi Shlaim, distinguished historian, “Probably the world’s last anti-colonial war”, Arab Digest org, 6.12.2023.

 

  • Yeshayahu Leibowitz a professor of biochemistry, organic chemistry, and neurophysiology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an outspoken Israeli prolific writer on Jewish thought and western philosophy and Orthodox Jewish public intellectual, described in a recorded interview Israeli conduct in the occupied Palestinian territories as "Judeo-Nazi" in nature while warning of the dehumanizing effect of the occupation on the victims and the oppressors.

 

  • “No-one cares more about antisemitism than I do. My mother and grandmother survived the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz and I grew up hearing their stories. So, l think I know antisemitism when I see it. In fact, there has never been any antisemitism at our rallies, at universities or anywhere in Australia in my lifetime.”

Peter Slezak, an Honorary Associate Professor, “We face one of the greatest moral tests of our time”, Pearls and Irritations, 5.3.2025.

  • “It's scary to see horrifying developments that took place in Europe begin to unfold here, …if there is one thing that is scary in remembering the Holocaust, it is noticing horrific processes which developed in Europe -- particularly in Germany -- 70, 80, and 90 years ago, and finding remnants of that here among us in the year 2016.”

Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, Israel’s second-highest military official, Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. In a speech he gave on the eve of the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, “IDF general in bombshell speech: Israel today shows signs of 1930s Germany” The Jerusalem Post, 4.5.2016.

 

  • “A growing majority of voters in Europe and elsewhere (young voters above all) simply cannot understand how the horrors of the last European war can be invoked to license or condone unacceptable behavior in another time and place. In the eyes of a watching world, the fact that the great-grandmother of an Israeli soldier died in Treblinka is no excuse for his own abusive treatment of a Palestinian woman waiting to cross a checkpoint.”

Sally Rooney, Award-winning Irish novelist, “Lies Are Being Told About Sally Rooney Because She Refuses to Ignore Israeli Apartheid”, The Intercept, 17.10.2021.

 

  • “While there are, indeed, anti-Semites, the accusation of anti-Semitism is too often used to block debate.”

Chris Mitchell, former senior editor of The Australian newspaper, “Touchy subject: We must end self-censorship on Israel and Palestine”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2.10.2021.

 

  • “Before Israel’s creation, some of the world leaders who most ardently promoted Jewish statehood did so because they did not want Jews in their own countries. Before declaring, as foreign secretary in 1917, that Britain “view[s] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”, Arthur Balfour supported the 1905 Aliens Act, which restricted Jewish immigration to the United Kingdom.

And two years after his famous declaration, Balfour said Zionism would “mitigate the age-long miseries created for western civilisation by the presence in its midst of a Body [the Jews] which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb”.

In the 1930s, the Polish government adopted a similar tack. Its ruling party, which excluded Jews, trained Zionist fighters on Polish military bases. Why? Because it wanted Polish Jews to emigrate. And a Jewish state would give them somewhere to go. You find echoes of this antisemitic Zionism among some rightwing American Christians who are far friendlier to the Jews of Israel than the Jews of the US.”

 

Peter Beinart, a associate professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York, “Debunking the myth that anti-Zionism is antisemitic”, The Guardian, 7.5.2019.

  • “when the fugitive Nazi functionary Adolph Eichmann was captured in 1960 and brought to Israel for trial a year later for war crimes, it was his second visit to the Holy Land. Indeed, Eichmann had been a guest of the Zionist movement in 1937, hosted for a tour of kibbutzim in historic Palestine by a double Zionist-Nazi agent named Feibl Folkes.

“Eichmann quoted Folkes to the effect that Zionist leaders were pleased by the persecution of European Jewry, since it would encourage emigration to Palestine,”

(the Israeli historian Tom Segev noted in his book The Seventh Million.)

Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University and the author of the new book Islam in Liberalism, “Zionist collaboration with fascism and anti-Semitism”, AlterNet Grayzone Project, 26.11.2017.

