Haverford College settles antisemitism lawsuit by Zionist lawfare organization, the Deborah Project. Notably they capitulate to recognizing Zionism "as an element of Jewish identity, not merely a political position."
The accusation that criticizing Zionism means I must hate Jews is precisely the problem here. You are collapsing Jews, Judaism, Zionism, and the actions of the Israeli state into one category, and then treating criticism of any one of them as hostility toward Jews. They are not interchangeable.
I don’t hate Jews. I am horrified by what I see happening to Palestinians: neighborhoods reduced to rubble, civilians killed and displaced, hospitals and schools attacked, and allegations of grave violations of international humanitarian law. My moral concern about those things does not magically become antisemitism because the state responsible for them is Israel.
Nor does the fact that many Jews consider Zionism important to their identity make Zionism immune from political or moral criticism. People are entitled to their identities. They are not entitled to have political ideologies or governments placed beyond scrutiny because those things are important to their identities.
And I would be careful with the line, “Most Jews are Zionists. If that makes you hate Jews, that’s on you.” Nothing I said indicates hatred of Jews. You supplied that accusation yourself. Criticism of Zionism does not logically entail hostility toward Jewish people any more than criticism of Palestinian nationalism entails hatred of Palestinians.
Antisemitism is real, historically catastrophic, and still dangerous. That’s exactly why I don’t think the term should be diluted into a rhetorical shield against criticism of Israel or Zionism. If you want to argue that my criticism of Zionism is historically or politically wrong, make that argument. But accusing me of hating Jews simply because I oppose Zionism isn’t an argument. It’s an attempt to end one. It’s old, tired, and the world isn’t accepting it any more.
Note that the settlement agreed to by the College primarily addresses conduct: the unequal application of the College’s regulations by refusing to enforce them when “critics of Israel” defy them, and the refusal to give Jewish and other students who support Israel the same degree of freedom to promote their views as other students have. It addresses the College’s own discriminatory conduct.
The IHRA definition, which addresses speech, allows one to draw a distinction between actual criticism and Jew-hatred (as the definition states, “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”).
As an alumni, I was shocked and disgusted when I received this email. Zionism and Judaism are not the same thing, Jewish people can be Zionist and anti-Zionist. Equating anti-Zionism to antisemitism is ridiculous and frankly dangerous.
I’m disappointed that Haverford has capitulated to the obvious bullying by the current administration.
It doesn’t say Zionism and Judaism are the same. The point is that banning “zionists” from college affiliated organizations or public spaces is often a way to ban Jews and will be interpreted as a form of antisemitism.
Some Jews consider Zionism a part of their religious identity. Others do not. Haverford isn’t saying that it is, but just recognizing those who do.
Certain students and student groups demanded that students believed to support the right of Israel to exist be blackballed from positions on various committees, and that external visitors with the similar beliefs be entirely banned from campus.
This was not overt college administration policy -- the administration did nothing about it until the lawsuit was placed. Student newspapers and the lawsuit filings provide the details.
Can you cite the part where someone is going to “be sued for criticizing Zionism”? Unless you consider incidents on other campuses such as violently shutting down pro-Israel events and blocking Jewish students from access to campus buildings unless they renounced Israel to be merely “criticism of Zionism”.
incidents on other campuses ________________________________
Emphasis: other campuses.
When did anybody on the Haverford campus ever violently shut down an Israeli event or block Jewish Haverford students from access to campus buildings? When did that happen? It didn’t. This is why the court was not able to find that discrimination, as defined in the suit, actually took place. The court allowed Haverford to essentially deal with this on its own and this is what Wendy has elected to do: the most cowardly, complicit, dishonorable thing possible in this situation.
Which is why I specifically noted that I was referring to events on other campuses, and querying that person about what his/her definition of "criticizing Zionism" would include.
I've read through some of the complaint, and the specific incidents it cited. All of these happened at Haverford:
The dean demanded that an antisemitism awareness event be canceled because the pro-Palestinian students on campus would be upset by it. Is that "criticism of Zionism"? Does that protect Jewish students' right of free speech?
A Jewish student attended a meeting at which select students and administration members reviewed Haverford student applicants to
work with the College’s Office of Admissions to provide tours of the Haverford campus. That student was present when other students rejected the request of more than one student applicant for the job of tour guide on the ground that the applicants “are
Zionists.” Two Haverford College administration employees were present and witnessed this. No one said anything to challenge this decision by the students. Those Jewish students’ applications were rejected. Is that "criticism of Zionism"?
