A police officer walks on Pearl street, the site of an attack on demonstrators calling for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, in Boulder, Colorado, on June 1. Photo by Getty Images
By Arno Rosenfeld
June 4, 2025
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“I will never personally humanize a Zionist,” an anonymous user posted on X in October. “They are nothing but worthless numbers, a mere statistic counting a group who chose to lead the most deranged lives imaginable.”
An account connected to Elias Rodriguez reshared the post months before he allegedly gunned down a young couple leaving a diplomatic event at the Capital Jewish Museum.
And Mohamed Sabry Soliman reportedly shouted “we have to end Zionists” as he used a homemade flamethrower to burn 12 people at a gathering for Israeli hostages on Sunday.
Both attacks were widely condemned, but some dwellers of the political fringes rushed to defend the perpetrators. “This was not because they were Jewish; it was because they were Zionists,” Guy Christensen, a popular TikTok influencer, said after Rodriguez killed Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky.
“Most of the people that go out to protest or demonstrate for the hostages are Zionists and Zionists like Nazis deserve no platform or safety,” a Bluesky user responded to the Boulder attack.
These arguments underscore the extent to which some anti-Zionists conflate anyone who holds any attachment to Israel with the worst perpetrators of violence against Palestinians: They’re all Zionists.
Often, nothing short of embracing anti-Zionism can absolve someone of this label, and Jews are especially likely to be targeted.
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Raven Schwam-Curtis posted a video last month featuring five of her “favorite anti-fascist Jewish creators,” social media influencers who post about abortion access, immigrant rights, climate change and other progressive causes.
The video didn’t mention Israel. But the comments were flooded with calls for a “free Palestine,” now a standard response to all sorts of Jewish content.
“Anti-fascist and Jewish?” one user asked. “Talk about an oxymoron 😂 did you guys get to handpick the next children’s hospital to get bombarded?”
Some commenters said they checked to see whether any of the creators had condemned Israel — an attitude of “Zionist until proven innocent” that often applies only to Jews, because people rightly intuit that most Jews (around 80%) feel at least some attachment to Israel, without pausing the consider what that means in practice.
The reality is that Jews, including Schwam-Curtis, are often more critical of Israel than many other demographics. A representative survey found that if American Jews could dictate policy:
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be out of a job;
- the U.N. Security Council would have passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire;
- and the United States would have required Israel to increase humanitarian aid and work to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza before sending additional military aid.
Only 22% of Jews want Israel to maintain permanent control over the West Bank and Gaza (compared to 33% of white evangelicals), while 46% want a two-state solution (the highest share of any demographic) and 13% want a binational state (same rate as all U.S. adults).
Yet these policy positions seem to hold less weight in certain circles than the underlying attachment to a Jewish state, as evidenced by the longstanding hostility toward J Street from vocal corners of the left.
The refusal by many activists to ask how so many Jews could feel close to Israel, even as they oppose many of its actions, strikes me as a failure to recognize their full humanity, especially when grace, at least among progressives, is often forthcoming to minorities.
It’s also not a hard question to answer: “Zionism served the no doubt fully justified ends of Jewish tradition, saving the Jews as a people from homelessness and antisemitism,” Edward Said wrote in a seminal 1979 critique of Zionism.
Yet that hasn’t penetrated the contemporary vanguard. “Say it loud, say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here,” marchers chanted while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge in May, a sentiment that trickles down to Harvard students boycotting Jewish events at Hillel because they “fucking hate Zionists.”
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Stochastic terrorism is unpredictable. I don’t see evidence that the pro-Palestinian movement is more culpable for the recent acts of violence than the pro-Israel movement is for the murder of 6-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi, the shooting of Palestinian college students in Vermont or the Israelis shot in Florida because a man thought they were Palestinian.
It’s also true that both events targeted by anti-Zionist violence were more political than Jewish. Some Jews, certainly, would have refused to attend either. But others would have gone without intending to make a political statement, just as they worship in synagogues with Israeli flags, send their children to day schools that celebrate Israel Independence Day and wear Star of David jewelry.
If any of those activities can mark someone as a “Zionist” — and if all Zionists are Nazis — then there’s little to distinguish an elderly Holocaust survivor rallying for Israeli hostages from an IDF soldier in Gaza. The red triangle symbol that has been adopted by demonstrators targeting Israel’s supposed supporters in the diaspora originally marked soldiers for death in Hamas propaganda videos.
As the war in Gaza drags on, and its opponents become increasingly desperate, the anti-Zionist left might be served by articulating a difference between the vast majority of Jews and Jewish institutions, most with some connection to Israel, and their actual political opponents.
GO DEEPER:
