Lately, more and more Jews step out and demonstrate by writing or speaking, against Israel’s occupation and aggression. The majority of people are becoming more and more aware and they know the distinct difference between Judaism and Zionism. Thus, protesting against Israel’s terrorism does not automatically label the demonstrators as being anti-Jews or anti-Semitic, as you suggested.

Humanity definitely needs to step up on fighting genocide committed by the Zionists (not just anti-Semitism, as you declared). Yes, Palestinian women and children, who are also Semitic, are the victims of Israel Destructive Force. And, for humanity’s sake, please state that, instead of whining about Israel’s image. Oh, and please provide some evidence of your claim. Shalom!

Should we condemn the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Jewish feeling? Of course. Any who is primarily responsible for this conflation? The state of Israel and its Western backers, who constantly describes it (and, indeed, demand that it be recognised) as “the Jewish State”, hail its Prime Minister as “the leader of the Jewish people”, run eroticised teenage booze-fests such as the “Birthright Programme” and frequently denounce any kind of criticism as “anti-Semitism”. In other words, it is primarily Israel itself which has actively worked towards this conflation, and so we should not be entirely surprised if its opponents sometimes suffer from the confusion it purposefully propagates.

Second: while we may say that anti-Jewishness (I shall not commit the logical fallacy of calling an Arab “anti-semitic) exists within Arab/Muslim populations as an EMPIRICAL FACT, this does nothing by way of CRITICAL ANALYSIS. It is, at best, a description – not an engagement. To the extent that it does exist within anti-Israel groups and, more specifically, Arab and Muslim population, this anti-Jewishness is so attenuated and removed from the historical – and specifically European phenomenon – of anti-Semitism that it is meaningless to use the same term to describe them.

Now, I am very happy to condemn anti-semitism or – a subtype of it – anti-Jewishness whenever I encounter it, but I refuse to do so unless I place it within its proper historical contest. Jews, despite some minor and (relative to the time) inconsequential discriminatory policies associated with dhimmitude, lived more or less peacefully in every major Arab city for hundreds of years. They were never more secure and prosperous than in Islamic Spain – and rarely more persecuted than after the Iberian reconquista by Christian armies. In so far as it exists, anti-Jewish sentiment among Arab and Muslim groups is a function of their opposition to Israel as a political entity, not vice versa.

That does not mean that the memes of European anti-semitism are not repeated or that I think that it is a good/productive/ethical way for people to express themselves, but this is absolutely NOT the same thing as European anti-semitism. Indeed, the very fact that Arab and Muslim people often rely on the repetition of these tropes is indicative of the DISCONTINUITY between European anti-semitism and anti-Jewishness as an expression of anti-Zionism – they have no significant indigenous canon on which to draw.

Unless and until the author engages in this discontinuity and attempts to understand WHY this superficially similar phenomenon is growing amongst Arab and Muslim populations, she will neither understand the “discrimination” directed against her, nor have any possibility of stopping it.

Humanity definitely needs to step up on fighting antisemitism, which on the whole is a phenomenon fairly independent of these “supporters”, as well as other xenophobias, and I hope that one day nobody has to worry about being Jewish, or Muslim, Black, etc., in Paris or anywhere else. Peace and justice on earth