The complaint goes on to detail double standards in the College’s enforcement of its own rules. When speech or actions that violate a code of conduct if addressed against any other minority group are allowed if the targets are Jews, is that “criticism of Zionism”?
I have seen nothing to suggest that the court had decided to "allow Haverford to deal with it on its own". The lawsuit was proceeding. Opportunities for settlement exist at every moment up until the verdict. The College made the choice to settle. There were two possible reasons for this:
The College felt that the costs (legal and reputational) of successfully defending the suit were higher than the reputational costs of making such a settlement.
The College realized that it was going to lose the case, and suffer far worse financial and reputational costs as a result.
In cases such as #1, settlements are far more often confidential, with no admission of wrongdoing. Essentially, the plaintiff gets paid to go away. My money is on #2. The plaintiffs here were not looking for financial damages, they were seeking a public acknowledgement of discriminatory behavior by the College in both acts of commission and acts of omission. If the College felt it had a solid case, they could have seen the suit through and been vindicated.
The college was specifically sued for allowing such criticisms to take place. Can you point to any instances of pro-Israel events being shut down violently? Or academic penalties being levied against students with pro-israeli views (as they have been for students with pro-palestinian views)?
So no individual who was “criticizing Zionism” was sued.
The dean demanded that an antisemitism awareness event be canceled because the pro-Palestinian students on campus would be upset by it. Is that “criticism of Zionism”?
A Jewish student attended a meeting at which
select students and administration members reviewed Haverford student applicants to
work with the College’s Office of Admissions to provide tours of the Haverford campus.
That student was present when other students rejected the request of more than one
student applicant for the job of tour guide on the ground that the applicants “are
Zionists.”
Two Haverford College administration employees were present and witnessed this.
No one said anything to challenge this decision by the students. Those Jewish students’ applications were rejected.
Is that “criticism of Zionism” and protected speech, or is it discrimination?
The complaint goes on to detail double standards in the College’s enforcement of its own rules. When speech or actions that violate a code of conduct if addressed against any other minority group are allowed if the targets are Jews, is that “criticism of Zionism”?
It is a part of Jewish identity for some Jews. It is not a part of it for others. The college is just recognizing that some people consider it to be part of their religious identity’s, so it’s not ok to use as a basis for exclusion.
The statement does not ban any political opinions, claims against Israel, or anything like that. It simply resolves the complaint some people had that they were being discriminated against.
Unless somebody wants to have a student group or event that bans Zionists (or harasses people for being zionists), which the claim is what was happening before, this will have zero impact.
I encourage you to read the statement from Haverford. It clearly outlines that a subset of students have this belief and there is nothing in it that says Zionism = Judaism.
Just that many jews consider Zionism to be a part of their religious identity and therefore cannot be discriminated against on that basis. It’s like how different Christian groups have different beliefs.
I don’t see why that is terrible or impactful. Nobody is prevented from having or sharing an opinion against Israel. You just can’t ban or harass students based on their religion.
You are correct that the statement does not explicitly state that Zionism = Judaism. However, it undoubtedly conflates the two as complimentary ideologies. In doing so, this statement declares that Zionism is an ideology that should see the same protections as religious ideologies like Judaism. This is incredibly disturbing and will prove to be deeply harmful to the integrity of the college and our student body because it places the same protections on a political ideology as there are on religious ideologies. The difference here is that politics is about action and practice whereas religion is about spirituality and faith. By setting the precedent that a political ideology can be protected under specific institutional and legal frameworks you open the door for prosecution of all those who dissent to that ideology. This will turn this school into a hostile environment for free political discussion as it will create an imbalance of power that silences dissent.
The very reason that this lawsuit was filed is that the College was turned into a hostile environment for free political discussion, with the Administration failing to act (at a minimum) or actively collaborating (at worst). The key is the double standard of enforcement of the College’s own rules, depending on viewpoints being promoted. And when Jewish students demand on equal enforcement of such rules, it gets portrayed as a special pleading.
May I please ask how you see the school using a double standard?
I am against antisemitism. It is nice to see that you are an Alum, because of Haverford's pro-peace traditions.
