‘Canceling a Zionist is antisemitic, plain and simple’

When I heard that Rabbi Andy Bachman’s appearance at a Brooklyn bookstore — where he was to moderate a talk with author Joshua Leifer about his new book, “Tablets Shattered: The End of an American Century and the Future of Jewish Life” — was canceled, I talked to him.

Rabbi Bachman is my colleague with the Jewish Community Legacy Project, which works with small synagogues to plan for their futures. In our conversation, he acknowledged his shock at being canceled solely because he was a Zionist. He and Leifer have been critical of the current Israeli government but their foundational belief in the right of the Jewish people to have their own sovereignty was ironclad. What made the situation even more absurd, Bachman told me, was that the author, whose book would be discussed, is making aliyah.

Zionists are increasingly being belittled and ostracized in progressive circles. In fact, the term is becoming a pejorative for too many of them. If Zionists are being canceled, then so are 90% of Jews who believe in Jewish self-determination as manifested in the State of Israel.

These so-called guardians of social justice are engaged in blatant antisemitism by their cancellations. The definition of antisemitism — adopted first by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and then by our State Department, dozens of countries, and most recently the State of New Jersey — considers an act of antisemitism to be “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of Israel is a racist endeavor … applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation … or drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to the Nazis.”

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This does not mean that legitimate criticism of the actions of the Israeli government is antisemitic but denying the right of any Israeli government to exist is verboten.

So when I hear sanctimonious statements that “as a Jewish anti-Zionist, I condemn all forms of antisemitism,” Shakespeare’s admonition that “the lady doth protest too much” comes to mind. They are espousing antisemitic rhetoric and are the useful idiots of the anti-Israel extreme left.

If Israel did not exist, if it were replaced by an Arab entity “from the river to the sea,” I can imagine some university or museum director crafting a land acknowledgement for Jerusalem. So many of them compose these acknowledgements for the land expropriated from indigenous native Americans in our own country. Other than their virtue-signaling, I wish more of them would devote some of their vast resources to help them.

The land acknowledgement would state:

“Here lies land taken from the Israelites who under King David established his capital in Jerusalem in 1000 BCE, and whose successors inhabited this land for more than 1,000 years. This is the capitol in which Jesus and his disciples consecrated the Last Supper.

“Despite the Romans’ destruction of the Temple 500 years before Muhammad was born in Mecca, the Jews have lived in Jerusalem continuously for the succeeding two thousand years.

“In their quaint emphasis on their nostalgic past, most of their descendants, the Jews, living thousands of miles away, recite yearly at their Passover seders their quixotic aspiration: Next year in Jerusalem.”

This acknowledgement is only fitting, as so many of the elite in the media and elsewhere love commemorating dead Jews.

No, with the establishment of the State of Israel, a thriving democracy despite incessant attacks by its enemies, an oasis of innovation in a desert of desolation and despair, no land acknowledgement is warranted.

Instead, we should recognize that despite its mistakes, Israel is in the vanguard, fighting against the rabid spread of radical and authoritarian Islam. It’s the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the West.

In short, Zionism should be celebrated as the modern miracle of the resurrection of Jewish sovereignty after 2,000 years, and the state of Israel’s birth coming just three years after the worst devastation foisted on our people in history.

Those who deny this right, who develop Rube Goldberg-like contortions to deny Zionism while claiming innocence of antisemitism, should be condemned for the hateful antisemites they purport to condemn.

And we should not be shy in calling them out.

Max Kleinman of Fairfield was the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest from 1995 to 2014. He is the president of the Fifth Commandment Foundation and consultant for the Jewish Community Legacy Project.