Zionism’s False Choice: Making A Socialist Intervention on Combating Anti-Semitism

To come of age in the United States means to be raised under a deeply pervasive barrage of both blatant and incredibly subtle propaganda. For those of us who call ourselves socialists, becoming aware of this is a key moment in our political development. The American dream we were told to believe in has turned out to be just another packaged lie we are sold, and the reality of the world we find in its place is one of Orwellian nightmares, greedy neo-colonialists, and ecological devastation. But the rejection of this lie has only ever been the first step towards being free of its influence. The language of propaganda, like the very language we speak, has been unconsciously absorbed into our ways of thinking. Ways that often show up even in our opposition to it. This is the part of propaganda that’s hardest to break free of, for it’s this part that we often can’t even see.

Like the atheist, raised in an evangelical community who, despite their explicit rejection of the Christian dogma they were indoctrinated with, still implicitly uses the framework of purity and sin in their language and thought processes, even if it’s now applied in a secular leftist context. It is not uncommon to find even the most adamant anti-capitalists or environmentalists still falling into the trappings of individualism or consumerism, and reproducing the very exploitative logic they set out to oppose.

True intellectual, and therefore political, freedom can only be achieved once we thoroughly understand the structure of belief and language in our culture's propaganda, and then untangle those structures from how we construct our own politics. Often this means confronting the most sensitive areas of our political discourse. And for socialists, the ongoing, inflammatory debate over anti-Semitism is but another example, one recently brought to a head by Mamdani’s controversial attendance at an October 7th Vigil in Union Square, New York, on Wednesday night.

The Mayor’s attendance at the vigil comes following the barrage of demonstrably false allegations of anti-Semitism he has faced since his election last fall. These allegations, made almost entirely by bad-faith actors amongst the oligarchic political establishment, seek to weaponize Zohran’s mere existence as a Muslim, along with his outspoken support for Palestine in opposition to Israel’s genocide, as “proof” of an allegedly fervent anti-Semitism in the Mayor’s office.

On September 29, in a move to try to silence said criticism and defend his administration from the pro-Israel establishment, which is trying so desperately to paint him as an anti-Semite, Zohran released a 30+ page plan entitled ‘New York City's Strategy to Combat Antisemitism’, outlining his administration’s approach to Jewish safety in the city. The strategy commits much-needed funding to initiatives against anti-Semitic hate crimes, including towards the security of synagogues and other houses of worship, new funding for Jewish historical & cultural institutions, expanded Holocaust education, as well as a citywide campaign informing New Yorkers how to report discrimination of this sort. However, the plan also places funding into known Zionist support groups such as United Jewish Appeal (UJA) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), organizations which are known to both advocate for and directly send millions of dollars straight to the settler-occupation and genocide in Palestine.

Zohran’s administration has still maintained its public opposition to pro-Israel policy and has called for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu under his International Criminal Court warrant. It has also outwardly opposed the settler expansion within the West Bank, which Mamdani himself previously challenged through his ‘Not On Our Dime!’ Act. However, the fine print within the new Mayoral plan–namely, its support for Zionist institutions–has made it clear that now, as the Mayor, Mamdani has unfortunately made vast capitulations to Pro-Israel interests in New York.

Zohran’s attendance at the October 7th Anniversary Vigil on Wednesday night was met with broad popular opposition, and rightly so. To play into the Zionist narrative regarding the events of October 7th, 2023, is to subsequently play into the broader Israeli narrative of the genocide at large. One in which the event is continuously used to re-justify further death and devastation upon the Palestinian people at the behest of Israel’s colonial project. For many, Zohran’s attendance at an event of this sort was to yield to this narrative, in turn making them more suspicious of the long game of his strategy in this regard.

In Palestinians Deserve More, a piece by Scott Patrick recently published in Geese, he effectively articulates this suspicion in many ways. Patrick points out the hypocrisy of denouncing Zionism rhetorically while funding institutions that intellectually and even materially support it. The piece further critiques the emblematic hypocrisy of having a strategy aimed at combating anti-Semitism in the first place, without also having one aimed at protecting Muslim and Palestinian New Yorkers along with their allies. These groups have been victimized by many, including the New York City government itself, and now may face even higher levels of suppression at the hands of the NYPD under new, vague policing guidelines.

