NOT IF YOU’RE CONSISTENT, BUT: Anti-Zionism Isn’t the Same as Anti-Semitism.

Goldberg writes, “certainly, some criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, but it’s entirely possible to oppose Jewish ethno-nationalism without being a bigot.” Sure, if you’re a libertarian or socialist type that rejects ethnicity and/or nationalism for anyone, then having the same view of Jewish nationalism is not anti-Semitic. But very few critics of Israel who support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) are actually against ethno-nationalism; indeed, they want Israel to be replaced by an Arab/Muslim majority state ruled by that majority (and not, as Goldberg suggests, a “bi-national state”), and thus not only don’t oppose ethno-nationalism, they support replacing a liberal ethno-nationalist state that grants autonomy to its domestic Arab population to be exempt from military service, to study in Arabic in public school, and so forth, with an Arab one that would almost certainly be illiberal.

What would be the fate of the Jews of Israel under that scenario? Let’s hear from the late Edward Said, the leading Palestinian nationalist intellectual in the English-speaking world before his death:  “I worry about that. The history of minorities in the Middle East has not been as bad as in Europe, but I wonder what would happen. It worries me a great deal. The question of what is going to be the fate of the Jews is very difficult for me. I really don’t know. It worries me.” In short, while Said apparently hoped the Jews would make out all right, the strong possibility (I’d say great likelihood) that they would be murdered, exiled, and/or oppressed was not sufficient to tame his desire for a Palestinian state replacing Israel. That’s what most BDS supporters and anti-Zionists think, and that’s why declaring that “Palestine should be free from the river to the sea” is an implicitly genocidal slogan.