Time for the Critical Study of Antizionism

The Battle Has Been Joined

It is happening. I am launching the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism (ICSA). Right now it is just a twitter account: please follow, on X, @InstituteCSA. Very soon it will have a website (next week?). An initial series of webinars will begin next month — stay tuned, but the first one will be December 16 at 7 pm, then the series will continue in February. (Thanks to Chai Mitzvah Scholars Circle for their support! If you’re looking to do some holiday giving, please send a few dollars their way.) Once the website is up I will officially recruit scholars, starting with the approximately 60 I already have on my list who have expressed interest. I am currently seeking collaborators and potential sponsors, so if that is you, please DM me. Meanwhile I am working hard to obtain support so that I can take a full year sabbatical next academic year and work on this project full-time. There is already a book planned, and a conference, at the start of a list of several dozen projects that ICSA can run. I have great enthusiasm for this project — it is long overdue — and I hope you do too. PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD to any interested persons.

Meanwhile to understand just why it is so essential that we redirect our efforts to combating antizionism specifically — apart from whatever relationship it has precisely to antisemitism — here are several important pieces. The first is a brief piece from Adam Louis-Klein, who has launched the Movement Against Antizionism, an activist group aiming to change the conversation. (Right now the haters have made “Zionist” a toxic slur and “Antizionist” a word of approbration; it is our task to reveal “Antizionism” for the libel-spewing, genocidal bigotry that it is.) That is followed by important essays from Kathleen Hayes and Rona Kaufman. Please read, AND SHARE WIDELY, as this new movement gets off the ground …

The Battle Has Been Joined.

Stay tuned.

===================

From Adam Louis-Klein, on X @adam_louis52328

We now need entire teams of researchers-serious, methodical, interdisciplinary-to mine the full archive of genocide studies, settler-colonial theory, Middle Eastern studies, and the whole academic nexus where antizionism has taken root. For decades, these fields have produced a vast, largely unexamined body of antizionist hate literature, treated as scholarship but functioning as ideology. The task before us is nothing less than a systematic mapping and deconstruction of this entire corpus.

This is precisely why the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism @InstituteCSA is indispensable. Its mission is not merely to “respond” to bad ideas but to expose, analyze, objectify, and name the hate-ideology that has captured the academy.

Antizionist ideology emerged from a small cabal of academics, primarily within the settler-colonial and Middle Eastern studies spheres, who created a discourse built on racist premises that no one within their circle would ever question. That niche discourse then ballooned into a prestigious theory-something the rest of academia felt obliged to adopt in order to signal virtue.

What we’re dealing with now is the inflated result of that unexamined, self-reinforcing system. It’s long past time to scrutinize it with the rigor it never received.

9:28 AM • Nov 26, 2025 • 525 Views

=====================

https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/385036/antizionism-the-reinvention-of-a-racist-hate-movement/

Antizionism: The Reinvention of a Racist Hate Movement

Antizionism is the latest chilling form of supersecessionism — the impulse to eliminate Jews to redeem the world.

Kathleen Hayes

November 19, 2025

“Tell me what you accuse the Jews of — I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.”

This 1959 observation by novelist Vasily Grossman, often quoted by writer Douglas Murray, was vividly illustrated at UCLA last week. An ignominious band of university departments including its School of Law sponsored a talk by Rutgers professor Noura Erakat — an activist posing as a scholar — who teaches the gullible that Israel is a settler colonial project. Erakat’s faux lecture, “Revisiting Zionism as a Form of Racism and Racial Discrimination,” was timed to honor the fiftieth anniversary of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 3379 — the since-rescinded-but-never-dead screed that declared Zionism a form of racism.

Judea Pearl, UCLA professor, Turing Prize winner and proud Israel-born Zionist, had had enough. When he learned of the “Zionism is racism” lecture, he issued a call for a countervailing event on campus the same night, Nov. 13. UCLA’s Jewish Faculty Resilience Group swung into gear, and in little over a week about a hundred people gathered at UCLA’s School of Law for a panel discussion called “Is Antizionism Racism?” Peter Savodnik of The Free Press was a thoughtful moderator, and Michael Berenbaum, Yael Lerman and Hindi Stohl Posy gave sobering, alarming, or stirring presentations. Presumably due to the imposing police presence (thank you, UCPD), antizionist protesters mostly stayed away. At least one professor in the audience felt secure enough from the keffiyeh brigade to pull out her knitting.

As Professor Pearl reported the next day on X, the event was a major success. “Two concrete outcomes became immediately evident,” he wrote. “(1) Zionist faculty and students at UCLA will now be asserting their right to a name, a voice and institutional representation on campus. (2) Antizionist faculty and students will now be facing a new, no-nonsense environment in which their rhetoric and ideology are exposed — and named — for what they are: racist.”

