Carbajal Supports Resolution Condemning Anti-Zionism

[Updated: Wed., Dec. 13, 2023, 9:35am]

Last week, Congressmember Salud Carbajal voted in favor of a Republican-sponsored House resolution denouncing anti-Semitism that — among other things — equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. He was one of 95 Democrats to do so out of 311 House members total who voted “yes.” Voting “present” were 92 Democrats. Only 14 members of the House voted against the measure. One was Republican. 

In the increasingly charged debate over Israel’s military attack on Hamas in Gaza, the language deployed by all sides has grown more fraught. The measure cited a 388 percent increase in the rise of anti-Semitic acts since Hamas launched its surprise attack on Gaza, killing 1,200 and kidnapping 240. It’s author, Tennessee Republican David Kustoff — who is Jewish — took exception to the slogan “From the River to the Sea,” chanted by some demonstrators opposing Israel’s response to the attack. In articulating its condemnation, HR 894 stated that Congress “clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” 

Several Jewish members of the House — including New York’s Jerry Nadler — took issue with the resolution’s language, noting that historically many of the most vociferous critics of Zionism have come from the Jewish faith. They voted present. 

Marcy Winograd, an activist with Code Pink, condemned Carbajal’s vote, stating, “It’s unfortunate that an official elected to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights displays such disregard for the First Amendment’s Freedom of Speech Clause.” Central Coast Antiwar Coalition organizer Omar Figueredo went further, accusing Carbajal of standing “with Israel’s genocidal campaign against the imprisoned population of the Gaza strip.” 

Anti-Zionism, they argued, is opposition to the State of Israel which has defined itself as a Jewish State; anti-Semitism, they insisted, is the persecution, harassment, and discrimination against people because they are Jewish. 

Carbajal responded that he supports the right to criticize the current Israeli government, stating that he had just shared some of his own concerns with the president. But anti-Zionism, he said, “says that the Israeli people have no right to the land they’ve inhabited for millennia, and particularly at a time when Israel is under attack by a fanatical terrorist group that preaches their people’s extermination.”

The debate over the resolution comes at a time when American humanitarian concern over Israel’s conduct of the war against Hamas — which has now claimed the lives of around 18,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry — is growing. The day after voting for the House resolution, Carbajal — as a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee — and 12 other Democrats with oversight on international affairs signed a letter to President Biden “to press Israel to adopt strategic methods that utilize precise targeting, reduce civilian harm, and work towards winning the peace.” That letter highlights the blowback caused by the United States’ prolonged military campaigns against Iraq and Afghanistan and stressed that Israel will never secure peace in the absence of a two-state solution giving Palestinians the right to self-determination.

As the Biden administration seeks billions more in military aid to Israel, the issue of international law and administration’s own policies regarding urban warfare, civilian death tolls, and military aid — whether such aid will more likely than not lead to civilian death tolls — is coming to the fore. Israel’s threshold for civilian casualties is reportedly higher than the United States and its officials are quick to note how Hamas leaders use human shields. U.S. State Department and military leaders have acknowledged they have no reliable way of monitoring.