Written by by Katya Rapoport Sedgwick at legalinsurrection.com
We, Jews, invested considerable effort into convincing the world that antizionism is a form of antisemitism. And, of course, it is. If, in the 1890s, one could be skeptical of Theodor Herzl’s ambition, to see Israel today and wish for its destruction — and ethnic cleansing of millions of Jews — is antisemitic.
But here is why we should let the haters self-identify as antizionists.
Let’s start by describing the group whose worldview is informed by the desire to destroy the Jewish state. Self-professed antizionists do not sound much different from hardcore antisemites. They want to obliterate Israel precisely because it’s full of Jews.
For instance, former mixed martial arts fighter and social media gadfly Jake Shields may insist that he doesn’t have anything against the Jewish people, only Zionists, but has no problems posting, “I’m thinking that would be better off had the mustached guy won [sic]” — along with a myriad of other hardcore Jew-hating tropes, blood libel chief among them.
Antizionists imagine Israeli bloodlust everywhere. When the Hamas mouthpiece, the Gaza Ministry of Health, announced that Israel bombed the Al Ahli Hospital, killing 500, the news spread like wildfire. The following morning, the hospital was filmed intact, although the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired a rocket at Israel that misfired and fell on the hospital parking lot. To this day, antizionists continue to believe that Israel bombed the hospital and ate up every allegation of massacres coming from Gaza officials.