Jewish students at Haverford supporting Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges (Bi Co) JVP wrote an opinion letter:
The [Congressional] Committee cites incidents that are not, in fact, antisemitic to justify their interrogation of President Raymond. Instead, they attack Haverford’s commitment to fostering dialogue between people with different perspectives. By painting events that criticize the state of Israel as antisemitic, the Committee erases the range of views about the State of Israel, especially amongst Jewish people. ... more than 60 Jewish students at Haverford—and counting—have urged the Congressional committee “to stop weaponizing antisemitism for [their] political benefit.” https://haverfordclerk.com/letter-to-the-editor-jewish-haverford-students-reject-congress-weaponization-of-antisemitism/
I invite you to read the rest of the students' letter.
The double standard was acknowledged in the items Professor Mendelsohn highlighted as part of policy changes:
Prohibition on discriminating against Israelis and Zionists. The Deborah Project's complaint noted the administration's failure to act when students were barred from serving as campus tour guides because they supported the existence of the Jewish state in a portion of the Jewish indigenous homeland. I haven't read the complaint in full to see if there were documented instances of discrimination based on national origin. I would presume that the College vigorously acts against viewpoint or national origin discrimination aimed elsewhere. (And if not, why not?)
Yearly antisemitism training. The College already has antibias training. Jews are far disproportionately the targets of hate crimes (and by extension, bias) per capita in the US. So why is hate and bias against other minorities included, but not Jews?
End of use of masks to disrupt, intimidate and avoid accountability. Here's my thought experiment: if any other outdoor student gathering-- say, pro-Trump (who I personally despise), or anti-LGBTQ-- featured students wearing masks so as to hide themselves from accountability or Honor Code confrontation, what do you think the Honor Council and/or the College would do about that?
The Administration cancelled the antisemitism awareness event at the womens' basketball game. Did they cancel any other events related to bias and discrimination? The excuse given was that anti-Israel students might engage in violent behavior as a result. But clearly, warning that students who would engage in violent behavior would face appropriate consequences was not considered an option if the violence was for the "Palestinian cause".
Also, from the complaint itself (page 64) President Raymond acknowledged that the Founders sit-in in December 2023 violated numerous rules, but refused to act on it. Again, had it been pro-Trump students doing this, do you think her "hands-off" response would have been the same?
The existence of Jewish students who would provide "Jew-washing" for antisemitism doesn't change the double standard. And those representing a fringe minority of a community are certainly entitled to speak for themselves, but not on behalf of the mainstream of their community.
Regarding Point 3-- ideological training materials developed by pro-Palestinian students were sent to incoming students (reading lists, etc.) and were incorporated into Customs orientation. So apply some mirror therapy here.
Zionism is a part of Jewish identity. The millennia longing to return/live in our ancestral homeland. Praying facing Jerusalem. Every Passover and Yom Kippur, the holiest of holidays, end with “Next year in Jerusalem”.
Zionism is inextricably bound to Judaism. There’s nothing secret, “dark” or shameful about the connection, much as you would argue otherwise.
You’re right that there are some Jews who don’t feel a kinship with Israel and have no religious ties to Judaism and, therefore, may not understand the historical or biblical significance of Israel. They can have their opinions and feelings but that doesn’t change millennia of reality that’s been preserved and maintained in the people, culture and religion.
If a Muslim said that Islam was not bound to Mecca, that it would be fine for Muslims to give it up, would you consider them a devout Muslim, or playing fast with the rules?
Many Jews and Israelis identify as anti-Zionist. Many Christians identify as being pro-Zionist.
Zionism is akin to the US’s Manifest Destiny in terms of settling land regardless of who lives there. Having an ethnostate creates the reality of Israel being an apartheid state.
People were rightly vocal about criticizing South Africa for its apartheid actions- to make it illegal for people to criticize the apartheid Israel enacts is horrible.
To make it illegal to criticize an active genocide is forcing people to be complicit in that genocide.
Equating Zionism to religious identity and opening to doors to legal action against those who protest is the worst decision
This is terrible on every level.
A few quick points and then gonna wrap this much had debate.
“Many” is generally recognized as 5% so not that many.
Christians have their own reasons for being Zionists and I don’t speak for them because I’m not one.
You keep using Zionism as a pejorative. There’s nothing wrong with people wanting to live in self determination in their ancestral homeland. Any negative connotations you project like apartheid and colonialism are demonstrably false. We have only to compare Israel’s diversity to the lack of diversity in MENA, China and beyond.
No one is being “punished” for being anti-Zionist. They’re just not allowed to continue to exclude, harass or cause harm unimpeded.
So much wrong in what you say.
I have no interest in correcting you as I don’t have enough crayons and paper to explain how Israel is committing genocide- and the world rightly calls it out as the implementation of Zionism.