 

  • …The idea that Israel is the Jews’ own ethnic state implies that Jews living outside of it — say, in America or in Europe — enjoy a merely diasporic existence. That is another way of saying that they inhabit a country that is not genuinely their own. Given this logic, it is natural for Zionist and anti-Semitic politicians to find common ideas and interests.

… in a letter to high Nazi officials, drafted in 1941 by Avraham Stern, known as Yair, a leading early Zionist fighter and member in the 1930s of the paramilitary group Irgun, and later, the founder of another such group, Lehi. In the letter, Stern proposes to collaborate with “Herr Hitler” on “solving the Jewish question” by achieving a “Jewish free Europe.” The solution can be achieved, Stern continues, only through the “settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine.” To that end, he suggests to collaborate with the German’s “war efforts,” and establish a Jewish state on a “national and totalitarian basis,” which will be “bound by treaty with the German Reich.

… Stern is memorialized in street names in every major Israeli town, …”

Omri Boehm (an assistant professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research), “Liberal Zionism in the Age of Trump”, New York time, 20.12.2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/opinion/liberal-zionism-in-the-age-of-trump.html?ref=opinion

 

  • “As Hitler exploited the Jews, it is paradoxical that certain Jews should have exploited and up to this very moment are still very much intent upon exploiting Hitler for Zionist propaganda purposes. …the aim of the game is to keep Adolf and his gang alive.”

Alfred M. Lilienthal, “The Zionist connection, What Price Peace?”, Dodd, Mead & Company, New York, 1978, p.461.

 

  • ‘Until Nazism, the great majority of Jews throughout the world had rejected Zionism, either as heretical (the position of the rabbis and the great majority of religious Jews) or as reactionary (the position of the Jewish workers movement in eastern Europe) or as completely anachronistic (the position of most of the assimilated Jews in western and central Europe).  In that sense, anti-Zionism has always been perceived not only as a legitimate political position, but also as the dominant ethos among world Jewry.  Among Jews, anti-Zionism predominated for more than half a century.  It is only during the last three decades that a campaign conducted on a worldwide scale has tried (not without success) to delegitimise anti-Zionism and even to identify it with anti-Semitism.’

Michael Warschawski, an Israeli writer and journalist, excerpts from his article ‘Depoliticising Zionism - On the road to holy war’, News from Within, September 2002, Vol. XVIII No.5.

 

  • "They might be anti-Semites, but they’re on our side."

Anat Berko, Likud MK, “Netanyahu Now Endorses Jewish Fascism. U.S. Jews, Cut Your Ties With Him Now”, in response Benjamin Netanyahu criticism for hosting the right-wing prime ministers of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary who have been accused of being anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic, Haaretz, 21.2.2019.

 

  • “…the Israeli government is following a fascist path and that Major General Yair Golan's warnings about similarities to Nazi Germany in the 1930s are coming to pass. …12 out of 14 "symptoms of Fascism" exist in Israel today.

"This government is leading Israel along the path followed by fascist movements, … Yair Golan's words, two years ago, unfortunately are confirmed before our eyes, and it is impossible to say that this man said the right thing in a difficult and painful moment when he looked back to the Holocaust. "

"From experience and history, we know that whoever does not stop the phenomena of the proto-fascist movement who follow the dark messianic magic of blood, race and soil - whoever does not stop them in time cannot stop them later."

Ehud Barak, Former Prime Minister and Defense Minister, “Barak: Proto-Fascist government must be stopped”, Arutz Sheva, 21,8,2018.

 

  • “Israel spent the last week wreaking utter devastation on Jenin, killing 12 Palestinians and wounding 120, 20 of them seriously. One Israeli soldier was killed. The vast majority of Palestinian victims were unarmed civilians.

