Opinions

Anti-Zionists are anti-Semites

In print | May 1, 2003

A number of anti-Israel chalkings appeared at Swarthmore recently, the most notable reading “Question Zionism.” Not surprisingly, several students witnessed the creation of these chalkings by a prominent member of Swarthmore’s very own hate group, “Why War?” This anti-Zionist sentiment is not confined to that group but is representative of the collective opinion of Swarth-more’s leftist activist crowd as a whole. “Question Zionism” is not a call to question the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is a call to question Israel’s right to exist.

Though flawed on a number of bases, typical reasons for challenging Israel’s existence include the Palestinians’ right of return, the “illegal” occupation, the “massacre” of innocent Palestinians by the Israeli Defense Force and Israel’s “theft” of Palestinian land. If the so-called oppression of the Palestinians is enough to warrant a cry for the dismantling of Israel, then surely Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror over the Iraqi people at least warranted his removal. Yet somehow the torture chambers and mass graves of Hussein’s regime could do nothing to elicit a mass outcry from American college students. The choice to focus criticism on a situation as complicated as Israel’s and essentially ignore a situation as morally repugnant as Iraq’s is baffling.

What alternative do anti-Zionists see to Israel’s existence? Israel was founded as a refuge for oppressed Jews from around the world. Though its creation was not able to save the victims of the first Holocaust, it will save them from the next one. There is no question that European anti-Semitism is on the rise. Physical attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions in countries such as France and Germany, revered by Swarthmore for their opposition to the liberation of Iraq, have risen dramatically in recent years. If these countries can do nothing to protect their Jews, surely those Jews have the right to a country that can.

The college communities that decry Israel’s existence have consistently demonstrated either simple ignorance of the Middle East or blatant anti-Semitism. Those who suggest the replacement of Israel with a secular democratic state that integrates the West Bank and Gaza forget that, in the whole of the Middle East, there does not exist a true secular democracy with a Muslim majority. The immediate result of such a monstrosity would be the election of Islamist leaders and the destruction of the indigenous Jewish people.

It is worrisome that the same college students who demand divestment from Israel to stop it from oppressing the “innocent” Palestinians do not demand divestment from Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia that fund terrorists in their efforts to kill Americans. I fear that incidents at San Francisco State, where campus activists have proclaimed “Zionists off the campus now” and “Hitler should have finished the job,” are indicative of times to come rather than the ignorance of a few mediocre-minded individuals. If Swarthmore embraces the trend of equating Zionism with racism, it surely will not be long before an attempt to eradicate racism from this campus manifests itself as an oppression of Jewish students from voicing their support for Israel.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that anti-Zionism is “discrimination against Jews … because they are Jews.” When forthright criticism of Judaism is not deemed wise, criticism of Israel’s existence serves as a convenient substitute. To question Israel’s existence is to validate Islamic terrorism’s vow to violently destroy that country and its Jewish people. Whether they admit it or not, anti-Zionists are anti-Semites.

Randy Goldstein is a sophomore. You can reach him at rgoldst1@swarthmore.edu.