Because what else can you call a movement that exists solely to deny the right of self-determination to one nation — the Jewish one? That screams to isolate, boycott or attack Jews, camouflaged as “Zionists”? That champions an organization, Hamas, whose founding charter calls to kill Jews? That celebrates as “resistance” the largest one-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust?

Jew-haters invariably ascribe to Jews whatever they find most abhorrent. For the Nazis who obsessed about race purity, Jews were polluters of the Aryan race. Medieval Christians hated Jews as the supposed killers of Christ. For communists, Jews were capitalists; and for reactionaries, Jews were communists. Today, when society overwhelmingly rejects racism, progressives who consider it the worst of all crimes scream “Racist!” at Jews who support the existence of a Jewish state. Meanwhile they support the elimination of that same state, making their claim the epitome of projection.

Progressives who consider racism the worst of all crimes scream “Racist!” at Jews who support the existence of a Jewish state. Meanwhile they support the elimination of that same state, making their claim the epitome of projection.

It has become counterproductive to insist that “antizionism is antisemitism.” Jew-hatred is, above all, a shape-shifting pathology. When antizionists insist they’re not antisemitic, in a sense they’re telling the truth. They’re usually not antisemitic in the classical sense — they don’t consciously hate Jews, and they simply adore Jews who peddle their party line. They’ve moved on to the next, even more noxious and dangerous form of Jew-hatred: antizionism.

More dangerous because it so effectively cloaks itself in righteousness. Because it’s hoodwinked vast swathes of respectable society, from academia to flagship media to countless seemingly noble, progressive groups and institutions, into believing that the Jewish state is singularly bloodthirsty and malign. Because it goes far beyond criticizing Israel — which might seem an innocuous if strange hobby — to calling for it to be obliterated for the salvation of mankind. As they themselves explain, seemingly unaware they refer to a people comprising 0.2% of the world’s population: “Zionism is a threat to humanity.”

Antizionism is the latest chilling form of supersecessionism — the impulse to eliminate Jews to redeem the world. In the Middle Ages, Jew-haters disguised as pious Christians murdered Jews for the sake of uniting Christendom. In the 20th century, Jew-haters murdered Jews with the aim of ushering in a glorious Third Reich. Now Jew-haters insist that building a better world requires annihilating Israel and marginalizing those who defend its right to exist.

There can be no compromise with this inevitably genocidal solution. And there’s little point in earnestly explaining what Zionism is in the hope that antizionists recant. They are drunk on the wine of righteousness, and obsessed with a phantom having nothing to do with actual Zionism. Their movement thrives on lies that spread like forest fires, against an enemy whose very humanity is denied.

Professor Pearl recognized years ago how pointless it is to charge antizionists with antisemitism, given that the latter easily dismiss the charges by saying, “I am a Semite too!” or “Don’t conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism” or “Some of our board members are Jewish.” Moreover, he points out, university administrators turn the charge of antisemitism into a license for inaction, as it permits them to appoint task forces that sit for years and philosophize on the nature of antisemitism, rather than deal directly with campus hostilities and attempts to purge Zionists from campus life.

“We will continue to lose,” he wrote in 2018, “unless we assert our moral stature clearly, unabashedly and effectively by using the magic word ‘Zionophobia’ — the irrational fear of Zionism coupled with an obsessive commitment to undermine the right of Israel to exist. We do not have another word that describes the moral pathology of those who deny us statehood or even peoplehood.”

In conversation with the Jewish Journal, Professor Pearl said: “My argument with Erakat is more personal. She wants me purged from this campus — along with some 400 other professors who share the noble Zionist aspiration for Jewish self-determination. We intend to remain here, on our campus, and we call her position racist in the first degree: Any activity that demeans, defames, or invalidates the core identity of a group of faculty or students is racist — and has no place in a university.”

Many of us have wasted too much time fighting antisemitism without recognizing that Jew-hatred has mutated into a much more resilient virus. It now targets Jews not as individuals, but as a people. And it must be fought with all the strength, clarity and moral force we have.

---

Kathleen Hayes is the author of ”Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir.”

===============

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/antizionism-is-not-antisemitism/

Antizionism is Not Antisemitism

by Rona Kaufman

Nov 9, 2025, 6:48 PM

The predictable antizionist mantra claims “antizionism is not antisemitism.” The mantra is right: antizionism is not classical antisemitism. But it misses the point: antizionism is itself a powerful form of Jew Hatred. It is different in form, but identical in function. Antizionism, just like antisemitism, is a hate movement that obsessively repeats popular libels about Jews to justify killing them. This cycle of libel leads to violence against Jews – and also against Palestinians, who are repeatedly sacrificed on the altar of its ideology and its endless wars.

To understand antizionism, we must first understand that Jew-hatred is a structural feature of monotheistic cultures. It takes on various forms, but its ancient cycle persists: anti-Jewish libels and conspiracy theories stigmatize Jews and lead to violence, which is then denied.

