Antizionism not antisemitism

Antisemitism is hostility, prejudice or discrimination against Jews because they are Jews. Try as hard as they can to convince everyone that criticism of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza is antisemitic, Zionists do not have a leg to stand on. It is simply a desperate attempt to frighten everyone off criticising their murderous, bigoted rampage against men, women and children in Gaza. It says much about the morality of the people who do try to conflate the two, in that they seem to have no concern for the thousands of children killed by the Israeli Defence Forces. That is what staggers me. People like Jillian Segal, who presumably has children and grandchildren, doesn’t care one iota for the children or grandchildren of Palestinians. She seems to think that exterminating teenagers, toddlers and babies is perfectly acceptable, as long as they are Palestinian¹.

In her report as the government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, she attempted to conflate criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza with antisemitism. This is her big mistake². This attempt at conflation has demonstrated to all of humanity that Israel is just as bad as the nazis of last century.

The ‘definition’ of antisemitism abused by Segal was that of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). This definition states that: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities”³.

What Jillian Segal seems to have missed is an important sentence in the supporting documentation which states: “However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled [sic] against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”³. This criticism of Israel is what Jillian Segal attempts to conflate with antisemitism.

The person who drafted the IHRA definition, American Kenneth Stern, has repeatedly argued that it was designed as a working definition for monitoring antisemitism, not as a rule for suppressing political speech⁴. And yet, that is what Jillian Segal wants to do. She wants to be able to monitor universities, cultural institutions and the media, such that all public funding would be terminated if these organisations did not adhere to her interpretation of antisemitism⁵. She has also called for the banning of pro-Palestinian protests, which is just what Kenneth Stern warned against.

In addition to Stern’s warning, assorted courts have come out and said precisely what Segal wants is untenable in democracies and goes against human rights. In 2020 the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of French activists (Baldassi and others vs France) who had been prosecuted for participating in a campaign calling for a boycott of Israeli products. The Court held that their activity was protected expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Crucially, the Court noted that the activists had not made racist or antisemitic statements and had not incited hatred or violence.

The significance of this is that: A political boycott directed at Israel can constitute protected political expression even though it is explicitly motivated by opposition to Israeli policy^6,7.

Journalist Mary Kostakidis was sued by the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, after her social media posts on Gaza and Israel that incorporated material from the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The ZFA alleged that the material was antisemitic.

The case became significant because the defence argued that the proceedings improperly conflated criticism of Israel’s conduct with racial hostility towards Jews. Justice McDonald dealt with the distinction between political criticism and racial vilification during the preliminary proceedings. On 12 September 2026, the Federal Court proceedings were discontinued by consent, without an order for costs and without a finding of liability. Kostakidis described the outcome as a victory for political and press freedom; the ZFA said its objectives had substantially been achieved through an earlier apology⁸.

Vexatious legal action like that against Kostakidis and others, and the intimidation of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in the Lattouf case, and the attacks on writers and academics such as Randah Abdel-Fattah, are designed to conceal the truth of what is happening in Gaza by curbing free speech⁹.

In the UK, the case of Miller vs University of Bristol also has important ramifications. Professor David Miller was dismissed by the University of Bristol after controversy over his views concerning Israel and Zionism. He believed that Zionism was associated with racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide, and that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians was profoundly objectionable¹⁰.

In February 2024 an Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) found that he had been discriminated against because of his beliefs. It held that Miller’s belief constituted a philosophical belief protected by the Equality Act 2010. The tribunal distinguished anti-Zionism from antisemitism. It expressly rejected the proposition that opposition to Zionism necessarily amounted to opposition to Jewish self-determination or hostility to Jews¹¹. The University appealed to the EAT, but lost the appeal¹². This is a particularly significant development: anti-Zionism is not merely something that a court says is “allowed” as a matter of free speech; it can constitute a legally protected philosophical belief¹¹.

Several US cases have produced very strong statements against the automatic equation of anti-Israel speech with antisemitism. In the case of StandWithUS Center for Legal Justice vs Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Jewish students and organisations alleged that MIT failed to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment during the pro-Palestinian campus protests. The First Circuit court rejected the argument that treated anti-Israel speech as intrinsically antisemitic. The court said that the assumption that one speaker’s anti-Israel speech is motivated by antisemitism cannot justify assuming that all criticism of Israel or advocacy for Palestinian sovereignty is antisemitic. It also rejected the right to suppress anti-Zionist speech merely by labelling it inherently antisemitic^13,14.

In the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) vs Rubio case, Judge William Young issued an extraordinarily strong ruling concerning the Trump administration’s actions against academic organisations and non-citizen academics involved in pro-Palestinian activism. He stated that the government’s conduct was an “unconstitutional conspiracy” to suppress First Amendment rights and blocked retaliation against members of the AAUP and Middle East Studies Association based on protected political activity. Again, this court distinguished antisemitic harassment from protected political advocacy concerning Israel and Palestine¹⁵.

I find it impossible to understand how a group of people who the Nazis tried to exterminate during the 1930s and 1940s because they belonged to a particular religion, could perpetrate the same sort of crime on another group of people, most likely because they in turn belong to a different religion. In addition, I find it imperative that if a person has any sense of justice or any simple humanity, then they should protest however they can against the genocide in Gaza.

Sources

Antizionism not antisemitism

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