WINNIPEG — Mira Sucharov advances a familiar but flawed line when she insists that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are distinct and must remain so. Reasonable people can and should debate Zionism as an ideology. They can, and should, criticize Israeli policies when warranted. But refusing to acknowledge where anti-Zionism slides into antisemitism is both intellectually dishonest and practically dangerous. Her piece understates key facts about how delegitimizing the Jewish state functions in the real world.
The first fact is simple and consequential. In recent months, a large group of religious leaders in the United States publicly warned that efforts to normalize anti-Zionist rhetoric can encourage hostility toward Jews. Over 850 rabbis and cantors across the United States signed an open letter criticizing a mayoral candidate whose politics they said normalize the delegitimization of Israel and risk exacerbating hostility to Jewish people. That is not abstract political theory. It is a concrete expression of fear among community leaders about how rhetoric translates into risk.
Second, international and national instruments used to identify antisemitism explicitly include certain forms of anti-Zionism. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism lists, as an illustrative example, denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, for example, by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor. That example is not a legal straitjacket. It is a practical tool used by governments and institutions to distinguish legitimate criticism from speech that delegitimizes Jews collectively by erasing their national right to exist. Ignoring that tool while demanding equal protection of Jewish safety is not intellectually consistent.
Third, major civil society figures and legislative bodies have recognized the overlap between anti-Zionist rhetoric and antisemitic outcomes. In recent years, the head of the Anti-Defamation League framed anti-Zionism as a driver of modern antisemitism, and the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution that explicitly states anti-Zionism is antisemitism. These are not trivial political gestures. They reflect a widespread recognition that when a movement aims to strip Jews of collective rights others enjoy, it is no longer pure ideology. It is exclusion dressed as politics.
None of this should be read as a call to criminalize every critique of Israel. Quite the opposite. Democratic debate demands vigorous scrutiny of states and movements. But there is a difference between calling for policy change and denying a people the basic right to self-determination or applying double standards to delegitimize their existence. Such denial frequently borrows tropes and strategies from older strains of antisemitism, and it often targets Jews in diaspora who are made to answer for a state simply because of their identity.
Professor Sucharov is right that definitions matter and that Zionism is contested even within Jewish communities. She is right to insist that not all critics of Israeli policy are antisemites. But the argument becomes untenable when it is used to dismiss concerns that delegitimizing the Jewish state feeds antisemitic movements and actions. A rigorous position honors both commitments: defend free and critical debate about Israel while also naming and pushing back against rhetoric and campaigns whose purpose or effect is the exclusion or erasure of Jewish self-determination.
The test is practical. Does a statement critique specific Israeli policies using standards applied to other democracies? Then it is legitimate. Does the statement deny Israel the right to exist, or hold Israel to uniquely harsher standards while ignoring comparable behavior by other nations? Then it is either bad faith politics or antisemitism in practice. Those are not mere semantic disputes. They determine whether communities must fear for their safety.
If the public square is to remain honest, we need distinctions that protect both free speech and vulnerable communities. That requires rejecting both the lazy equivalence that labels any criticism of Israel as antisemitic and the opposite error that denies antisemitism can wear the guise of anti-Zionism.
This is an urgent moral task. Jewish safety, the integrity of political debate, and the credibility of institutions that police hate all depend on it.
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East’s opening argument is that over 850 rabbis and cantors across the United States defend a secular Zionist state, E European in nature that bloody Stalin birthed who 2025 won’t join sanctions against Russia & fires in soup lines.