We Are Turning the Tide Against Antizionism

Four months ago, I wrote in the TOI Blogs about the antizionist libel machine — the relentless, gear-grinding juggernaut whose sole purpose is to make life unsafe and unwelcome for Jews, no matter where they are in the world.

Six weeks ago, I promised you that you — that we — are not alone, that every generation of Jews has banded together for one another, every single time, and that the pattern that’s held for three thousand years must continue to hold today.

Today, I want to tell you that the counter-movement against antizionism is taking shape in real time.

We are turning the tide.

To every Jew who is exhausted. To every Jew who is afraid. To every Jew who’s reading yet another headline about another Jewish group being demonized, or another attack on Jews or Israel in the guise of social justice, or another local leader refusing to address Jewish safety. To every Jew who feels that they’re pushing back alone, that their voices aren’t being heard, that their cries are being swallowed up by a relentless movement that no logic or truth can penetrate: you are not fighting alone. The fight against antizionism is taking shape. Indeed, it has names, and voices, and a destination on the seventeenth of May: the World Symposium Against Antizionism in Toronto. The first conference in the world specifically dedicated to combatting antizionism, organized by Tafsik and Stop Antizionism.

In 1975, the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, declaring Zionism to be a form of racism. The resolution was formally repealed in 1991 — but by then the libel was already impacted, like a rotting wisdom tooth, deep into the academic and NGO infrastructure of the West. It broods there to this day.

Two decades ago, Judea Pearl clearly articulated the formula ANTIZIONISM = RACISM, flipping the script in his indictment of UC Irvine as the pioneering laboratory of what Pearl calls “Zionophobia.” Forty-five of his writings have been collected in his recently published book, Coexistence and Other Fighting Words. Twenty years of actionable insight and inspiration, gathered in a slim volume that crackles with the experience of generations.

Decades later, the journalistic flank of the fight against antizionism is operational. Late last week, The New School’s University Student Senate voted to defund Hillel, and although the school’s administration pushed back rapidly, the damage was already done: Jewish students demonized, ostracized. Kevin Deutsch’s After October 7 Substack publishes named-perpetrator accountability reporting — the kind most mainstream media sources seem reluctant to surface — week after week. He filed the New School story while the vote was still warm. He called out Mamdani’s putative “antisemitism czar” by name. He diagnoses maladies. He names cowards. He brings receipts.

The academic flank has institutional form. Andrew Pessin at the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism. Naya Lekht and Natasha Pein at Stop Antizionism. Adam Louis-Klein at the Movement Against Antizionism. Add Izabella Tabarovsky, who traces the Soviet origins of contemporary antizionist rhetoric in today’s campus discourse. And those are just to name a few. Multiple scholars, multiple vocabularies, one analytical project. One fight.

The legal flank of the fight against antizionism is building steam. Eyal Yakoby is suing the University of Pennsylvania under Title VI. The U.S. Department of Education has opened investigations into multiple campuses. Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed to prohibit racial discrimination at federally-funded institutions, and a series of post-October-7 cases is establishing — case by case, settlement by settlement — that anti-Jewish discrimination on campus is indeed actionable. The law is a sword and a shield, and the world shouldn’t be surprised that we’re adept at wielding them both.

The street flank is awake. The Hatikvah Collective is a global network of dozens of Jewish artists who, in the two and a half years since October 7th, have turned the street (lampposts, street signs, public spaces) into a direct response to catastrophe. Tens of thousands of stickers to date, around the globe, drawn from our self-created open-source image library and embedded in the real, visible world. Our People’s response to delegitimization and erasure and violence must reclaim our voice, our pride, our culture, and our courage. We’ve been ringing this bell on the street for over two years (we’re not the only ones). People are finally starting to listen.

The voice flank of the fight against antizionism resounds in countless authors and podcasters and thinkers. Melanie Phillips. Casey Babb. Gad Saad. Saudi public intellectual Loay Alshareef. Jesse Brown (with his eye-opening Canadaland podcast miniseries, What Is Happening Here). Not all of the voices are Jewish. They’re not all from the same political tribe. But they — we — are finally resonating with a shared diagnostic vocabulary. A vocabulary drafted by many hands, sharpened by many tongues, owned by none of us alone.

All of these flanks will meet in Toronto at the World Symposium Against Antizionism on May 17, just two weeks from the date I write these words. Through the World Symposium Against Antizionism, we’re watching civil society get organized — finally, after half a century — to delegitimize the antizionist lie.

Yes, I still worry. And I know you do, too. And the antizionist libel machine will never stop grinding forward and devouring minds; it has an uncanny momentum. But we’ve built the counter-machine. The diagnostic stack, the institutions, the street, the voices, the vocabulary are all taking shape. And the Tafsik conference exists. The counter-movement against antizionism is no longer an academic concern or an abstract appeal for sanity. It exists. And it’s ready to roll.

This is an embrace between the diaspora and Israel, a mutual, multigenerational embrace that’s long overdue. Society’s immune system is finally switching on. Finally starting to build antibodies against antizionist libels. Finally seeing those libels, naming them, and calling them out. This is the moment the libel machine is most vulnerable to coordinated cultural pushback — which is why we need the World Symposium Against Antizionism more than ever.

So it’s time to show up. Let’s throw our wrenches into the machine. Let’s invite the world to bear witness as we fight back against antizionism. Let’s inspire all rational humans to action. Let’s give the world the courage and skills and tools they need to say: “ENOUGH!”

אל תירא, כי אתה לא לבד
Be not afraid, for you are not alone.

The tide is turning, but it’s going to take every single one of us.

Time to show up.