opinion
Antisemitism Isn’t a Strong
Enough Word
BY MITCHELL BARD
upporters of the BDS movement against Israel
claim they are not antisemitic. I have concluded
that they are correct in the sense that the word
“antisemitism” is too weak to capture their depravity.

It is not necessary to go into the myriad exam-
ples of the International Holocaust Remembrance
Alliance to define “antisemitism,” the word means
hatred of Jews. Lots of individuals and groups hate
Jews and have for centuries. More recently, a new
form of antisemitism emerged in which “Israel”
or “Zionist” is used as a euphemism for “Jews.”
BDSers certainly do this but referring to them as
antisemites is inadequate because it makes them
indistinguishable from other antisemites who, for
example, don’t care about Israel.

Anyone who has spent any time listening to
the BDS proponents or reading their propaganda
can see that they have no interest in peace, a
two-state solution or changing Israeli policy. They
are not to be confused with legitimate critics who
question the wisdom of the Israeli government’s
policies towards the disputed territories and the
Palestinians, but not its right to exist.

BDSers persecute Jews who don’t live in Israel
but merely have an affinity for Israel and its insti-
tutions. They have one overriding objective — the
destruction of the homeland of the Jewish peo-
ple. This is not mere bigotry; it is a campaign for
genocide. So how can we uniquely describe this level of
malevolence? I considered referring to them as the “New
Nazis” but that would confuse them with neo-Na-
zis who, like Klansman and other white suprema-
cists, have a whole menu of hatreds. BDSers are
single-minded; it’s all about the Jews. They could
be called “Holocausters.” But whenever you make
comparisons to Hitler, Nazis or the Holocaust, you
end up in arguments about the uniqueness of the
Final Solution, and it becomes a distraction.

A few years ago, I suggested a more appro-
priate description would be “Israel Deniers.”
Cary Nelson has since written a book, “Israel
Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism & the Faculty
Campaign Against the Jewish State,” which cap-
tures the idea.

The BDSers deny that Jews are a people and
therefore have no right to self-determination in
Israel, which they also reject as the homeland of
the Jews because the land belongs to the indig-
enous Palestinians. I hoped the term would catch
14 MAY 26, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
on so that Israel Deniers would be treated with
the same contempt as Holocaust Deniers. Alas, it
did not, and now I see that term is also inadequate
because BDSers not only deny that Jews have a
claim to their homeland; they want to destroy it.

BDSers are sometimes referred to as delegit-
imizers, but that also fails to capture their larger
goal of the annihilation of the Jews. The word also
doesn’t roll off the tongue.

UCLA Professor Judea Pearl has suggested we
refer to their malignancy as “Zionophobia.” A pho-
bia is an irrational fear. One might argue that their
demonization of Jews and the double-standard of
treating Jews differently than any other people are
irrational, but BDSers don’t fear Jews; their hatred
is based on an assertive desire to eliminate the
Jewish people as punishment for their crimes.

There are some “Judeophobes,” but they are
mostly conspiracy theorists. While some BDSers
may subscribe to some of these fictions, they are
not driven by them. BDS is not an extension of
QAnon. An apt term would be “ethnic cleansers,” but
that’s a bit awkward. Run-of-the-mill antisemites
are again distinguishable from the BDSers since
they don’t insist on ethnically cleansing the state
of Israel. Ironically, it is also two-state proponents
who want to ethnically cleanse a future Palestinian
state of Jews.

As it is, their attitude toward settlements is
essentially antisemitic because they insist that
there is one place on earth where Jews should not
be allowed to live despite the fact it is part of their
homeland. Imagine the reaction if anyone agreed
there should be two states and that Palestinians
should not be permitted to reside in one of them.

BDSers and other like-minded folks, like
Islamists, belong in the same category as repro-
bates who have sought to exterminate a particular
group of people. We could call them “liquida-
tors,” but that sounds too conventional — like a
store going out of business. “Exterminators” fits
but is too associated with pest control. BDSers
also generally don’t have the Hitlerian view of
Jews as vermin, at least not that they would
admit. “Terminators” makes you think of Arnold
Schwarzenegger, but while their goals are fright-
ening the BDSers themselves aren’t the least bit
scary (Schwarzenegger, incidentally, is an avid
supporter of Israel).

Better terms would be either “genocidists” or
“genocidaires.” Still, we need to distinguish them
from Pol Pot, Stalin, Rwandans or other mass mur-
derers who did not specifically target Jews.