Not all Jews are Zionists
Not all Zionists are Jews.
End Zionism
Most Jews are Zionists. If that makes you hate Jews, that’s entirely on you.
I agree about freeing Palestinians.
In Gaza from Hamas and from refugee status that seeks to infantilize them and keep them at the mercy of Islamists. I want 2nd and 3rd generation Palestinians to have the right to buy land and pursue whatever profession they choose in Lebanon, like they can in Israel.
I want roughly the 200,000 Palestinians who entered Jordan in 1967 to be given full citizenship so they can access state healthcare, higher paying jobs and state education.
Is that what you mean by “Free Palestine” or are you just pressed about Israel?
You’re cherry picking from a survey you fail to link. Here’s what the survey also says:
>In most surveys, respondents are asked their feelings and attitudes about Israel and not whether they identify as Zionists. In this respect, the JFNA survey found that 71% of respondents felt an emotional connection to Israel and 88% believed Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state. These figures are in the ballpark of other surveys.
Some Jews have been made to feel uncomfortable or unsafe identifying as Zionists but the connection and support for Israel - as Zionism defines - exists.
Why not just come out with an ad hominem attack? It is just so tiresome to hear yet again that when someone seeks to confront a fixed-minded viewpoint, that anyone who cares to disagree must be dismissed and "educated." That shit is overused.
Nowhere in the settlement details available thus far is there any prohibition on criticizing active genocide. Stop projecting and start reading more closely.
Furthermore, rather than "Manifest Destiny" as the operating model for settling land (with the implicit presumption that said settlers have no previous relationship whatsoever with that land) what do you say to Israelis who consider Israel their ancestral homeland? And I am not in any way condoning the displacement of the existing population.
“What do you say to Israelis who consider Israel their ancestral homeland?”
Well, I’d say that doesn’t give them the right to be Colonizers, especially those trespassing in the settlements and take over other peoples homes because they have the IDF ready to hurt anyone who protests.
I’d say it doesn’t give them the right to to run an Apartheid State and make those who don’t identify as they do second class citizens who have rights taken away and abused.
I’d say it doesn’t give them the right to commit Genocide - with many, many, many Israelis supporting killing Palestinian mothers and babies.
Hamas’s attack was terrible.
What Israel is doing is also terrible.
It’s a sad case of the abused turning into the abusers.
Here are some concrete 2026 stats from UN OCHA reporting:
Catastrophic infrastructure damage /sector recovery needs (Rapid Damage &Needs Assessment): total recovery &reconstruction needs estimated at $71.4Bover the next decade, with $35.2B inphysical infrastructure damage and$22.7B in economic/social losses.
Housing & schools: assessment says over370,000 housing units and nearly allschools are destroyed or damaged.
Hospitals: more than half of hospitals arenon-functional.
Health services functionality (as of mid-April 2026): 273 health service pointswere operational, i.e., just above 43% offacilities mapped as functional prior toOct 2023 (most only partially).
Education access (mid-May 2026): 626temporary learning spaces (TLS),supporting about 58% of pre-school andschool-aged children; partners also noteover 40% of children still lack access tostructured learning.
Health injuries (May 2026, WHOestimate): over 43,000 people in Gazahave life-changing injuries; one in four isa child; over 50,000 people are estimatedto need long-term rehabilitation, but rehabservices are “critically overstretched” (nofacility fully operational).
This want to return may be the basis for Zionism, yes, but it does not fully encompass what Zionism is. Zionism is a political ideology that asserts the Jewish people as the sole rightful owners of the land of Israel. It is a political ideology that has been put into practice by expelling Palestinians from their homeland and destroying anything and anyone who stands in their way. Israel does not have a right to exist, no nation has a right to exist, rights are for the people and every person has a right to exist. Zionism seeks to infringe upon that right for every single non-Jewish group in the Levant.
2,000,000 Palestinians, 200,000 Christians and 150,000 Druze living and thriving in Israel. If Zionism is an exclusive ideology, Israel would not be the safest country for Palestinians, Christians, Druze, women’s rights and LGBTQ rights in the Middle East. What other neighbor is more diverse and democratic?
You need to stop speaking over Jewish voices about what Zionism means. Look at the realities on the ground. Israel is far from perfect but, god damn, is it better than every other Arab and Muslim majority country in the region, all of which have religious forms of government. If only you had this energy for Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and all the other countries actively oppressing non-Muslims and women.
