How to define an antisemite
The rise of Jew-hatred in America can be reversed, but only if it is fought differently.
The hate-mongers have been successful in gaining legitimacy for their absurd argument that being antizionist and supporting the eradication of the State of Israel does not make them antisemites.
Members of the antizionist Neturei Karta sect demonstrate against Israel in New York City. (Photo: Luke Tress/Flash90)
Even antisemites such as far-left political commentator and streamer Hasan Piker, who referred to hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Jews as “inbred” and who supports Hamas over Israel, are legitimised by mainstream publications and mainstream politicians on the left.
The reason he and others are legitimised is polling that shows Democratic voters support Palestinian Arabs over Israelis by a 3-1 margin, and the Democrats want to appeal to those voters. Once public opinion shifts back, people like Piker and others will no longer be legitimised by members of the Democratic Party.
The fact is that, to argue that antizionism is not antisemitism, the haters have to do two false things. The first is that they need to argue that Judaism has nothing to do with Zionism. They attempt to prove that with Neturei Karta demonstrators and assimilated, self-hating Jews with no knowledge of Judaism. The fact that Neturei Karta represents a tiny, insignificant group that does not even represent Orthodox Jews, no matter their traditional dress, is ignored in the media.
The second false narrative is to deny Jewish history and Jewish connections to the land of Israel. Everyone would agree that if you deny the Holocaust happened, you are an antisemite. If you deny that King David ruled over Jerusalem, you are an antisemite. If you deny that Jewish prophets and others have been buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem for more than 2,000 years, then you are also an antisemite. It is important to note that the oldest Muslim cemetery in Israel dates from the 11th century.
A view on the old city and the new city of Jerusalem, the capital city of the state of Israel. Jerusalem, Oct 16, 2018. Photo by Kobi Richter/TPS
If you believe in the rights of Indigenous people to their land, except when it comes to the Indigenous Jewish people of Israel, you are antisemitic. If you ignore the historical legal right of the Jewish people to the land of Israel because you deliberately ignore that under the League of Nations decision of 1922, the Anglo-American Treaty ratified in 1925 and Article 80 of the UN Charter, international law recognises the Jewish right to the land of Israel, you are antisemitic.
If you try to claim some random time in history when Jews were not the majority and do not go back to who was first in Israel, namely, the Jews, or who is the majority in Israel today, namely, the Jews, then you are antisemitic.
The Jews were militarily forced from their homeland by the Romans in the year 70 CE and then during the Bar Kokhba revolt from 132 to 136, when almost all Jews were forcibly evicted from their ancestral homeland and were not allowed to return freely in large numbers until the modern Jewish state was re-established in 1948. The land of Israel was mostly empty, as American essayist Mark Twain described during his visit in 1867.
I asked Thomas Nides, the former US ambassador to Israel, to name a Palestinian Arab leader from before 1867. He could not, because those who were called Palestinian in 1867 were Jewish residents, not Arab residents. Even the Muslim Waqf, in its 1925 tourist guide to the Temple Mount, wrote that it was the site of the Temple of King Solomon. It acknowledged that Muslims occupied the site in the seventh century when they built the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Despite the League of Nations decision of 1922, Jews were restricted by the British from moving back to the land of Israel, even though there were still 600,000 Jews in Israel by 1948. After being forcibly removed, the Jewish people never gave up their claim to Israel. That is why Jews face Jerusalem when they pray and why returning to Jerusalem is included in the main Amidah prayer of the Jewish service. Now, more than 7.5 million Jews live in Israel.
Those who advocate for the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state to replace the Indigenous Jewish state are the advocates for apartheid, since a majority of the people living in the land of Israel are Jews. If they support the physical murder of this Jewish population, then they are supporters of the real definition of genocide.
We need to fight the falsehoods with historical facts, as antisemites have mainstreamed the denial of Jewish history. This can work with many of the 40 Democratic senators who opposed selling arms to Israel last month while the tiny nation is still fighting a war against multiple enemies trying to destroy it. Less than five years ago, almost all of these individuals supported arms sales to Israel, and that support can be rebuilt.
The point is this: The United States has no better ally than Israel, with its air force, intelligence and other strategic know-how. Israel is a military and technological power, with about 100 companies listed on Nasdaq. Compare this with a country more than 10 times its size, such as Egypt, which has one company listed on Nasdaq.
Moreover, the joint war with Iran has shown the United States the great value that Israel brings at a time when European countries will not lift a finger to battle Islamic extremism. They refuse to even allow their bases to be used to help take down a regime that aims to overpower the West.
The bottom line is that the Jewish people and Israel have the winning argument. They can overcome the antisemites. They do, however, need to change tactics in how they fight back because the current tactics are not working in America.
Farley Weiss is the co-author, with Leonard Grunstein, of Because It’s Just and Right: The Untold Backstory of the U.S. Recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel and Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, and a past president of the National Council of Young Israel.
