I agree that antisemitism must always be denounced- and 99.99% of the Left always do denouncenit-and the small number people who actually do believe this sort of rubbish- but does it really matter if progressive activists, in an age when we know every Israeli government from here on in is going to be against the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel, and will never ease the endless collective repression inflicted on ordinary Palestinians, identify as Zionists or not? I personally support Israel's right to exist in peace and safety on the pre-1967 linss(in the only areas the state ever had a legitimate claim to- but let's face it: it's silly to act as if Israel's going to cease to exist as a country unless everybody supports its "right to exist", unless everybody in the world takes its side against the Palestians, unless everyone endorses everything the IDF are doing in Gaza and the West Bank, unless everyone agrees that any Palestinian leadership that tries to work with Israel agrees to the premise that it deserves to have IDF troops on Palestinian soil, that it deserves to be forced to play the role of the defeated side in the conflict, that it deserves to treated as if its nation identity isn't real, that it acts out of nothing but antisemitism, that ordinary Palestinians have no legitimate grievances about how the Israeli government has treated them, that Palestinians can never, no matter what, be treated as if they are capable of not being murderous berserkers?

I think there are actually two Zionisms: small-z zionism, the idea of a safe homeland for those Jews who feel they must have such a place, yet does not oppress or persecute Palestinians- the other people with equal roots in the soil of the general area. In my view, the vast majority of those who identify as non-Zionists could probably live with that, and supported that up until the Permanent Ascension of Netanyahu.

What Netanyahu and his supporters- and, it now appears you- demand support for, instead of that, is "Large-Z Zionism"(or "realzionismus" to repurpose a term the East Germans used to describe their closed, ossified perversion of socialism) in which all of the original ideals of what Israel was to be about are now reduced to nothing but the fascistic objective of taking land for the mere sake of taking land, which withholds any empathy or recognition of fundamental humanity to ordinary Palestinians, assigns collective responsibility to all of them for things no one but Hamas militants had a hand in, and which spent decades inflicting massive violence on innocent Palestinian civilians far out of proportion to anything done to Israelis on October 7th.

I agree that what Hamas did that day was vile, and that the hostages should be immediately released, and thar Hamas as an organization should never have existed- which also means Netanyahu should immediately apologize, resign, turn himself into the Israeli police and be put on trial for treason for ever having "bolstered" them as a counterweight against Fatah.

But this situation cannot decently be used to brand all or even many Palestine solidarity activists as "Jew haters". The prohibitive majority clearly aren't- if they were, there would not be sizable Jewish Voice For Peace contingents in Palestine solidarity marches worldwide.

Let us fight antisemitism- but slandering nearly all critics of what Netanyahu does in Gaza as antisemites. Doing so robs the word of it's meeting.

Instead- try and find an answer to this question: can the unspeakable historic oppression of one people, on one continent, ever justify the subsequent oppression of another people, on another continent, when the second people had nothing to do with the oppression of the first?