CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Why Opposing Genocide in Gaza Isn’t Antisemitic

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The charge that alleged antisemites represent the opposition to the current genocide in Gaza illustrates the turnabout that history has wrought. The charge that this opposition reflects a hatred of Jews is a non sequitur. Was opposition to the Holocaust also the product of hatred of Jews? No? Then opposition to genocide bears no necessary relation to hatred of Jews. Only by 1) defining antisemitism as opposition to the policies of the nation-state of Israel and 2) defining the interests of Israel as the interests of all Jews, does this formulation have logic. Neither of these is true.

For those who missed it, the effective legal definition of antisemitism that is now being deployed across the West is opposition to the policies of the nation-state of Israel. This is more likely than not the result of actual antisemites being hard to find amongst Western opponents of the US – Israeli genocide. Nevertheless, the leaderships of both parties in the US are taking a hard line against the Americans opposed to genocide. The sense now being put forward that there is disagreement amongst the party leaderships over it is misplaced. They both support genocide and ethnic cleansing.

In this regard, I was recently ambushed by longtime friends who are American Jews connected to the top of the Democratic party over my opposition to the genocide currently underway in Gaza and the West Bank. What took most of an hour to understand was that their poorly informed discussion of ‘antisemitism’ had anything to do with my politics. Again, opposition to genocide and antisemitism are neither logically nor factually related to one another except in the minds of political marketing agents for Israel. This now apparently includes the very top of the Democratic Party.

(I am not a party partisan. I voted for Jill Stein in 2016 and supported Bernie Sanders in 2020 and Jill Stein again in 2024).

Preceding party loyalties is that the position of my Jewish, Democrat, friends with respect to Israel is indifferentiable from that of Donald Trump and most of MAGA. But my friends imagine that they are opposing Trump by siding with Israel. Their logic is: 1) Trump is fascist, 2) fascists hate Jews, 3) Israel supports Jews, therefore 4) Trump hates Israel. A poorer reading of the current political schema is difficult to imagine. But this is American party politics in 2026. Great policy differences are claimed based on what people don’t know.

Since 1948 the phrase ‘antisemitism’ has been used as a political bludgeon to great affect against critics of the policies of the nation state of Israel. While by definition, the most antisemitic people on the planet are Israelis— Israel’s Arab neighbors are Semites, the term is used to conflate hatred of Jews with opposition to the policies of the nation-state of Israel. Left unexplained is how one would criticize these policies without being accused of antisemitism? Without an alternative, the charge is but a way to shut down criticism of Israel.

The fraud lies in the conflation. I don’t hate or even mildly dislike Jews. I have lots of Jewish friends, many of whom I have great affection for. But I vehemently oppose the policies and actions of the nation state of Israel and the foreign policy of the US that makes it possible. The unwillingness of the US and Israeli political establishments to grant that legitimate criticism is possible without having at its core hatred of Jews is political posturing intended to silence dissent. The move is to exert fascistic control over legitimate political discourse.

Graph: American neocons (neoconservatives) migrated to the Democratic Party following George W. Bush’s military catastrophe in Iraq. But very little of the Democratic Party rank-and-file have supported the neocon project since it emerged in the 1990s. This has placed the leadership of the Party in the position of trying to ‘manage’ rank-and-file views to keep donations from Zionists flowing to Democrats. That this places the Democratic Party leadership on the side of genocide and ethnic cleansing is being hidden behind misdirection regarding antisemitism. Source: Gallup.

With a genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank still underway, the slander behind the antisemitism charge has come full circle. ‘Antisemites’ in 2026 are people who oppose fascist governments using genocide to exterminate a people. And the fascist exterminationists in 2026 are Western liberals allied with Christian evangelicals to empty Palestine of Palestinians. The blind spot of my Jewish friends comes from using opposition to a genocide that ended in the 1940s to legitimate the genocide that Israel is carrying out right now.

Why the charge of antisemitism persists is that for the last seven decades it has worked to silence critics of Israeli policy. While hatred of Jews most certainly exists,........

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