Recently, it seems to have become acceptable to hate Zionists on the Carleton campus. “Not Jews,” people are happy to clarify, “just Zionists.” But this is Carleton, so I feel comfortable saying that data is necessary; thus, here are the statistics: 80% of American Jews say “caring about Israel is an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them,” and 60% feel a personal attachment to Israel. The American Jewish Committee found in 2022 that “70% of millennial American Jews think a strong state of Israel is necessary for the survival of the Jewish people.” Zionism is part of Judaism: many prayers are oriented towards Jerusalem, and many Jewish holidays are based on the agricultural calendar of Israel, celebrating events such as the harvest. This has been true for 2000 years. After Passover, we say “next year in Jerusalem” — it is not a metaphor, it is a hope for return.

There are Jews who aren’t Zionists, but Zionism is part of Judaism. Judaism is an ethno-religion, more than just a religion. You can hear this casually mentioned in Jewish events, that we all have the same lactose intolerance or other shared traits. Jews are an ethnic group that are indigenous to Israel and were never native to anywhere else. That is Zionism. Zionism is the belief in the existence of a state of Israel. It does not preclude the existence of a Palestinian state, it does not dictate what the borders of Israel should be — it simply says that the state of Israel should continue to exist as a homeland for Jews.

Every Jewish person has their own opinion on Israel. But, if you are willing to listen to the words of anti-Zionists, then stop for a few minutes to think about what I’ve written here. If you’re unwilling to do that, I ask you to ask yourself why. 

Frequently, you’ll hear people defend that Israel has the right to exist. I’m not going to do that here: it’s the wrong place to start. I rarely hear people ask whether any country has the right to exist, except the ones that don’t currently. For example, to momentarily move away from the Israel/Palestine conflict, do the Kurdish people have the right to a state? Absolutely. The question is asked because there currently is no Kurdistan. But students who question Israel’s right to exist rarely question the United States’s or Canada’s right to exist. I believe Israel has a right to exist, but that’s not the relevant  question to ask. Israel does exist. It is a country with a population of nearly ten million people: a small country, but one that will defend itself if people try to destroy it. Because Israel already exists, the question of does Israel have the right to exist is, more accurately, the question: do we (and who this nebulous ‘we’ is depends on who you ask) have a right to destroy it. And that is a profoundly violent question.

When we hear our peers advocating for Palestine “from the river to the sea,” many of the Jews on campus are scared. This is a phrase supporting a Palestinian state that extends from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea — it is calling for the destruction of Israel. It is one of many anti-Zionist phrases currently being tossed around campus by people who I hope simply don’t know what they’re advocating for. I have to assume that many of the people saying these things don’t understand what they mean. Tell me, anti-Zionists, where do you expect Israelis to go? Because this is a call for the murder of ten million people. And rhetoric calling for the mass destruction of Jews is scary to many of the Jews on campus.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the main group on Carleton’s campus advocating against Israel, has argued that their problem is with Zionists rather than Jews. A Jewish student was anonymously quoted in a Carletonian news article saying, “if you replace the word ‘Zionist’ in many of [SJP’s] statements with ‘Jews,’ then you’re left with something that’s classically antisemitic.” The SJP responded to this: “it is important to clarify that we did not use the term ‘Jew’ because our reference was NOT to Jewish people. Employing ‘Jew’ in this context would not only be anti-Semitic but also factually inaccurate.” The SJP also objected to the idea that there is a thin line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. But, this line is thin — a lot of anti-Zionist rhetoric advocates for significant violence against Jews. SJP will cite Jewish (and Jewish-seeming) groups as evidence that their anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism, but that’s not how it works. A few Jews saying that something isn’t offensive doesn’t negate the majority of Jews saying that it is. The Anti-Defamation League, one of the pre-eminent advocacy groups fighting antisemitism, wrote about Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an organization often cited by anti-Zionists because of its opposition to Zionism: “JVP does not represent the mainstream Jewish community, which it views as bigoted for its association with Israel. JVP’s staunch anti-Zionist positions place it squarely in opposition to mainstream American Jews and Jews worldwide, most of whom view a connection with Israel as an integral part of their social, cultural or religious Jewish identities.”