The IDF assaulted the town’s hospital and fired tear gas into the halls, which filled with thick smoke. Three people were shot and severely wounded.  …the IDF brought a thousand soldiers, bulldozers which destroyed homes and roads, and armed drones which rained down missiles on the homes of Palestinian civilians. 

The Nazis too destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto during and after the Jewish revolt. Israel has done the next best thing. It knows it cannot repeat what the Nazis wrought, because the world would rise up in righteous indignation. So it wreaks suffering just below that threshold. Like an expert torturer, Israel knows how much it can get away with and when to stop before killing the victim.”

Richard Silverstein, “Israel Wreaks Revenge on Jenin”, Tikun Olam, 5.7.2023.

 

  • “I spoke with the head military lawyer for the IDF, Joel Singer, and I said ‘You know, I’m two weeks here. It’s clear you people are inflicting Nuremberg crimes on the Palestinians, exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews. What’s your explanation?’ He said ‘Military necessity’.

Notice, he didn’t disagree with me. I said ‘That argument was rejected at Nuremberg when the lawyers for the Nazis made it.’ And then he said, ‘Well, we have public relations people in the United States, and they handle these matters for us.’” 

Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law, University of Illinois, “Israeli Lawyer Doesn’t Deny Nuremberg Crimes on Palestinians (What the Nazis Did to the Jews)”, BSnews, 28.7.2014.

 

  • “The State of Israel cannot solve the question of the Arabs who are in the country by Nazi means,” he stated, adding, “Nazism is Nazism, even if carried out by Jews.”

Pinhas Lavon, Israel’s defense minister in 1954-55, in 1955, a few months after resigning as defense minister, he savaged the concept at a Mapai’s political meeting in Beit Berl, , “'We Look at Them Like Donkeys': What Israel's First Ruling Party Thought About Palestinian Citizens”, Haaretz, 13.1.2018.

 

  • “All who want to see an end to bloodshed in the Middle East must ensure that any settlement does not contain the seeds of future conflict... We are frequently told that we must sympathise with Israel because of the Suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis.  I see in this suggestion no reason to perpetuate any suffering.  What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify terror of the present is a gross hypocrisy.  Not only does Israel condemn a vast number of refugees to misery, not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule, but also Israel condemns the Arab nation, only recently emerging from colonial status, to continuing impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development.”

Bertrand Russell, “Toward Peace in Palestine”, edited by Hatem Hussaini, PIO, Washington DC, 1970, P. 54.

 

  • ‘We did not fight for human rights, but for the rights of Jews.  We were for the freedom of movement and freedom of choice-for Jews only.  We spoke of universal suffrage, but we meant the right to vote for Jews only.  We do not mind occupation and invasion, as long as we invade and occupy.  The sight of a child raising hands in front of the machine gun toting thug grieves us only if it is a Jewish child.  The gentile child can be shot at freely.

‘Tsarist Russia, the land of pogroms, was much hated by our grandfathers and eventually destroyed by them.  Still, a hundred years of Jewish pogroms caused fewer casualties than what we murder in a week.  The most horrible pogrom of Kishinev claimed 45 dead and 600 wounded.  In the last 15 weeks in Israel, 300 were killed and many thousands wounded.  After the pogrom in Russia, all writers and intelligentsia condemned the perpetrators.  In the Jewish state hardly few dozen gathered at the demonstration in Tel Aviv, while the Hebrew Writers Union supported the pogrom of gentiles. ...

What did we not like about the German Nazis?  Their racism?  Our racism is not less widespread and poisonous.  A Russian language newspaper published in Jerusalem asked hundreds of Russian Jews about their feelings towards the Palestinians.  Typical answers were: “I would kill all Arabs”, “All Arabs must be eliminated”, “Arabs must be expelled”, “An Arab is an Arab.  They have to be eliminated”.  I am not sure you would get better results in Germany in 1938.  Even Nazis did not intend to kill their Jewish enemies until 1941.