Whether intentional or not, Zohran’s attempt to walk the line between appeasing critics, contributing to Jewish safety within the city, and remaining in opposition to Israeli propaganda and war crimes has ultimately failed. Any state money that flows, whether directly or indirectly, towards the murder of innocents or the illegal seizure of land must be steadfastly opposed, especially when it comes from those who claim alignment with the pro-Palestinian cause. No matter how progressive Mamdani may be on the question of Palestine compared to his peers, it is necessary to criticize and protest funding of this sort.

The broader discourse surrounding these events has also, however, exposed a vein within socialist circles that, in their rightful frustration with relentless Zionist propaganda, have become far too comfortable with the denial of anti-Semitism as an issue worth attention at all. Some even, in extreme cases, contribute to the very proliferation of anti-Semitism in the first place.

This should come as no surprise. For decades, the Zionist project has worked tirelessly to equate any form of opposition to it with anti-Semitism, and to equate Judaism as a whole with the Israeli state. This is the narrative, whether explicit or veiled,  that the vast majority of us grew up under in the United States. But the ironclad grip of that narrative is finally slipping. The demand to end all material and military support to Israel is now more popular than ever, and the percentage of Americans across the political divide who support that initiative only grows with each passing month.

For the first time in decades, we are operating in a political landscape that could very well see such an initiative at the top of the ticket in the coming 2028 elections. But even as this Zionist fever seems to be breaking, the grammar of the propagandistic conflations it's been planting for so long remains, and it is precisely this lingering shadow of Zionism’s false choice that threatens to kneecap any hope we may have of creating change. For each time critics of Zionism equate pro-Jewish speech or actions with being pro-Israel, they inadvertently fall into the same narrative peddled by the same institutions they criticize. In essence, they only strengthen Zionism and its hold over American politics.

The recent statement published in Geese from the NYC-DSA group, World to Win (W2W), is a resounding rejection of support for Zionism in Mamdani’s new plan. Although it correctly criticizes much at the heart of the plan's failure, it inadvertently falls into this aforementioned conflation. By failing to address the urgent issue of socialist mass leadership in combating anti-Semitism, it cedes leadership of crucial political terrain to the right and even to Zionism itself. 

The question of which organizations receive municipal grants from the initiative is not a trivial one, and W2W is right to demand transparency and accountability around it. But much of the statement limits the potency of its own critiques by failing to link these issues to a comprehensive, socialist orientation. The statement implies that anti-Semitism is not a problem worth leading on, painting the picture of an issue entirely contrived by the political establishment. W2W fails to mention once how anti-Semitism could be more effectively combatted or offer a concrete alternative that directs a mass audience to new and advanced solutions that reflect our values. This sort of limited thinking certainly cannot be considered the socialists’ line of reasoning on tangible xenophobic violence.

The left should demand independent data collection, and a clear distinction between an anti-Semitic hate crime and political speech about Israel. But skepticism about methodology is not the same thing as skepticism about the existence and growing prevalence of xenophobic anti-Semitic hate in New York and beyond. For socialists to oppose the weaponization of anti-Semitism and claim mass leadership of anti-Zionism, it must establish itself as the most uncompromising and principled political force against anti-Semitism.

One of the most striking developments of the post-October 7 political landscape has been the way sections of the far-right have learned to appropriate the language of Palestinian solidarity, and even the guise of anti-Zionism for explicitly anti-Semitic purposes. Nick Fuentes has explicitly argued that Israel’s destruction of Gaza can be politically useful for fascists insofar as it mobilizes people against Jews, and has repeatedly redirected criticism of Israel into hateful conspiracies about Jewish control of the American state. Far-right actors have gleefully recognized something that parts of the left seem reluctant to acknowledge: the Israel-Palestine conflict can be used as a vehicle for an older politics of anti-Semitic conspiracy.

