Weaponization Of Antisemitism Stifling Legitimate Criticism Of Israel – OpEd

Antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Arab discrimination, like all hatred for a person’s race or religion, should be banned and severely punished. But too often, especially in America, accusations of antisemitism are leveled against all critics of the Israeli government’s policies, while anti-Arab hate is ignored.

This has been going on since before the first Arab-Israeli war, with pro-Jewish groups advocating for the expulsion of Christians and Muslims from Palestine in the 1930s.

Religious and racial bias against Arabs was accepted and even became a part of American foreign policy when politicians like President Harry Truman marginalized the claims of Palestine’s non-Jewish population.

Because Israel defines itself as a “Jewish state,” even though it has a large non-Jewish population, anyone who criticizes the policies of Israel’s government are denounced as antisemitic. Arabs thus find themselves at a disadvantage when fighting anti-Arabism and are denounced as antisemitic during the debate over Israel and Palestine because the pro-Israel community has historically better understood the power of words and rhetoric through public relations and the influence of the American news media.

Israel’s Intelligence Ministry and many elected Israeli officials have openly called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt — a true form of anti-Arab hate.

The weaponization of antisemitism to silence critics of the Israeli government’s violent policies not only dominates the Israel-Gaza war, but it also has a huge influence in the US, which is one of Israel’s strongest allies and which allows Tel Aviv to commit war crimes without any consequences.

America silences critics of Israel’s government at the UN Security Council. Pro-Israel Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield last month vetoed a resolution calling for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza. This veto reinforced the realization that the UN system suffers from a system of hypocrisy among certain powerful nations, even when it comes to humanitarian needs.

The weaponization of antisemitism is also growing on university campuses, where Jewish students have long enjoyed a greater sense of rights and privilege than Palestinian students.

I led the Arab Student Organization at the University of Illinois in the 1970s. I faced constant opposition from the university leadership, which frequently denied funding for our events and rejected speakers who were pro-Palestinian. In comparison, the university often co-sponsored pro-Israel events.

When we protested Israeli government policies, we were demonized as being antisemitic, not only by the university’s professors but also in the school’s newspaper, which had no Arab journalists. That situation pushed me to pursue journalism and abandon plans to become a doctor.

Today, the bias against pro-Palestinian activists on college campuses in America is even worse. And it is empowered by the bias of the mainstream news media.

Since the Oct. 7 wave of violence and carnage in Israel, the pro-Israel movement in America has done everything possible to define any criticism of Tel Aviv’s response and its unjustified and egregious atrocities as antisemitic.

More than 1,200 Israelis were murdered on Oct. 7, many in the most heinous manner, with reports of rape, beheadings and torture. Yet, since then, Israel has used anger to justify its widespread indiscriminate violence, which has taken 22,000 lives, including more than 8,000 children. Since Oct. 7, Israel has leveled nearly 70 percent of all the homes in Gaza.

Anyone who speaks out against this disparity or condemns the Israeli government’s policy is angrily demonized as being antisemitic. No university is immune from this growing trend of one-sided demonization.

The first Black president of the prestigious Harvard University was this week forced to resign. At first, Claudine Gay was assaulted with exaggerated claims that she tolerated antisemitism against Jewish students — without any mention of anti-Arab hate or protests by pro-Israel students supporting Israel’s Gaza carnage.

The media played a critical role in piling on the claims of antisemitism and marginalizing any references to anti-Arabism by accusing her of plagiarism. In the face of this overwhelming assault and bullying from Harvard professors, pro-Israel activists, the media and right-wing members of Congress — many of whom receive tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from pro-Israel political action committees — Gay announced she was stepping down.

What was Gay’s crime? She responded to charges of antisemitism on campus in a balanced manner, narrowly defining it as “speech that incites violence, threatens safety or violates Harvard’s policies against bullying and harassment.” She acknowledged that there had been “reckless and thoughtless rhetoric” by both pro-Israel and pro-Arab student groups.

Republicans and many Democrats have, in recent years, turned to legislating punishments for those who criticize the Israeli government’s policies, such as by pushing through unconstitutional laws in more than 28 states that criminalize anyone who boycotts Israel, including as a result of the illegal settlement movement.

The Biden administration has warned universities that they will lose federal funding if they do not confront antisemitism or Islamophobia. But this threat does not address rhetoric or actions that are anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian for a specific political reason: only about 25 percent of American Muslims are Arab. And it also does not address Christian Arabs, who are a majority of the millions of Arabs living in America. The real stand should be to oppose both antisemitism and anti-Arabism.

What happened on Oct. 7 was horrific and unjustified. The perpetrators should be punished. But what has happened since then is just as horrific and unjustified and the perpetrators should also be punished. What Hamas has done is wrong. What Israel’s government has done is wrong.

Yet, calls to end the ongoing carnage against Palestinians have been stifled, while the outrage over violence against Israelis echoes at every level in America — an imbalance empowered by the weaponization of antisemitism and that ignores the equally atrocious violence that is killing far more Palestinian civilians, especially women and children.