Israel Shamir, Russian-Israeli writer and journalist, excerpts from an article “Acid test failed”, taken from the Russian-Israeli weekly RI & reprinted in Green Left Weekly (Aust) 24.1.2001.

 

  • “Anti-Semitism tendencies wherever they occur function as arguments in the hands of the Zionists not for equal rights as a universal principle in all countries, but for exclusive rights for Jews in the State of Israel. Israel and anti-Semitism are related to each other in this manner, both in Zionist theory and in political history.”

Sigbert Axelson, “Israel and Anti-Semitism, a critical view”, Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 7, Nos. 2&3, 1985, p.13.

 

  • “If the Jews of Britain and their chief rabbi were more honest and courageous, they would ask themselves: Isn’t Israel’s brutal occupation policy the strongest motive for anti-Semitism today? There is anti-Semitism, it must be fought, but it must also be recognized that Israel supplies it an abundance of excuses and motives.”

Gideon Levy, “The Contract on Corbyn”, Haaretz, 28.11.2019.

 

  • “The rabbis need to understand the damage such documents [IHRA] are doing to the prospects of a genuine Jewish/Palestinian dialogue.  Anti-Palestinianism is as bad as antisemitism.

How can a Jewish religious movement call for equality and justice for all, while making an exception in the very place where we claim our Jewish origins?”

Robert A. H. Cohen, a British writer, “‘History will judge us’ —

Have progressive UK rabbis reached end of the road on Israel?”, Mondoweiss, 30.7.2020.

 

  • “The case of Palestine coverage in the media is special for one reason.  We have a peculiar vocabulary, developed for the local coverage.  If I kill Ahmed, it would be reported that ‘Ahmed was killed by an Israeli’.  But if, God forbid, Ahmad killed me, you would learn that ‘a Jew was murdered.’

‘As in Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde, an Israeli may kill; but if an Israeli is killed, he turns into a Jew.  It is absolutely forbidden to speak about Jewish atrocities and murders.  The Jews are forever victims.  It often appears we have three nations in Palestine: Jews, Israelis and Palestinians.  Israelis may commit crimes, but it is innocent - always innocent - Jews are murdered.  If you confuse the two words and refer to a murderer as ‘a Jew’, you will be called an anti-Semite, and probably you will lose your job.”

Israel Shamir, Russian-Israeli writer and journalist, excerpts from his speech to the UNESCO conference ‘Getting the Facts Right’ in Paris, June 2001.

 

  • “You can attack the Palestinians in America uninterrupted, call to expel them and deny their existence. Only don’t dare to touch Israel, the holy of holies, the country that exists above suspicion. …

The key word of course is anti-Semitism. A lot has been written about the use Israel and its supporters make of anti-Semitism. And it works wondrously, it’s a magic word that silences people. …

Fire more analysts who dare to criticize Israel or suggest just solutions to the occupation – and more people surveyed will say what everyone knows: The Jews and Israel have an incredible degree of influence in Western media. Now you can call me an anti-Semite, as well.”

Gideon Levy, “In U.S. Media, Israel Is Untouchable”, Haaretz, 2.12.2018.

 

  • Aipac [the American Israel Political Affairs Committee] and a variety of closely linked Jewish organizations regularly use the anti-Semitism card to attack anyone who dares criticize the occupation of the West Bank. Increasingly dominated by Jewish neo-cons and their worldview, the Jewish establishment has moved far to the right in the past two decades, spurred in part by Aipac’s powerful impact."

Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society and author of Healing Israel/Palestine, “Criticism of AIPAC Is Not Anti-Semitism”, America Magazine, 4.10.2004.

