Pro-Israel Antisemitism or Pro-Hamas Anti-Zionism?

Pick Your Poison

For a guide to the perplexed, keep reading.

“Pro-Israel antisemitism” ranks with “multiracial whiteness” as a bizarre neologism used to failingly grasp our current political reality. But it does gesture at a question worth exploring. Namely, how do Jews figure in the MAGA movement, and populism in general? On the one hand, Donald Trump cuts funding to Columbia University for “failing to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment.” On the other, pro-Trump podcasters like Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan interview Nazi apologist Darryl Cooper and Zionist-Epstein conspiracy theorist Ian Carroll. As part of his immigration crackdown, Trump seeks to deport anti-Israel activists like Mahmoud Khalil, a spokesman for the Hamas-supporting Columbia University Apartheid Divest. Yet at the same time, Trump claims Jewish Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has “become a Palestinian,” while two of his top allies perform inadvertent (?) Nazi salutes. For Zack Beauchamp of Vox, the answer to this apparent populist paradox is pro-Israel antisemitism, “a simultaneous embrace of the Jewish state and attack on American Jews’ place in American life.”

Yet as

Ross Douthat

notes, the actual MAGA antisemites are not, in fact, pro-Israel. Rather, they are part of a broad coalition with Israel’s more numerous Christian (and Jewish) Republican supporters. Candace Owens—who blamed AIPAC for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy—is a Trump-supporting, anti-Israel antisemite. Meanwhile, Ben Shapiro—who fired Owens from his media company—is a Trump-supporting, pro-Israel Semite. (Though Owens would claim he’s a Khazar.) Does the MAGA movement contain contradictory voices? Sure. To paraphrase the great American (but not Make America Great Again) poet Walt Whitman, populism is large; it contains multitudes. But at the head of American populism is Trump, who is decidedly not personally antisemitic, given his Jewish family members (daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner) and political henchmen (like Stephen Miller and Steve Witkoff).¹ As Douthat writes, “Donald Trump divides American Jews, as he divides all groups, into good guys and bad guys, depending on whether they back or oppose him.” Sure, Trump’s jibe about Schumer was in poor taste. But treating his Jewish rivals as harshly as he treats his non-Jewish rivals is hardly discriminatory. Quite the opposite.

That Trump neglects to condemn his antisemitic supporters is, again, of a piece with his general political (and personal) outlook. Trump is loath to criticize anyone who backs him, regardless of ideology. After dining with openly pro-Nazi and generally deranged ex-talent Kanye West in 2022, Trump said “I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’ Why wouldn’t I agree to meet?” Trump also refused to condemn Jew-baiting grifter Nick Fuentes, whom West brought along as a plus-one, to avoid alienating parts of his base. Yet Trump’s big-tent approach to populism, which finds room for conservative Jews and antisemites alike, is mirrored on the left. Of course, the equivalency isn’t exact. Democrats are often more forthright in disavowing progressive antisemitism. For example, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has affirmed Israel’s right to exist and condemned Hamas, which resulted in her “unendorsement” by the Democratic Socialists of America. Yet at the same time, the mainstreaming of leftist anti-Zionism has had a larger, more negative effect on American Jewish life than the right-wing platforming of mostly online trolls. To cite just one example, a study found about one in five non-Jewish college students “wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who supports the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.”² Since most Jews do support Israel’s existence, that means de facto ostracism on campus.

Here, it’s worth pausing to acknowledge that yes, criticism of Israel does not equal antisemitism. But if being a member of a group means anything, it means caring about other members of that group. Since almost half of Jews live in Israel, it’s quite natural that Jews elsewhere would care about their fate. This isn’t politics, but basic sociology. For most American Jews, Zionism doesn’t mean supporting Likud’s policy platform. (American Jews are generally to the left of Israel’s current government.) It means, at minimum, not wanting Israeli Jews to be slaughtered. Anti-Zionists might reply that the abolition of Israel doesn’t require the massacre of Israeli Jews. But the joy with which many of them greeted October 7 makes most Jews understandably skeptical.³ Thus, contra Beauchamp, the main “attack on American Jews’ place in American life” doesn’t come from “pro-Israel antisemitism.” It comes from progressives who’ve made anti-Zionism an ideological shibboleth. More broadly, it stems from the DEI movement, which doesn’t have Jews (or Asians) in mind when it purges institutions to achieve “equitable” representation. Trump doesn’t actually think Schumer is a fake Jew. By contrast, anti-Zionists aren’t kidding when they claim that Jews are white European colonizers, with no ancestral ties to ancient Judea, who should “go back to Poland.”