 This terrain must urgently be combatted by socialists. By uniting the struggle against anti-Semitism and Zionism, we most effectively wage both battles, and most effectively place socialism–the only possible solution to American imperialism–in a position where it can achieve mass leadership. Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, and defending our Jewish friends and neighbors has no equivalence to pro-Zionism. This perspective may sound tired, but with the prospect of socialism now more tangible than ever, we must be careful not to present too easily an Achilles' heel within the movement for our opponents to exploit, as they have so often before in this case.

Jewish safety should be a socialist issue. We are the only organized political force in the nation that offers any serious solution to the growing hate and violence in the United States. We are the only political force that is capable of opposing fascism at home and abroad, and we should be proud to hold that position. The defense of Jewish life should belong as naturally to socialism as the defense of Black life, immigrant life, Muslim life, queer life, or Palestinian life. Socialists should represent the political force that says that no community should have to choose between its safety and its politics.

That also means acknowledging something else a lot of the discourse around this subject largely obscures: Jewish New Yorkers are not a singular political bloc. There are Zionists and anti-Zionists, religious Jews and secular Jews, socialists and conservatives, Orthodox Jews and assimilated Jews. A left politics worthy of the name cannot regard “Jewish organizations” as a single political subject, any more than it could speak of “Arab organizations” or “Muslim organizations” as though they possessed a unified political consciousness.

Without combating anti-Semitism, genuine anti-Zionism in the United States gets siphoned into bad-faith narratives and isolated from mass political viability governed by the far-right. And without principled Anti-Zionism, we allow American support for the genocide in Gaza to go unchecked. The popular critique of Mayor Mamdani's plan offers much to take incredibly seriously. Should a socialist mayoral administration give public money to organizations that directly support settlement expansion or other components of the Israeli occupation? Our answer must be a resounding no. Should city agencies be able to use anti-Semitism as a pretext to repress constitutionally protected criticism of Israel? Absolutely not. On these issues, the mayor still has much to answer for and correct, and the socialists of New York have much work to do to continue to organize and support the Palestinian solidarity movement and its allies, even–especially–when they are directed at the Mayor himself.

Socialists must insist that New York City and the federal government examine their financial, procurement, and institutional relationships with entities implicated in the occupation while simultaneously demanding an aggressive public campaign against anti-Semitism. These are not competing causes. The mayor should remove funding that makes its way back to genocidal forces, and it must be directed towards the safety of Jewish New Yorkers here at home that the initiative was made to combat.

Any principled socialist municipal strategy seeking genuine leadership over the diverse demographics that make up our communities would have to combat anti-Semitism while also expanding protections against Islamophobia, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian hate,  all of which are forms of contemporary xenophobia that are not nearly being combatted enough, despite their continued meteoric rise. It would teach the history of Jewish life without censoring the history of Palestine and its struggle against oppression; it would distinguish anti-Semitic conspiracy from legitimate anti-Zionist politics; it would investigate hate crimes without outsourcing political judgment to Zionist advocacy groups; and it would make clear that solidarity with Palestinians is strengthened, not weakened, by an uncompromising rejection of anti-Semitism.

The task for socialists is harder than choosing one side of a false binary. That is not a compromise; it is the only position from which socialism can hope to win. The number of people in our country who desire an end to Israel’s war crimes and safety for people of all faiths is growing. We must ask ourselves: will we be so blinded by the structures of Zionist propaganda that we will leave them behind? To be a socialist is to be for the liberation and safety of all people. For too long we’ve been presented with a false choice, rooted in Zionism, that we can only be for the freedom of Palestine or the safety of Jews. It is this narrative, peddled time and time again, that we as a nation across the political divide have fallen for hook, line, and sinker. The only question that remains is, will we continue to do so? Or will we forge a new narrative, one free of the rhetorical structures and boundaries that have allowed for so much slaughter? To imagine this new way of thinking is our imperative; anything less only plays into the hands of those who seek to divide us.