 

  • “Whenever Israel comes under renewed international pressure to withdraw from occupied territories, its apologists mount yet another meticulously orchestrated media extravaganza alleging that the world is awash in anti-Semitism. This shameless exploitation of anti-Semitism delegitimizes criticism of Israel, makes Jews rather than Palestinians, the victims, and puts the onus on the Arab world to rid itself of anti-Semitism rather than on Israel to rid itself of the Occupied Territories. A close analysis of what the Israel lobby tallies as anti-Semitism reveals three components: exaggeration and fabrication; mislabelling legitimate criticism of Israeli policy; and the unjustified yet predictable “spillover” from criticism of Israel to Jews generally. I conclude that if, as all studies agree, current resentment against Jews has coincided with Israel’s brutal repression of the Palestinians, then the prudent, not to mention moral, thing to do is to end the occupation. A full Israeli withdrawal would also deprive those real anti-Semites exploiting Israeli policy as a pretext to demonize Jews – and who can doubt they exist? – of a dangerous weapon as well as expose their real agenda. And the more vocally Jews dissent from Israel’s occupation, the fewer will be those non-Jews who mistake Israel’s criminal policies and the uncritical support (indeed encouragement) of mainline Jewish organizations for the popular Jewish mood.”

Norman G. Finkelstein, “Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, Verso, 2005, page 16.

 

  • “Earlier in my life I had a fleeting utopian dream that a Palestinian Israeli should feel as much at home in Tel Aviv as a Jewish American does in New York. I struggled and sought for the civil life of a Muslim Israeli in Jerusalem to be similar to that of the Jewish French person whose home is in Paris. I wanted Israeli children of Christian African immigrants to be treated as the British children of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent are in London. I hoped with all my heart that all Israeli children would be educated together in the same schools. Today I know that my dream is outrageously demanding, that my demands are exaggerated and impertinent, that the very fact of formulating them is viewed by Zionists and their supporters as an attack on the Jewish character of the state of Israel, and thus as antisemitism.”

Shlomo Sand, an Israeli historian, “I wish to resign and cease considering myself a Jew”, The Guardian, 11.10.2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/10/shlomo-sand-i-wish-to-cease-considering-myself-a-jew

 

Sigbert Axelson, “Israel and Anti-Semitism, a critical view”, Arab Studies Quarterly, Vol. 7, Nos. 2&3, 1985, p.13.

 

  • “In the bad old days of Golda Meir, one of the Israeli army's entertainment bands sang a jolly song which started with the words: "The whole world is against us / But we don't give a damn…" The band danced around to the tune.

For some reason, Jews derive satisfaction from a world-wide condemnation. It affirms what we have known all the time: that all the nations of the world hate us. It shows how special and superior we are. It has nothing to do with our own behavior, God forbid. It is just pure anti-Semitism.”

Uri Avnery, “Anti-Semitic Zionists”, Gush-shalom.org, 31.12.2016   http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1483105431

 

  • “The abuse of alleged anti-semitism is morally despicable. It took hundreds of years and millions of victims to turn anti-semitism – a specific case of racism which led historically to genocide – into a taboo. People abusing this taboo in order to support Israel's racist and genocidal policy towards the Palestinians do nothing less than desecrate the memory of those Jewish victims, whose death, from a humanistic perspective, is meaningful only inasmuch as it serves as an eternal warning to the human kind against all kinds of discrimination, racism, and genocide.

Moreover, portraying the victimisers as victims – a standard characteristic of anti-Palestinian propaganda – is precisely what anti-semitism has always done: in blood-libels which portrayed defenceless Jewish victims as victimisers of Christian children, or in the ultimate accusation of Christ killing, which abused the persecution of early Christians to legitimate the persecution of Jews once the balance of power changed. Thus, evoking Jewish victims of the past to defend Jewish victimisers of the present –remember that Israel has one of the mightiest armies on earth – is a moral fault on a par with, and embarrassingly similar to, anti-semitism itself.”

Ran HaCohen, “Abusing 'Anti-Semitism'’,  Antiwar.com, 29.9.2003.

