The Incoherence of, “I am not anti-Semitic. I am just against Zionists.”

7 min readMar 25, 2024

The Accusation Zionism Is A “Racist Ideology”, so Anti-Zionism is Anti-Racist, Not Anti-Jewish

Jewish people are, in fact, Semites. They are the indigenous people of Israel and Judea, an area which would encompass not only modern-day Israel but also the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, parts of Syria, parts of Lebanon and perhaps parts of Egypt. The UN describes criteria for a people to be indigenous to an area, and Jewish people meet all the criteria to count as an indigenous people of the Levant. Zionism is a refugee movement centered on the idea that Jewish people should exercise their right as indigenous people to self-governance in their historic land, which is a right guaranteed by articles 3–6 of the UN’s 2007 charter on the rights of the indigenous, which says in summary,

“Articles 3–5. Self-determination. Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination, including their economic, social, and cultural development, and the right to self-government, including the right to maintain and strengthen their own governing institutions.”

“Article 6. Nationality. Indigenous individuals have the right to a nationality”

Go deeper: The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People
Go deeper: Israelis are Refugees, From Both Muslims and Christians

The criteria for being indigenous is to have a continuous presence on the land, combined with traditions, language, religions and a way of life specific to that land. The Jewish people are all those things to the land of Israel, and are indigenous, and those in diaspora have a right to immigrate to their ancestral land ( and it has nothing to do with genetic purity ). You cannot colonize the land you came from.

The Jews were not reviving a dead connection to the land from thousands of years ago. When the first Zionists arrived, Jews already lived there, as they had continuously for thousands of years. When the Arabs massacred the Jewish population of Hebron in 1929, they weren’t killing recently arrived Zionists. Many of the victims had lived there for uncounted centuries. They were old family lines.

An assertion of an internationally recognized indigenous right cannot possibly be a “terrorist ideology”, a charge I often hear, and that is a slander against all Jewish people, denying all of us our historical identity.

I have heard many seemingly smart and sane people say, “I am not anti-Semitic. I am just against Zionists.” I have even heard academics who I know are educated repeat this nonsense. This statement teeters very close to incoherence and, if it’s not incoherent, it slices the bologna microscopically thin.

Let me explain.

Next time you hear this, ask the person what their definition of a Jewish person is. You can only get one of two answers from them: It is a person who is part of the Jewish religion, or it is a person who is part of the Jewish ethnicity.

If they say a Jewish person is a person who is part of the Jewish religion, ask them to explain to you their idea of what makes the Jewish religion the religion it is. What are the central, defining tenets of the Jewish faith?

Here is the answer, which you should explain if the other person does not know. The central tenet of faith in Judaism is that God made a covenant with the father of all Jews, Abraham, and then renewed it explicitly with his gathered descendants at Mt. Sinai after freeing them from slavery in Egypt. The terms of this covenant were that he would give them the lands of Israel and Judaea ( a much bigger territory than modern Israel, which is essentially a small reservation for Jews within their original lands ) for themselves and their descendants if they would agree to take no other Gods and live by Mosaic law.

That’s it. That’s the central tenet of the Jewish faith. Without it, there is no Jewish religion. Judaism is about the Jewish people being bound to that land, by covenant and essentially. It says many other things too. There are thousands of years of Jewish moral and practical philosophy based on argumentation over Mosaic law and Jewish experience, but without the tenets of faith, those arguments are just another take-it-or-leave-it philosophy, not religious faith.

If someone says, “I am not anti-Semitic. I am just against Zionists.” and says they think Jews are the people of a certain religion, they are simultaneously saying they are not against the people but hate the central tenet of the religion which they hold defines them as a people. It is an incoherent thing to say.

What if they say to you Jewish people are an ethnicity and the religious faith is unnecessary? Ask them what constitutes the ethnicity. What secular condition(s) binds the people together into a single ethnic group?

The answer is all of the Jewish people are Jewish because they are tied to the Hebrew people, by descent or by marriage or by adoption. The Hebrew people are the indigenous people of the land of Canaan, a group of tribes which united to become Israel in ancient times, and remained Israel for 1,500 years until the Romans conquered the land and named it Palestine.

They have maintained a continuous presence there since before recorded history, and when living outside that land have maintained themselves as an ethnic identity by rehearsing amongst themselves their historic ties to that land, how it was they were forced to leave, the Hebrew language which they brought from that land, and the dream of one day returning to it. That is what binds them together as an ethnic group.

A person who says, “I am not anti-Semitic. I am just against Zionists.” and also says they think Jews are an ethnic group, is saying they do not hate the ethnicity but do hate that the ethnic identity is constitutionally built upon several thousands years of Jews believing they are the indigenous Hebrew people of Israel, were thrown unjustly into diaspora by conquest, and want to have the right to live in their homeland again someday. Such people demand, implicitly, that Jewish people redefine their ethnicity to suit Muslim sensitivities.

In essence, people who say, “I am not anti-Semitic. I am just against Zionists.” are trying to reduce Jewishness to just being people who eat bagels and lox and tell funny stories. They are saying we can keep these harmless practices if we want to, but we must eliminate the faith which has bound us together and they want to force redefinition of the relation between Jews and Hebrew history, which has also bound us together, in return for Jews to gain the acceptance of the anti-Zionist.

To say this is not a form of anti-Semitism is just incoherent. At best, it is about destroying Jewishness while leaving the Jew intact, like an ideological neutron bomb. At worst, it is about inciting hatred and violence against Jewish people while maintaining a thin semantic veneer of deniability.

Just as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” is really an attempt to hide a call to genocide behind pretty words, the phrase, “I do not hate Jews. I hate Zionists.” is an attempt to take Jewishness from Jews and leave behind a shell: leave the Jew intact while emptying him or her of everything except the food and the comedy.

Finally, a person using this phrase may just say they know they are not anti-Semitic because they know many Jewish people and many of them are their friends. This is like someone saying they know they are not racist because they have a black friend. There is a bigger picture they are missing.

Trying to live by incoherence can lead to disaster, and trying to hide hostility underneath incoherence can lead to tragedy. Before we can undress more of the bad faith inside the anti-Zionist Gish Gallop, we need to understand the horrific practical consequences, “I am not anti-Semitic. I am just against Zionists.” has had in Israel. For that, we need some history.

The best way to understand how things have gone so badly is to read the chapters of this resource in order, from beginning to end, clicking on the Go deeper links as your time allows. It is an immersive experience and few people will get through unchanged, having learned the context of the conflict, including parts the United Nations does not want people to learn.

This essay is part of a larger resource for parents, teachers, students, concerned individuals, and anyone else who desires to contextualize the conflict and navigate the accusations against Israel and Palestinians.

All Chapters:

0. Foreword to Zionism and Anti-Zionism

1. The Gish Gallop of Anti-Zionism

2. Genocide or Just War?

3. For Hamas, The Suffering Is The Point

4. What Is Israel? Why So Much Violence?

5. The Hebrew People, Not the Jewish Religion

6. Chosen For Their Insignificance, Not Their Superiority

7. The Incoherence of, “I am not anti-Semitic. I am just against Zionism.”

8. Refugee Immigration, Not Settler Colonialism

9. How the Zionists Saved ( Not Conquered ) Palestine

10. The 1920’s And The Spread of Hate