It’s oh-so-chic these days to argue, in learned journals, late-night dorm room sessions and over tea and crumpets, about whether anti-Zionism is equivalent to anti-Semitism. Whether hatred of Israel and attempts to delegitimize her is effectively the same thing as hating Jews.

But, leaving that question aside for the moment, aren’t the vehemence, vilification and violence regularly exhibited at protests against Israel sufficiently ugly on their own to merit a sane society’s contempt?

If there are any protests over Myanmar’s genocide of Rohingya Muslims or over Communist China’s gross mistreatment of Uighurs—or over Turkey’s ethnic cleansing of Kurds, Christians and Yazidis, or over Sudan’s persecution of an assortment of non-Arab groups—they seem to have flown under the radar. If they exist at all.

When it comes to Israel, though, for her attempt to defang a movement pledged to her destruction, a movement that has maimed and murdered thousands of Israeli civilians, Jews and Arabs alike, she has become the villain of the nonce. And no one even tries to claim that Myanmar or China or Turkey or Sudan are “illegitimate” countries like, say, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani contends about Israel.

But, as odious and unreasonable as anti-Zionism is, the question remains: Is it an expression of anti-Semitism—that is to say, hatred of Jews, or an entirely different animal?

Well, the very fact that, as above, the only universal villain just happens to be a state that claims a Jewish identity would seem to point in the direction of the first contention. But it could be a mere coincidence. Could be.

Adding weight to the same pan of the scales, though, is the fact that haters of Israel seem to enjoy venting their spleen against not only Israelis but at Jews anywhere.

What, after all, does opposition to Israel have to do with the yarmulke-wearing citizen walking down a New York street, that merits him a beating? Or with a French shul, to justify setting it aflame? Or with Chanukah celebrants, to be mowed down with gunfire on an Australian beach? (No room here for the abundance of other examples.)

Nothing, of course—if, that is, the anti-Israel animus is what it claims to be: opposition only to a political entity, not bigoted hatred of an ethnic or religious group.

So all the scholars, dorm residents and tea-sippers can savor their theoretical discussions. But by considering their topic to have two arguable sides, they reveal themselves oblivious to reality.

Yes, yes, of course, there may well be some true anti-Zionist outliers who have nothing against Jews and only, for whatever reason, hate Israel. But outliers they remain.

Is Mayor Mamdani among them? I can’t claim to know what is in his heart. But what I can claim to know is that he has refused to condemn the “Globalize the Intifada” slogan, which unarguably translates as “attack Jews everywhere”; and, as I detailed in this space last November, that he regularly and wrongly claims that international law prohibits the purchase of a home in Yehudah or Shomron. Maybe it’s simple ignorance? Maybe.

One thing, though, seems certain: A Venn diagram with circles representing people voicing anti-Israel sentiment and people harboring anti-Jewish hostility, respectively, would yield a bloated overlap of the two, with only the slimmest arcs outside the intersection.

Rabbi Hertz Frankel, who shared a close relationship with the Satmar Rebbe, quoted him as stating: “Any non-Jew who opposes Israel is an anti-Semite, for it is not the shalosh shevuos [the Talmud’s ‘three oaths,’ one of which prohibits Jews from returning to their ancestral land en masse by force] that motivate his opposition.”

Rabbi Moshe Sherer, the president of Agudas Yisrael of America, shortly after the UN’s infamous 1975 “Zionism is Racism” declaration, had a similar take.

“Though the resolution was supposedly aimed only at secular ‘Zionism,’ a movement with which the traditionally Orthodox world has little connection,” he wrote, “we are not fooled; the slander is an attack on the entire Jewish people.”

In 2023, New York City authorities investigating a series of attacks on Jews reported that, while plotting the assaults, one of the perpetrators advised the others in a group chat, “Remember, don’t chant out Jews, it’s the Zionists.”

Sly, and revealing, advice.

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