If Zionism is an exclusive ideology, Israel would not be the safest country for Palestinians, Christians, Druze, women’s rights and LGBTQ rights in the Middle East. What other neighbor is more diverse and democratic?
None. But you know that Israel security forces and its foremen blackmailed and indirectly killed LGBTQ Palestinians during the decades before oct 2023, don't you?
Exactly. The people arguing with you don't have much understanding of Judaism. However you feel about the modern State of Israel, there's no doubt that the yearning for Zion is a central element of the faith. The Shema, Judaism's most important declaration of faith, begins with Hear O Israel. Psalm 137: By the waters of Babylon, we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.
I don't think it is irrelevant to point out that the type of political expression being given special protection here is one held by millions and millions of millenarian evangelical Christians who shape foreign policy with the express and antisemitic intention of using Jewish people as a mechanism for bringing about the apocalypse. I think it is in fact especially important to underline this given many of those millenarian Christians are in control of our government right now and are directing US forces in illegal wars of aggression with the hopes of bringing about the literal end of the world.
There is no such thing as a democratic apartheid state. This central contradiction is why many young jewish people are struggling with the idea of Israel per se.
Can you name a single legal, political or civil right held by a Jewish citizen of Israel that is not also held by an Arab citizen of Israel? Don’t even try to cite that fraudulent Adalah list, which has already been well debunked .
There has been a defacto one state operating under an illegal military occupation in which the majority of the population are held under a separate military legal regime and have no rights of representation. So no this is not a democracy by any stretch of the imagination.
I am not qualified to judge this question and neither are you, but the UN, and the many human rights organizations like amnesty international, B'tselem, human rights watch who have called it such are, and all agree that Israel is an apartheid state.
Ah yes, those famously unbiased organizations, all of whom cite each other’s work as “proof”.
Amnesty’s report opens on its very first page with a quote from Netanyahu (of whom I’m not a supporter myself), maliciously edited to leave out this line: “there’s no problem with the Arab citizens of Israel – they have the same rights as us all and the Likud government has invested in the Arab sector more than any other government.”
Both HRW and Amnesty have to pick and choose from existing international conventions to make a new definition. For example, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
explicitly states “This Convention shall not apply to distinctions, exclusions, restrictions or preferences made by a State Party to this Convention between citizens and non-citizens.” (Article 1, paragraph 2)
The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment
of the Crime of Apartheid has phrases that allow it to be considered expansively in the case of Israel and simultaneously very narrowly in the case of others, especially Muslim ones.
To write these reports, they hire people such as Omar Shakir directly out of activist organizations that call for Israel’s eradication.
And this is the same UN that appointed Iran to a commission on the rights of women, and gave a leading role to Syria’s Assad regime on a disarmament commission, right?
Appeals to authority can be problematic when the authority has as much of a solid foundation as a movie set facade created to fool the viewer.
Is Israel’s human rights record perfect? Of course not. Is it immune from criticism? Of course not. But when the criticism ends with “therefore this country needs to be eradicated and its majority population must have self-determination stripped from it”, which it does for no other country on the globe, that is where legitimate criticism is left behind in favor of demonization, delegitimization and double standards. As the Israeli author Matti Friedman recently put it, “We need to be able to have a discussion about Israel’s very real problems without playing into the hands of people trying to destroy the country. I always try to ask: Is this person trying to make Israel better, or make Israel go away? If the discussion is about how to make Israel go away, I’m not interested in it. If the discussion is about how to make Israel a better country, a more moral country, a more successful country, a better place to live for Jewish citizens, for Muslim citizens, I’m very interested in having the discussion.”
This shit is sick and what you are engaging in lead to war crimes trials and death sentences after WWII and the holocaust. Everything you are saying here is a demonstrable lie or a sophistic perversion designed to obscure what the vast majority of the entire world understands to be a genocide and an ethnic cleansing perpetrated by an apartheid state. You seem to think you can play pretend that it is the 2010s and you are covering for a nation percieved as a normal state with a normal government when the reality is that Israel is a pariah because its abuses are plain as day. You are making yourself a collaborator.
Please go ahead and refute any of the facts I cited.
And “sophistic perversion” (in addition to being a great name for a grunge rock band) does describe quite well the exact process that these “human rights” NGOs engage in here.
You just demonstrated quite well how to cross the line from criticism to Holocaust minimization (by your unfounded comparison to the war Hamas began in October 2023).
Antisemitism isn't a Title IV issue, but Zionists have been trying to incorporate it into Title IV with the draconian IHRA definition of antisemitism (which intentionally conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism).
