Antisemitism is weaponized, but not the way you think
A dear colleague of mine, with whom I have serious disagreements regarding the war in Gaza, recently published an op-ed that I know firsthand to be disinformation. I contacted her privately, suggesting she double-check her sources. She replied rather quickly, stating that what she had argued was already published in Haaretz, and ended her message with a sarcastic question: “are they also antisemitic?”
While this was not what my colleague had implied, that sarcastic remark reflects a widespread argument used by many left-wing activists, some of them Jews themselves, who claim that Israelis weaponize antisemitism to deflect and delegitimize legitimate criticism. The logic runs as follows: Israelis understand perfectly well that objecting to a country’s existence and its creation (anti-Zionism) is not the same as objecting to a race or people (antisemitism) out of prejudice. Therefore, Israelis deliberately conflate the two, transforming justified opposition to a state’s existence into an accusation of racial or religious hatred. Through this rhetorical sleight of hand, Israel can supposedly continue its actions in Gaza without consequence.
In purely theoretical terms, they have a point. Anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not identical. The former opposes Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. The latter represents the ancient prejudice of hating Jews simply for being Jews, a practice that became taboo in mainstream discourse following the Holocaust. One can technically be anti-Zionist without being antisemitic.
Yet this theoretical distinction collapses when confronted with reality. When someone claims to oppose not Jews but merely Zionism, they are rejecting an identity held by the overwhelming majority of Jews worldwide. There are approximately 15 million Jews in the world, and nearly all are Zionists. In every Israeli elections, Jewish voters who support anti-Zionist parties are virtually negligible, concentrated mostly in ultra-Orthodox factions that oppose Zionism on theological rather than political grounds. In the United States, a June 2024 survey by the JPPI reveals that even among Jews who identify as “strong liberals,” 64% describe themselves as Zionists, with another 24% either “somewhat” Zionist and a minority of simply a-Zionist. Only around 2% self-identify as anti-Zionist overall.
Even in activist circles, the numbers tell the same story. Jewish Voices for Peace, one of the largest anti-Zionist Jewish organizations in America, recently celebrated reaching 32,000 members. This sounds impressive until one considers that there are approximately 7.5 million Jews in the United States, and the organization does not even verify that all its members are actually Jewish.
Thus, the claim “I’m not against Jews, just Zionism” becomes difficult to sustain when it effectively means “I’m not against Jews, just against what nearly all of them feel about their own collective identity and future.”
This is not a minor policy disagreement. Zionism is the expression of Jewish self-determination, nothing more. To oppose it while championing self-determination for other peoples, particularly Palestinians, is to apply a discriminatory standard uniquely to Jews.
And here is where the deeper problem emerges. In contemporary progressive circles, where concepts like “lived experience” and “microaggression” have reigned supreme for years, no one outside the absolute fringes would dare suggest that minorities manufacture their own oppression for strategic advantage. No one would claim that Black people exploit racism or that LGBTQ+ individuals fabricate homophobia as rhetorical weapons. Anyone making such arguments would be immediately denounced as a bigot attempting to silence legitimate grievances.
Yet with Jews, this protective standard vanishes entirely. Calls for the erasure of an entire country are treated not as eliminationist rhetoric but as principled political positions. The denial of a people’s right to national existence is framed not as discrimination but as anti-colonial critique. Demands for radical transformation of a sovereign nation’s demographic composition, specifically to reduce or eliminate its Jewish majority, are presented not as targeting an ethnic group but as pursuing justice. What would be immediately recognized as hostile to the core identity of any other people becomes, when applied to Jews, legitimate political discourse worthy of academic panels, TikTok skits, and newspaper op-eds.
The true weaponization lies in this preemptive disarmament. By casting the identification of antisemitism as itself a weapon, critics ensure that Jews can never defend themselves without appearing to prove the accusation against them. It creates a perfect rhetorical trap: the moment Jews point to prejudice, they are told they are manipulating the charge of prejudice. The moment they claim discrimination, they are accused of fabricating discrimination to silence dissent. The defensive act becomes the offense itself.
This is not merely skepticism toward particular claims of antisemitism but a systematic delegitimization of Jewish self-defense as a category. No other minority faces this wholesale dismissal of their ability to identify mistreatment before they even speak. Jews who point to this disparity are immediately accused of acting in bad faith, told they are cynically manipulating historical suffering to deflect criticism. They become the only minority whose identification of discrimination is treated not merely with skepticism but with active hostility, as though the very act of naming prejudice constitutes an abuse of moral authority.
Antisemitism is indeed being weaponized, but not by Jews. It is being weaponized by those who preemptively declare any accusation of antisemitism suspect, creating a rhetorical fortress in which Jews become the only minority without recourse to name prejudice against them. The weapon is not the identification of antisemitism but the meta-accusation that such identification is itself a dishonest tactic.