Beauchamp claims that “pro-Israel antisemitism” originates from European populism. He notes that parties like Hungary’s Fidesz “position hostility to Islam and Muslim immigration to Europe as a defense of European Jews, chiefly by blaming antisemitic violence on immigrants and their children.” Yet the reality, uncomfortable as it may be for liberal Jews to accept, is that a great deal of European antisemitic violence is attributable to immigrants and their children. For example, scholar Günther Jikeli estimates that Muslims commit 50% of antisemitic incidents in France, despite being 6 to 8% of the population. Similarly, a European Union survey found that a plurality of German Jews who experienced antisemitic harassment say that the perpetrators were Muslims, even though Muslims are less than 7% of Germany’s population. Meanwhile, Hungarian Jews, living under an immigration-restrictionist populist government, reported the lowest fear of antisemitic violence among a dozen surveyed European communities. And in an example of what economists call “revealed preference,” an ADL delegation found that a majority of Belgian Jews are considering emigrating, with Hungary and Poland as their top destinations. Beauchamp may be right that populist parties often “deploy antisemitic dog whistles” to “signal to domestic antisemites that the far-right retains its historic commitments.” But the question for many European Jews is whether listening to antisemitic dog whistles is preferable to being beaten like one. 

The largest sources of immigrants to the US are Latin America, India, and China, not the Greater Middle East. America also tends to be better than Europe at assimilating newcomers. Accordingly, Muslim antisemitism is a less pervasive source of violence here. Still, among the historically high number of illegal immigrants who arrived in the US under President Biden was a Mauritanian who shot an Orthodox Jew. More broadly, the ADL has found that the vast majority in Muslim countries hold anti-Jewish views, which is also reflected in Pew Research polling. It’s quite reasonable (and typical) for liberal Jews to defend the Turkish student slated for deportation because she co-wrote an anti-Israel column. But all American Jews should consider whether mass, non-selective immigration—often espoused by progressives who excuse or minimize Muslim antisemitism—could result in a situation like Europe’s. Closer to home, it’s worth asking whether the explosion of Jew-hatred in Canada since October 7 has anything to do with that country’s growing Muslim minority. Thanks to a stridently pro-immigration policy, the number of Muslims in Canada has doubled over the last 20 years. They’re now 5% of Canada’s population, compared with about 1% in the US.⁴ Of course, American Jews may conclude that diversity is such a strength that importing antisemites is a price worth paying. Or that the creeping acceptance of white nationalism is a greater threat than the alliance between progressive anti-Zionism and Muslim Jew-hatred. But we should approach such questions honestly, without ideological gaslighting. For American Jews, the uncomfortable choice may be whether you prefer your antisemites on the left or on the right.

1. Of course, antisemites can have personal ties to Jews. An example is 19th-century Viennese mayor Karl Lueger, who famously defended himself from the charge of having Jewish friends by proclaiming, “I decide who is a Jew!” But Lueger, unlike Trump, didn’t have Jewish mishpacha. And while the President may privately hold some “old-fashioned” views about Jews, he clearly dislikes any number of other groups (Democrats, illegal immigrants, Mexican drug cartels, Canadians) more.

2. Theoretically, some of these students might actually be right-wing, but rightoid antisemitism tends not to correlate with a college education (or having friends).

3. Not Peter Beinart though!

4. Notably though, around 75% of Canadian Jews live in the Greater Toronto Area (10% Muslim) and Montreal (13% Muslim).