By Dr. Alex Grobman
No democratic state should consider itself immune to rebuke. Israel is no exception. As the late American sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset once observed, “In ancient Israel, the Biblical prophets devised the art of self-criticism.” This tradition of self-examination remains embedded in Israeli society today. But there is a vital distinction between legitimate criticism of government policies and rhetoric that denies Israel’s very legitimacy.
The Standards of Justice
Journalist Edward Rothstein offered a useful measure for this distinction: criticism of Israel crosses into antisemitism when “standards of justice” are applied in a distorted fashion—particularly when such distortions jeopardize Israel’s survival. When murders are committed, when genocidal declarations are celebrated, and when rhetoric that would qualify as hate speech on any university campus is directed against Israel, the issue is no longer honest critique but a modern manifestation of antisemitism.
Recognizing What It Is
Like pornography, antisemitism is often “recognized when seen.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this clearly. When confronted with anti-Zionist remarks at Harvard, he rebuked the speaker, declaring, “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking about antisemitism.” Similarly, literary scholar Hans Meyer explained that those who claim to oppose only “Zionism” but not Jews are fooling themselves. The Jewish state is the embodiment of Jewish peoplehood; wishing to dismantle it is simply Jew-hatred in another form.
Ironic Antisemitism
Josef Joffe, longtime editor of Die Zeit, noted the irony of contemporary antisemitism: in polite Western society, open hatred of Jews is unacceptable, but vilifying Israeli leaders—or Israel itself—is tolerated. This selective outrage is telling. While countries with far worse human rights records rarely make headlines, Israel is relentlessly singled out for opprobrium. Joffe called this an “obsessive need for moral denigration,” one that reveals not facts but prejudice.
“Only Against the State”
Anti-Zionists often protest that their hostility is directed “only” at Israel, not Jews. But as Thomas Friedman—no stranger to criticism of Israeli policies—admitted, when Israel is singled out for disproportionate condemnation and sanctions, that is antisemitism. Per Ahlmark, Sweden’s late deputy prime minister, clarified the absurdity: one cannot claim to love a people while calling for the elimination of their state. No one would believe a person who declared affection for Britons but opposed Britain’s existence. Yet this is precisely the double standard applied to Jews.
A Country’s Right to Exist
As former Israeli Ambassador Daniel Taub once pointed out, no one expresses support for “Australia’s right to exist” or “Guatemala’s right to exist.” Such statements would sound nonsensical. Yet people say this about Israel, as though its very existence were a matter of debate. That alone exposes the exceptionalism—and the prejudice—underlying much of the rhetoric against the Jewish state.
The Old Hatred, New Clothes
Former UK Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks captured this evolution: in the Middle Ages, antisemites targeted Jewish religion; in the 19th and 20th centuries, they targeted Jewish race; today, they target the Jewish nation-state. It is the same hatred, repackaged in modern political language.
Drawing the Line
Criticism of Israel’s leaders, its policies, or its military decisions is legitimate in the same way it is for any democracy. Israelis themselves are among their government’s harshest critics. But when the critique morphs into delegitimization, when it seeks to deny the Jewish people what is granted to every other people—the right to a sovereign homeland—then it is not justice, not human rights, not peace. It is antisemitism.
And today, more than ever, the world must learn to tell the difference.