Referring to BDSers as “antisemites” is too good
for them. They are Judeocidists. JE
Mitchell Bard is a foreign-policy analyst and an
authority on U.S.-Israel relations who has written
and edited 22 books, including “The Arab Lobby,
Death to the Infidels: Radical Islam’s War Against
the Jews” and “After Anatevka: Tevye in Palestine.”
tzahiV / iStock / Getty Images Plus
S



opinion
Where Do Jews Fit Into Critical
Race Theory?
BY FRED L. PINCUS
U. J. Alexander / iStock / Getty Images Plus
I n the midst of the continuing national controversy,
Jews have debated whether critical race theory is
“good for the Jews.” Opinions are wide-ranging, from
those who think critical race theory is antisemitic to
those who are developing a Jewish version of critical
race theory.

A central tenet of critical race theory is that rac-
ism/white supremacy has been an integral part of
American institutions since our nation’s founding.

Rather than being a problem of individual white
attitudes, critical race theory proponents argue that
racism is structural or systemic. White people are
the dominant/oppressor group with power while
Black people and other people of color are the
subordinate/oppressed groups.

This, of course, brings up important questions:
Are Jews white? If so, are they oppressors with
white privilege? Must Jews fit into this oppressor/
oppressed binary?
Jewish critical race theory critics answer all these
questions with a resounding “No.” For example,
Commentary carried an article titled “No, Jews
Aren’t White: We’re Our Own Thing, and Whatever
Privilege We Possess is Conditional.” Author Liel
Leibovitz wrote, “Jews are just Jews, a difficult reali-
zation that has driven haters to distraction through-
out the generations.”
Several Jewish writers have argued that critical
race theory can be extended and used to better
understand the Jewish experience. They have pro-
posed developing a Jewish critical race theory just
as Latinos and Asians have.

In the 2020 issue of Social Identities, for example,
Daniel Ian Rubin argues that Jews occupy a “space
between” whites and people of color. Although
Jews have been largely recognized as white since
the end of World War II, “they found themselves
further separated from other minority groups in the
U.S. even though they still were not full accepted by
White society (nor are they fully accepted today).”
Sociologists have described Jews as a “mid-
dleman minority” group that lacks power over the
non-Jewish elite above them but that has power
over the people of color below them. Jews are both
oppressors and oppressed. This is not something
that is unique to Jews since, for example, Asian
people, many of whom currently own businesses
in Black communities, can also be described as a
middleman minority.

There are other issues raised by Jewish critics
of critical race theory as evidenced by an opinion
piece by David Bernstein, founder of the Jewish
Institute for Liberal Values, in The Daily Phil news-
letter. According to Bernstein, critical race theory
promotes antisemitism through its promotion of the
Jewish privilege trope, its failure to give Jews credit
for being successful in higher education, its promo-
tion of “equity” rather than “equality,” its attempts
to limit discussion about the nature of racial conflict
in the U.S. and its critique of the Israel/Palestine
conflict. It’s certainly true that the powerful, privileged
Jew has been part of a worldwide antisemitic trope
for centuries, and it’s also true that antisemitism
continues in the Trump years and beyond. Jewish
critical race theory scholars like Rubin would agree
with that. None of this is inconsistent with the fact
that Jews have privileges that people of color lack.

The critical race theory emphasis on equity
rather than equality is also important to under-
stand. The term “equality” usually refers to a com-
petition where everyone lines up at the starting
line and the “best” people cross the finish line first.

The term “equity” emphasizes a competition where
the winners are representative of the race/ethnic/
gender distribution in the population.

For a variety of reasons, Jews have been quite
successful using meritocratic criteria for college
admission, once discriminatory quotas were grad-
ually removed in the first half of the 20th century.

They are overrepresented among the winners in
the higher education race.

Unfortunately, these same meritocratic standards
have not worked well for Black and Hispanic
people because of a variety of discriminatory fac-
tors including segregated housing, underfunded
schools, discrimination in the labor market, etc.

Meritocratic standards yielded unequal results.

That’s why critical race theory scholars emphasize
equity rather than just equality.

In terms of the criticism that critical race theory
limits discussion of American racism, it’s not the sup-
porters who are banning books from schools, passing
laws restricting how schools can teach about racism
and calling for a two-sided discussion of slavery.

Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation
League, has warned Jewish educators that insisting
on a more “balanced” treatment of slavery could
also result in demands for teaching a “balanced”
view of the Holocaust. Greenblatt said, “Put simply,
you can’t teach the Holocaust without understand-
ing its origins in unchecked bias and how such
hatred then can be implanted in a society.”
Finally, since the issue of “legitimate” criticism of
Israel vs. antisemitic criticism has been broadly dis-
cussed elsewhere, I’ll not deal with it here. Suffice it
to say that exactly where the line should be drawn
continues to be contentious.

Critical race theory, and its Jewish variations, are
a useful way to understand the continuing racial
conflict in the United States and the role Jews play
in the “space between” as a middleman minority. JE
Fred L. Pincus is emeritus professor of sociology
at University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and a
founding member of the Baltimore Jewish Cultural
Chavurah. JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
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