“There was a time when it was cool to be Jewish,” said a close friend of mine here in Berlin a couple of weeks ago, after a discussion about the impact of the genocide in Gaza. And indeed, in my 44 years of life, it has never been so complicated to be Jewish, especially when you are in the public eye.
“It is my obligation as a Jewish person to distinguish Jews from the state of Israel. Our religion and our culture are such an important and long-standing institution that is really separate to this sort of ethnonationalist state,” declared Hannah Einbinder in her Emmys acceptance speech. “In my heart there is great pain now every day for months. I come from Israel and live there. I love it. It’s my home,” declared Israeli conductor Ilan Volkov towards the end of his recent BBC Proms performance. “We cannot let this go on any longer. Every moment that passes puts the safety of millions at risk.” Meanwhile, the organizers of Flanders Festival Ghent canceled the scheduled performance of the Munich Philharmonic because its Israeli conductor, Lahav Shani, had not “unequivocally” distanced himself from his (and my) government.
For centuries, antisemites claimed Jews control whole countries behind the scenes and manipulate leaders for their own interests. Jews were accused of being greedy, disloyal and murderous – especially towards children. Today, the Zionist regime, with its efforts to complete the genocide in Gaza, appears determined to turn each and every false antisemitic accusation ever used against Jews into reality. The Zionists have murdered at least 20,000 Palestinian children with direct attacks & brought the death of tens of thousands more children from disease, hunger and thirst. They have used their influence in key global powers, as well as tech giants and global media, to silence opposition to their atrocities.
See how the BBC, New York Times and others continue to spread false Zionist propaganda against every journalistic standard, Google, Microsoft and others play an active role in the Gaza Genocide, and not to mention countries like the US, UK and Germany who continue to block any attempt to stop the Zionist bloodlust – against the interests of their citizens, and even when the Zionists murder their citizens in Gaza. In the meantime, the Zionist army in Gaza is dominated more and more by soldiers for hire, who gave up on their hopes of having a real career and instead make money from murdering Palestinians and demolishing their homes (for a fairly substantive daily payment).
What makes things even worse is that the Zionists claim to be doing all those unthinkable crimes in the name of the Jewish People. And they succeed. Antisemitism is on the rise globally, and it is conflated deliberately by the Zionists with legitimate anti-Zionist objections to the genocide and the apartheid regime responsible for it.
There is nothing new in this attempt to silence any just criticism against the Zionist regime with bogus claims of antisemitism, nor is it new that Zionists and antisemites have aligned interests. I remember a conversation I had in Berlin over 20 years ago with an ardent Zionist who claimed Jews have no place in Europe because “they don’t belong here”. Many Zionists repeated this claim, and this perception even shaped the Zionist response to the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, including Zionist efforts to block the possible escape of Jewish refugees from the slaughter in Europe to anywhere that was not Palestine.
In fact, the commonly used and justly criticized IHRA definition of antisemitism, shaped by Zionists and forced by them down the throats of many organizations and countries, is in itself antisemitic. The definition rightly states that blaming Jews for Zionist actions is antisemitic, but much of the definition is dealing with why it is antisemitic, i.e. anti-Jewish, to criticize the Zionist regime – thus extending the blame for Zionist crimes to all Jews.
What changed in the past 23 months of genocide is that the Zionists succeeded in their efforts of making antisemitic fantasies come true. Today, almost every Jew everywhere around the world is required to clarify their objections to Zionist crimes or face consequences. Antisemites all over the world feel vindicated, and many of them even use their support for the murderous Zionist regime – and endorsements by Zionists – to deny their antisemitism while still spreading it.
The Zionist vision always relied on presenting the world as unsafe for Jews – thus justifying their claims that their regime is the only safe place for Jews. Now, with the Gaza Genocide and the murder of tens of thousands of Palestinians in the most horrid ways, they are succeeding in making much of the world hostile towards Jews – and thus fortifying their position in both fresh supplies of immigrants and moral justifications. Therefore, fighting to dismantle the genocidal Zionist regime has to also include shedding light on how Zionism is inherently antisemitic, and denying their claims to speak for the Jewish People.
Photo: Mahmud Hams/AFP
