Anti-Zionism Revisited

In the Voices piece, “When Anti-Zionism Is Indeed Anti-Semitic,” the writer’s conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism sets the stage for a new McCarthyism in which anyone who challenges the apartheid state of Israel can be targeted for investigation.

Anti-Zionism is opposition to violent settler-colonialism that established a Jewish homeland at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians.

In contrast, anti-Semitism is bigotry — often wrapped in conspiracy theories — against the Jewish people due to their ethnicity or religion.

In retaliation for Hamas’s horrific attacks and kidnappings in Israel on October 7, Israeli leaders turned Gaza into a “graveyard for children,” in the words of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

Author Dan Meisel objects to what he describes as “hyperbolic and inflammatory terms like ‘genocide,’” but all the foot stomping in the world cannot deny that Israel’s imposition of collective punishment on a caged population amounts to “genocide” as defined by the UN Convention on Prevention and Punishment for the Crime of Genocide and the Rome Statute, Article 6, of the International Criminal Court.

The writer complains about a call I made to Downtown Santa Barbara objecting to the 100 Jewish Federation flags flying on State Street lamp posts days after Israel began its genocidal campaign against Gaza. While the Jewish Federation contributes to worthy social welfare causes, it is not an apolitical charity but one that routinely declares “We Stand with Israel.”

This unconditional support comes despite Israel’s 75-year occupation of Palestine and bombings of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, half of them children.

If the writer wants an apology, he can offer one to Santa Barbarans of Muslim and Arab descent whose families have been harmed by Israel’s crimes of dispossession and erasure.

Cease-fire now!

Marcy Winograd is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and a Santa Barbara organizer with CODEPINK and the Central Coast Antiwar Coalition.