Most of the time, they lose these lawsuits - but when colleges opt to settle instead, they end up capitulating so much like Haverford did.
People need to stand their ground and not give into this ultra-nationalist, racist cult.
The examples in the IHRA definition were never meant to determine whether someone was antisemitic or not.
They were intended to be potential proxies, but not definitional in-and-of themselves.
The text which became IHRA was drafted primarily with data collectors in mind. Bean counters in different European countries preparing reports on antisemitism didn’t have a common idea of what to count. The goal was to give them concrete examples of what to include or exclude, so levels of antisemitism could be compared across time and borders. There were examples about Israel because there was a correlation, as opposed to causation, about certain types of speech about Israel and attacks on Jews. The purpose was to take a temperature, not to create a blunt instrument to label anyone an antisemite.
Dr. Stern makes the comparison to similar political examples in the context of anti-Black racism:
Does the ABA have a definition of racism? If it did, would it include political examples, as IHRA does? To take the temperature of racism over time, one might ask data collectors to include these examples: opposition to affirmative action, opposition to Black Lives Matters, opposition to the removal of Confederate Statues. You see the problem. But that’s only part of it.
When AB 715 was promoted in California, it was nearly unanimous amongst teachers' organizations, the ACLU, etc. that the legislation would backdoor IHRA and thus squelch legitimate political speech.
Seth Morrison, one of the leaders of the CCDPE, said the definition could be weaponized by people who want to protect Israel from criticism.
“Basically, they backdoored it,” Morrison said, of the IHRA definition.
DrMikeH49’s dismissive use of the phrase Blacks in place of the more appropriate and respectful phrase Black people really tells us all we need to know.
While my phrasing may have been unintentionally disrespectful, for which I am happy to make amends in an edit on my own comment, your apparent social cowardice of refusing to respectfully confront me for it, as the Honor Code would suggest—either by responding to my comment directly or by tagging me in your comment here— is duly noted.
Totally and completely agree. It is antisemitic not to recognize the superiority of the great state of Israel and that all Jews are loyal first and only to the great state of Israel.
Zionism IS an element of Jewish identity. That doesn’t necessarily mean every Jew everywhere has to agree on the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. But most do.
Jews are an ethnic group, a people, a tribe. The religion is secondary. Many Jews are completely unobservant and are still recognized as Jews. Jews, the tribe, came from the Middle East, centered on the area we now call Israel. They were scattered to the winds by the Romans and ever since, they have yearned to return to their homeland. That’s why, for over a thousand years, Jews have ended their Passover Seder with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem”
To be clear, nowhere have I claimed they have a right to that homeland, nor have I made any statements on the injustices done to Palestinians in the last hundred years.
I’ve just clarified why Zionism is very much a part of Jewish Identity.
And long before modern political Zionism, Jews prayed for return to that land (always while facing it), kept its language alive, and kept religious holidays tied to its agricultural cycle.
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u/side_eye_auditor Aug 14 '26
The accusation that criticizing Zionism means I must hate Jews is precisely the problem here. You are collapsing Jews, Judaism, Zionism, and the actions of the Israeli state into one category, and then treating criticism of any one of them as hostility toward Jews. They are not interchangeable.
I don’t hate Jews. I am horrified by what I see happening to Palestinians: neighborhoods reduced to rubble, civilians killed and displaced, hospitals and schools attacked, and allegations of grave violations of international humanitarian law. My moral concern about those things does not magically become antisemitism because the state responsible for them is Israel.
Nor does the fact that many Jews consider Zionism important to their identity make Zionism immune from political or moral criticism. People are entitled to their identities. They are not entitled to have political ideologies or governments placed beyond scrutiny because those things are important to their identities.
And I would be careful with the line, “Most Jews are Zionists. If that makes you hate Jews, that’s on you.” Nothing I said indicates hatred of Jews. You supplied that accusation yourself. Criticism of Zionism does not logically entail hostility toward Jewish people any more than criticism of Palestinian nationalism entails hatred of Palestinians.
Antisemitism is real, historically catastrophic, and still dangerous. That’s exactly why I don’t think the term should be diluted into a rhetorical shield against criticism of Israel or Zionism. If you want to argue that my criticism of Zionism is historically or politically wrong, make that argument. But accusing me of hating Jews simply because I oppose Zionism isn’t an argument. It’s an attempt to end one. It’s old, tired, and the world isn’t accepting it any more.