First came anti-Judaism, which hates Jews for their religion. Its cycle of libel cast Jews as Christ-killers and blood-eaters. Its conspiracy theories told of the corruption of princes and well poisoning. Disguised as piety, anti-Jewish violence erupted in mass burnings, expulsions, inquisitions, and pogroms.

Then came antisemitism, which hates Jews for their race. Antisemitic libels cast Jews as communists, capitalists, and race-polluters. Conspiracy theories were updated: Jews were turned from well-poisoners to back-stabbers. Antisemitism disguised itself behind myths of racial purity and national strength. Far-right violence soon emerged, from the Black Hundreds, to the killing fields of the Holocaust.

Next came antizionism. Antizionism hates Jews not for their religion or race, but for their nation. It targets Israel, the single Jewish nation, and libels it: colonizer, apartheid, and genocide. Its conspiracy theories accuse Israel of plans for regional or world domination. Its violence has ethnically cleansed Jews across the Middle East and former-USSR, and is already spilling into the West, re-coding ordinary Jews as “the Zionists” deemed worthy of stigma and violence.

All three iterations of Jew Hatred are rooted in the logic of supercessionism—the impulse to eliminate Jews to redeem the world—and all three repeat the same cycle over and over: libel, conspiracy, stigma, violence, and denial. Each version merely swaps in new libels and selects a different aspect of Jewish identity to attack. The content of the libels is secondary to how society wields them: repeated obsessively, until they succeed in demonizing the Jews, justifying and sanctifying anti-Jewish violence.

Antizionist war and terror left a long wake of atrocities before Oct 7th, as the ideology was born over a century ago. The Yevsektsiya, the antizionist “Jewish section” of the USSR began purging Jewish culture in 1918. In 1929, antizionist Arabs butchered their Jewish neighbors, after living alongside them for generations. In the 1940s-1960s Arab nations ethnically cleansed 850,000 Jews from their countries. Antizionism drove the tiny remnant of Poland’s Jews from that country in 1968, as just one example. The rest of the Soviet bloc would flee much later. Antizionist terror such as the butchery and mutilation of Israel’s Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972, the Air France hijacking to Entebbe in 1976, targeted Israelis and Jews worldwide for decades. Repeated wars struck Israel whenever the region had the opportunity and the backing. Ordinary Palestinians certainly didn’t benefit from the violence. Every time Israelis and Palestinians stood on the brink of peace, antizionist violence errupted—dragging both peoples back into war. On October 7th its armies once again butchered and rampaged, leading Gaza into yet another devastating war. Since October 8th, that violence has been simultaneously denied, justified, and celebrated by antizionists worldwide.

That the antizionist movement can claim Jews among its supporters, does nothing whatsoever to rehabilitate it. Even Nazi Germany tokenized Jewish antisemites in the Association of German National Jews, just as the Yevsektsiya pledged allegiance to Lenin. Tokenized Jews benefit from the status quo and recoil at having their comfort unsettled by “troublesome” Jews who call out persecution.

How do we stop antizionism? Recognize how it is like all forms of Jew-hatred before it: an eliminationist hate movement that still depends on the ancient cycle of libel. Expose how it cloaks its evil in a false consciousness and the politics of the era.

But also recognize what is new: antizionism is an oppression pretending to be anti-oppression. It invokes the language of decolonization and liberation as it murders and persecutes Jews. It is racism for anti-racists, reformatted against an entire nation: Israel. It persecutes Palestinians viciously–consistently choosing libel and war over coexistence. The price is thousands of dead Palestinians, destroyed infrastructure, and generations raised in trauma. Its goal is not a better life for Palestinians but the end of Israel. We need you to see through this trick.

Fight the cycle of libel in the media, at work, and at school. Fighting for human rights starts with disrupting the antizionist libels that inevitably lead to horrific violence against Jews and Palestinians alike.

—

Rona Kaufman is an associate professor of law at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University, where she teaches constitutional, employment discrimination, family, and gender law. Her views and opinions are her own. They do not represent the position of Duquesne University.

About the Author

Rona Kaufman is an associate professor at Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University, where she teaches constitutional law, employment discrimination, family law, and gender and the law. Her scholarship focuses on intersections of law, women, motherhood, gender, antisemitism, antizionism, and Jewish peoplehood. Professor Kaufman was a recipient of the Wexner Foundation’s two-year Wexner Heritage fellowship (2018-2020). In 2024, she was selected to be a member of President Isaac Herzog’s Voice of the People first global cohort. Professor Kaufman serves on the Brandies Center for Human Rights’ Center for Legal Innovation advisory board and on the Holocaust Claims Commission’s legal education working group. In 2025, she studied antisemitism and Holocaust inversion and distortion at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, Israel. Professor Kaufman studied at Oxford with the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism Policy in 2025. She is a member and faculty consultant of the Academic Engagement Network. She is the Chair of the Law & Antisemitism Conference which will take place in March at Cardozo Law School. She works with various other organizations to protect the civil rights of Jews and combat Jew-hatred.