When Carleton students defend resistance by “any means necessary,” that is a justification of the violence against civilians on October 7. On that day, more than 1400 Israelis were killed, 200 were taken to Gaza as hostages and an unknown number of women were violently raped. Entire families were burned alive and babies were brutally killed. The victims were civilians: they were families, they were children and they were Holocaust survivors. Portraying this as a legitimate form of resistance justifies Hamas, a terrorist group.

SJP may consider themselves to hate Zionists instead of Jews, but the Hamas charter disagrees. As a writer in The Atlantic explained, the text of the Hamas charter is clear: “‘The Day of Judgement will not come about,’ it proclaims, ‘until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’” For the people who invaded Jewish towns and murdered Jewish grandparents, babies and other civilians, there is no difference between a Zionist and a Jew: They want them all dead. To hear Carleton students justifying that violence is disturbing. Maybe there is anti-Zionism that isn’t antisemitic. But most of it is. Because the “liberation fighters” that students will justify are intent on killing as many Jews as they can. And so SJP can say that they don’t have a problem with Jews, but when their rhetoric calls for the destruction of the state of Israel, that’s advocating for the mass murder of Jews.

I don’t want to diminish the suffering of Palestinians through anything I’m saying. But I’m not convinced that either Benjamin Netanyahu or the leaders of Hamas care what I have to say, so they’re not my target audience here. I know Palestinians are suffering right now, and the point of this article isn’t to diminish that. It’s for people on the Carleton campus. It is specifically for anyone who is posting online or speaking about what is happening in Israel and Gaza right now, especially those who don’t have a personal connection to either place. I’m not saying that antisemitism on Carleton’s campus is a larger or more important global issue than other things I could talk about here, including what’s happening to Palestinians. But, antisemitism on campus is something that I believe (perhaps naively) I can do something about, so that’s what I’m writing about.

I’m seeing a lot of antisemitic posts online, and I’m hearing a lot of people saying antisemitic things on campus, and I’m tired of it. It’s offensive, and, when it’s so many people, it’s scary. But I want to assume that Carleton students mean well. I want to believe that a lot of this antisemitism is unintentional and that by telling students about it, I can do something to change it. I don’t write this to say students shouldn’t protest for Palestine; I write this in the hopes that as students advocate for Palestinians, they do so in a way that is less harmful to Jews. And that starts by listening to Jews — not just the token Jews that you can find who will denounce Israel, but the Zionist Jews who represent the majority.

When Zionism is a bad word, many Jews do not feel safe. Because when you talk about Zionists, you’re talking about most Jews. I don’t claim to speak for all Jews: many Jews will disagree with me, and that’s OK. People get to define their Judaism differently. But, when non-Jewish groups cite a few members of a very vocal minority of Jews as evidence that they’re not antisemitic, that’s tokenization. Non-Jews don’t get to define Judaism, and they don’t get to pick a few Jews that agree with them to say that what they’re saying isn’t offensive.

And as this sense that Zionism is terrible grows, it becomes easier to diminish the feelings of the Jews who disagree. If there is a lack of Zionist voices on campus, it isn’t because every Jew agrees that there should be no Israel — it is because Jews are scared to say otherwise. I have talked to so many Jewish students on campus who are scared right now. We are scared of the rhetoric we are seeing from students, and we are scared by the silence of our friends. These voices are less audible because they’re scared of the response they’ll get, but they exist. Antisemitism isn’t some foreign concept that we care about because it is the right thing to do: It is here, and it is affecting us every single day. 

In this article, I speak for myself, I don’t claim to speak for the entirety of the Jewish Students of Carleton or write this in my capacity as JSC President. I considered writing this article anonymously because I know the things I’m saying will be controversial on campus right now. I’m putting my name on this for two reasons, and two reasons only. First, for the Jewish students who are scared to speak up, to tell them they are not alone. And second, for the students who went to the SJP rally last week where they explicitly said not to engage with Zionists. I want them to know that when they’re talking about Zionists, they’re talking about people on this campus. And I hope by putting my name on this, it will remind every person that I know who’s there that when they talk about Zionists, they’re not talking about some faceless global entity — they’re talking about me.