(JNS) There is almost no way to have a political conversation or debate today without, at some point, the word “racism” being brought into play.
Usually, the word serves as a “nuclear option,” a way of demonizing one’s opponent and detonating any possibility of consensus. This was described best by the internet’s famous “Godwin’s Law,” which holds that, “As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or to Nazis approaches one.”
This is complicated by the fact that, for the most part, the word has been devalued to the point that it essentially means nothing. At best, “racism” has come to mean, “something of which I violently disapprove.” At worst, it has become a euphemism for “radical evil” or, in a non-metaphysical age, “the devil.”
Anti-Zionists understand this quite well, and they deploy the term “racist” at every possible opportunity, usually as a preemptive strike to obfuscate what they say next, which, ironically, tends to be genocidally racist: “From the river to the sea,” “Globalize the intifada,” “Death to Israel,” etc. In their hands, the word “racism” is a sword and shield, a way to strike what is hoped to be a mortal blow while parrying any attempt at defense.
This kind of sucker-punching is both cheap and decidedly undignified, but it can be effective, especially against squishy liberals. Such liberals live in terror of the accusation of racism and are easily rendered guilt-ridden by the thought that they themselves might be even slightly racist.
Indeed, many on the left have perfected this form of emotional blackmail by asserting that everyone is racist—excepting, of course, themselves—thus forcing all the squishy liberals of the world, and far too many others who ought to know better, to bend the knee at will.
All of this is ironic, however, because it is not an exaggeration to say that, in many ways, anti-Zionism itself is the most racist ideology in the world today.
The extent to which anti-Zionism is racist ought to be obvious. First, it is an ideology of absolute apartheid—an apartheid on the scale of humanity itself. For millennia, the Jews were essentially second-class citizens of the world and only managed to achieve something like equality through Zionism and the establishment of the modern-day State of Israel.
Anti-Zionism seeks to reverse this meager form of equity and, in effect, re-establish the old global apartheid, confining the Jews to a new ghetto, made even more oppressive and barbaric by globalization and the powers of modern technology.
The logic of anti-Zionism is genocide. We know this because the anti-Zionists say so.
More importantly, perhaps, is Martin Luther King Jr.’s observation: “In the final analysis, racism is evil because its ultimate logic is genocide.”
There can be no question that the logic of anti-Zionism is genocide. We know this because the anti-Zionists say so. Indeed, they say so as stridently as they possibly can. The aforementioned slogans are proof enough of this fact.
Moreover, if there are such things as “speech acts,” then there are also acts that constitute speech. Thus, every Jew that the anti-Zionists assault and kill constitutes a statement of intent, and that intent could not be clearer.
But anti-Zionist racism is not confined to the desire for physical extermination. Even if some anti-Zionists do not actually want to kill all the world’s Jews, they still desire a kind of genocide: a genocide of the spirit. That is to say, if there is one overriding ambition harbored by any anti-Zionist, it is to hurl the Jews back into exile. That is inherent in the goal of dismantling the Jewish state, even if its Jewish residents are left physically unharmed.
As Oct. 7 proved, the Jews would not be left physically unharmed, but that is somewhat beside the point, because even if they were, they would still be subjected to the genocide of the spirit, which is, in its own way, as horrific as a genocide of the body. The genocide of the spirit is an act of infinite prolongation, a crucifixion that never ends. It is the consignment of the soul to the Ninth Circle. Anti-Zionism wants precisely this: to torture the Jew not solely in the moment of slaughter, but for eternity.
We know this because of the one question anti-Zionists never acknowledge, let alone even answer: What, exactly, are the Jews supposed to do? Should we simply submit to the depredations of a perpetual and eternal exile without hope of redemption? Should we allow our bodies and our souls to be exterminated without resistance? The anti-Zionists’ answer is, of course, “yes,” though they are rarely capable of mustering up the courage to say so. Instead, they present rosy scenarios of coexistence and equality that have never and will never be granted to the Jews.
Any thinking Jew with any awareness of our dire, if triumphant, history knows that such promises of coexistence and equality are, at best, debased hypocrisy, because we have long memories, and we remember exile and what it means: It means torture. It means the perpetual infliction of pain on the part of a world content to take its sadistic pleasures from a people unable to defend themselves against the assault. If you want a picture of the anti-Zionist future, imagine a Jew on the rack—forever.
This is not a fate as horrific as Auschwitz, but it is horrific enough, and the idea that the Jews ought willingly to submit to it, let alone that it is morally incumbent upon us to do so, is as racist as the ambition itself.
It is also, whether the anti-Zionists, with their preening pretensions of sainthood, like it or not, an ambition that could only be harbored by the most racist ideology in the world today, because it is ultimate racism, a racism with nowhere else to go, a racism that has reached the end of King’s terrible logic.
There is only one admonition to be drawn from this tawdry spectacle, and it is simply this: We do not have to listen to these people. No anti-Zionist has the right to fancy himself a member of a caste of saints, and we are under no obligation to recognize the anti-Zionist’s delusion that he is a saint.
As such, the anti-Zionist has forfeited any moral right to make any argument whatsoever. He has removed himself, with malice aforethought, from the arena of human discourse, and to enter into it with him would be to lose our humanity. To take our humanity is, of course, precisely what the anti-Zionists want, and we should not give it to them.
Our only answer, then, should be to look the anti-Zionist in the eye and speak the truth: “You are not a saint. You are the devil.”
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