To the woke-ist, the liberal progressive-ist, the post-modern-ist, the post and anti-Zion-ist, and all their fellow travelers; understand the following and educate yourselves a bit beyond memes, social media, and flavor of the moment "causes."
The hatred and persecution of the Nation of Israel, the most ancient prejudice against a collective, is termed antisemitism for a reason. This hate is based on the fundamental identity of the collective it is targeted against, its identity as a people, a nation of a particular ethnic\racial character. Hence the application of the accurate term to reflect that basic principle: antisemitism is being against the Semitic people that is Israel.
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In today's world of leveraging ignorance, general indifference, and short attention spans to achieve propaganda goals and spread false narratives, which in turn affect the public discourse so widely, it is even more important to lay out certain basic truths which have been overlooked, forgotten, or brushed aside. The nation of Israel is just that a nation, in fact, the oldest continuous nation in existence. A Semitic nation that preserved, throughout millennia of exile and oppression and speaks to this day, a West-Semitic tongue.
That language, Hebrew, is indigenous to the region of the Middle East known as the Levant, of which the homeland of this nation is a geographic part. The annals and chronicles of the nation, known to the world as the Hebrew Bible, make it abundantly and repeatedly clear that the character of the collective\civilization it records is a Semitic group, Bnei Yisrael [the sons of Israel], whose origins lay in a tribal confederation, who in turn developed from a clan with a clear patriarchal line.
But don't take the nation's own texts as the basis for their identity (although with any other nation\ethnic group such documentation would never be questioned or trivialized in such a manner)- refer instead to the texts and inscriptions of the ancient Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Hellenes, the Romans, and many others throughout the ages- the ethnonational group Israel, from the Land of Israel, and of the Hebrew tongue is historically documented in all of them. This nation's peculiar monotheism and worship regimen of the G-d of their forefathers (an ethnonational determinative) in a singular temple in their country's sole and celebrated capital city is also documented repeatedly by foreign sources.
This foreign recording of Israel's nature and history would continue (including in Arab and Islamic sources) into and throughout the nation's long dark exile precipitated at the hands of the Roman Empire.
Antisemitism as the racist hatred of the Nation of Israel is precisely what today those claiming to 'simply' be opposed to the existence of the State of Israel, are trading in and practicing. One cannot bifurcate, regardless of how much tongue twisting terminology or self-contradicting arguments one makes, antisemitism from the denial of the Nation of Israel's basic and historic right to national liberation and self-determination, i.e., Zionism and the state in resurrected.
There is no, I have no problem with Jews and Judaism but I hate and despise the fundamental character of their existence and practice, which is their geographic, linguistic, and ethnic\racial identity and self-expression. Furthermore, apart from the fundamentally racist and bigoted view that the Nation of Israel has no right to its native land, it is a denial of indigenous people's rights in general, a supposed priority of the parties mentioned in the opening of this piece. Yes, indigenous peoples' rights- historically, geographically, linguistically, genetically, and in every other significant way (again don't take Israel's word for it, open the works of Cassius Dio and Tacitus or go view the Lakhish Reliefs or Merneptah Stele housed in some of the greatest museums in the world)- as the Nation of Israel is, as obviously as the name overlap implies, the indigenous people of the Land of Israel.
Anti-Zionism and the denial of the State of Israel's right to exist are point-blank antisemitism on another practical and destructive level. As history has starkly proven time and again, when the nation is in exile, a minority of strangers in strange lands, devoid of self-governance and collective self-defense, it is subject not just to consistent, systemic, and unrelenting oppression and violence, but to genocidal annihilation.
The absence of an independent and free State of Israel equals enslavement, expulsion, death, and destruction along with many other horrors for the Nation of Israel. Those who support and promote "an end to Israel", the "dismantling of Israel", etc… are supporting and promoting those acts against an entire people not just a polity.
Finally, the charade of 'Jews okay, Israel no way', as if Israel is some sort of special case pariah amongst the countries of the world, exposes yet another clear and basic antisemitic banality- the double standard. While states that actually do commit war crimes and atrocities of the worst kind such as Syria, which has killed more Arabs identifying as Palestinians during the civil war there than all those killed in the operations and battles between Israel and Hamas run Gaza- that butchery garnered no Hamas propaganda hashtags from the Hadid sisters, or slanderous US late night tv host monologues crying out for the despair and wellbeing of those Palestinians, or calling for the erasure of the state of Syria.
The hypocrisy of this grotesque and outrageous double standard cries out to the heavens. These snake-oil salesman of antisemitism, knowingly or not, also deployed an additional timeless weapon of antisemitism- the blood libel. They peddled in the BIG lie that innocents are deliberately and maliciously targeted or killed without remorse for absolutely no reason, and in an unprecedented manner even implying that it is a result of the inherent behavioral traits or nature of Israel nation and state. Not to mention the complete lack of even a passing reference by such parties as to Israel's Arab citizens having the ability and privilege to live in a country and state that not only affords them freedom but a meritocracy allowing them to aspire, attain, and succeed; instead, they only disingenuously shriek about apartheid (which also trivializes the actual Apartheid of South Africa's past).
These spurious falsehoods and lack of context spread globally like a plague, as did unhinged media interviews with the likes of US Senator Bernie Sanders spewing self-righteous sanctimonious canards about Israel and his relationship to it, pouring fuel on the double standard fire. These actions lay bare the blatant antisemitic reality of judging and holding the State of Israel by standards applied to no other country or nation on earth. Not to the tyrannical despotic regimes which are Israel's polar opposites and many times her enemies such as Iran, Syria, and Turkey, nor to our fellow free and democratic states such as the UK, France, and the US who have caused far more civilian casualties and collateral damage in their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and against groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida, than Israel ever has in its conflicts with Gaza or the Arabs of Judea and Samaria.
No one is calling for an "end to" or "dismantlement of" those countries, nor do they delegitimize their very existence. At most, there are those who call for the replacement of the dictatorial and despotic regimes of countries such as Iran or Venezuela.
These self-evident truths have been buried under what is now decades of dumbed-down propaganda, fake news, disinformation and big lies. Anti-Zionism is antisemitism pure and simple. It is perfectly legitimate for one to criticize certain policies of the Israeli government, it actually happens to be a national pastime in Israel itself, but negating Israel's very right to be is as unprecedented, unparalleled, and unacceptable as it is antisemitic.
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