Who gave you the right to define our identity?

By now, anyone watching social media, university campuses, or public debate with open eyes will have noticed the same pattern again and again.

People with no connection to Jewish life, no stake in Jewish continuity, and no respect for Jewish self-understanding feel perfectly entitled to tell Jews who they are allowed to be. They tell us what Zionism means, what it should mean, whether it is moral, legitimate, welcome, or beyond the pale. Increasingly, they tell Jewish students in particular that belonging depends on whether they are prepared to renounce the parts of themselves others have decided are unacceptable.

That should alarm all of us because this is not just a political disagreement. It is an assertion of power. It is the insistence that Jews no longer have the right to define their own identity, history, or connection to peoplehood and homeland. For most Jews, Zionism is not some fringe slogan or modern branding exercise. It is the belief that the Jewish people, like every other people, have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. The effort to strip Zionism out of Jewish identity is not merely wrong. It is an attempt to remake Jewish identity by force.

That effort does not always come in a crude form. Sometimes it arrives through carefully curated dissenting Jewish voices held up as proof that Zionism has nothing to do with Jewish identity and that the rest of the community is somehow exaggerating or politically compromised. Those voices are entitled to their views. But they do not speak for the overwhelming breadth of Jewish experience, and they certainly do not give outsiders permission to redraw the boundaries of Jewish identity for everyone else.

No other community is treated in quite this way. No one tells other peoples that their national identity is acceptable only if it conforms to an outsider’s political preferences. No one tells other groups that they may participate in public life only if they renounce their connection to land, history, and collective memory. But Jews are expected to do exactly that.

This is why the language around Zionism has become so poisonous. It is no longer merely a term of political disagreement. It has become a weapon, a substitute, a socially acceptable proxy. People say “Zionist” and insist they do not mean “Jew”, but the hostility lands where it always lands: on Jewish students, on Jewish staff, on Jewish institutions, on Jews who are told that their presence is tolerated only if they amputate a central part of who they are.

We should stop pretending not to notice what is happening. When “Zionist” becomes the acceptable word for the Jew you are allowed to exclude, shout down, intimidate, or morally disqualify, that is not sophisticated political discourse. It is an old prejudice in updated language.

Of course, none of this means that criticism of Israel is illegitimate. It is not. Israel, like any nation, can be debated, scrutinised, and criticised. But the problem begins when Jews alone are told that their national movement is uniquely illegitimate, when Jewish self-determination is treated as the one expression of peoplehood the world is expected to reject, and when Jews everywhere are forced to answer for that supposed crime.

That is why it is not enough to dismiss anti-Zionism as simply another political position divorced from antisemitism. In theory, people can construct neat distinctions. In practice, that is not what our young people are facing. On campus and online, anti-Zionism is too often used not to critique a policy, government, or leader, but to place Jewish identity itself in the dock.

It is also wrong to reduce antisemitism and anti-Zionism to just another form of racism or generic hate. There is overlap, but antisemitism has always had its own structure. It does not only target Jews as individuals. It targets Jews as a collective, as a civilisation, and as a people whose legitimacy is always treated as conditional. That is what makes the question of Jewish self-determination so central.

Our mistake, too often, is that we respond as though this is simply a debate over facts. We explain Zionism. We go back to history. We correct misinformation. All of that matters, but facts alone do not defeat a frame designed to put Jews permanently on trial. The real issue is not only what our opponents say Zionism is. It is their assumption that they have the right to define it for us in the first place.

That is the insight our community needs to articulate far more clearly, especially for young Jews on campus. They do not just need historical facts. They need the confidence to challenge the structure of the accusation. When someone says, “I’m not against Jews, just Zionists,” the first response should not be retreat or apology. It should be a question: who gave you the right to define what Zionism means to Jews? Who gave you the right to decide which parts of Jewish identity are acceptable? Who gave you the right to tell Jewish students that belonging comes at the cost of renouncing their peoplehood?

Those questions matter because they expose what is really happening. This is not merely a disagreement over language. It is a struggle over authority, over who gets to define Jews, Jewish identity, and the boundaries of legitimate Jewish existence in public life.

The answer must be simple. Not you.

Jews do not need outsiders to instruct them on the meaning of their history, identity, or attachment to their homeland. Jewish students do not need permission to remain whole. The word may now be “Zionist”. The target may still be “Jew”. But beneath it all lies the same old arrogance: the belief that others have the right to tell Jews who they are.

They do not.

Michael Gencher is the Executive Director of StandWithUs Australia