 

...if anti-Zionism is labeled antisemitic, because the settlements, even if they do not represent fundamental aspirations of the Jewish people, are an entirely plausible extension of Zionism.  To oppose them is indeed to be anti-Zionist and therefore by the stretched definition antisemitic.  The more antisemitism expands to include opposition to Israeli policies, the better it looks.  Given the crimes to be laid at the feet of Zionism, there is another simple syllogism: anti-Zionism is a moral obligation, so, if anti-Zionism is antisemitism, antisemitism is a moral obligation...”

Michael Neumann, professor of philosophy at Trent University, Ontario, Canada, excerpts from his article ‘What is Antisemitism?’, MIFTAH, 7/6/2002.

 

  • “Today, Australia’s 39 Universities endorsed a dangerous and politicised definition of antisemitism which threatens academic freedom, will have a chilling effect on legitimate criticism of Israel, and risks institutionalising anti-Palestinian racism. They did so without meaningful consultation with Palestinian groups or diverse Jewish groups who are critical of Israel.

The Jewish Council of Australia strongly opposes the antisemitism definition developed by the Group of Eight (Go8) universities and adopted by Universities Australia. By categorising Palestinian political _expression_ as inherently antisemitic, it will be unworkable and unenforceable, and stifle critical political debate, which is at the heart of any democratic society.

The definition dangerously conflates Jewish identities with support for the state of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism.”

Statement by the Jewish Council of Australia, “Jewish Council of Australia slams Universities adoption of dangerous, politicised and unworkable antisemitism definition”, 26.2.2025.

 

  • “It degrades the very real fight against antisemitism for it to be weaponised to silence legitimate criticism of the Israeli state and Palestinian political expressions. It also risks fomenting division between communities and institutionalising anti-Palestinian racism.” 

Sarah Schwartz, human rights lawyer, “Jewish Council of Australia slams Universities adoption of dangerous, politicised and unworkable antisemitism definition”, 26.2.2025.

 

  • “As a Jewish-Israeli academic who researches and teaches in the area of settler-colonialism and Israel/Palestine, I fear this definition [ of antisemitism] will have a chilling effect on scholarly work criticising the state of Israel and the political ideology and impacts of Zionism. This definition could very well be weaponised to silence the crucial work of academics in this area, including my own. 

It is not antisemitic to reimagine Israel/Palestine as a place of equality for all who live there. This may entail calling for the elimination and reformation of the State of Israel from a state that systematically privileges the rights and freedoms of one group of people - Jews - over others.”

Naama Blatman, Scholar of settler-colonialism and Israel/Palestine, “Jewish Council of Australia slams Universities adoption of dangerous, politicised and unworkable antisemitism definition”, 26.2.2025.

 

  • “The right to challenge Israel’s brutal occupation and settler-colonialism is not just a political stance – it’s a moral imperative, and no definition of antisemitism should ever be weaponised to shut this down.

What we are witnessing is a dangerous and authoritarian crackdown on freedom of _expression_ and solidarity with Palestine in all aspects of life in this country – McCarthyism is reborn, where dissent is no longer tolerated, and critical thought is branded as ‘hate.’”

Nasser Mashni, APAN President, “McCarthyism reborn: Australian universities capitulate to Israel lobby, suppress criticism of Israel”, 26.2.2025.

 

  • “The Australian Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights’ recent report on anti-Semitism raises concern for being a politically-motivated move that threatens open discourse, academic freedom and values Australians hold dear.

By recommending that Australian universities ‘closely align’ with the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, the report seeks to impose a politically-charged framework that risks silencing essential academic inquiry, particularly regarding Israel’s actions in Palestine.  … Australia, as a multicultural society with strong ties to the Middle East, needs to allow citizens to express solidarity with victims of Israel’s brutal military actions in Palestine, especially over the past 16 months.”

Daud Batchelor, “Report on anti-Semitism: A grave threat to Australian values”, Australasian Muslim times, 21.2.2025.
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