Around a week ago I published an article about The Denial Of Antisemitism, which also touched on the relationship between antisemitic views as compared to anti-Zionist views. I highlighted several examples of the writer Barry Purcell denying that various actions and organisations were antisemitic, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. This short Holocaust Memorial Museum video, discusses denials and trivialisations of mass murders as a kind of antisemitism that has difficulty with accepting the idea of Jews as victims.
Following the publication of this article, Barry Purcell has returned to his position on anti-Zionist views as compared to antisemitic views, in order to offer some additional commentary. As he has very often done in the past, he sought to justify his position by reference to Jewish people themselves. Specifically, his suggestion is that if any of his readers would take the time to engage with some Jewish people “in the real world”, they too would discover significant anti-Zionist sentiment among the Jewish community.
The most obvious response to the tweet above is that Barry Purcell is in fact himself here engaging with the views of Jewish people, and being told the precise opposite of what he promised. The tweet above is a performative contradiction. The JewBelong organisation is a large cultural and political advocacy nonprofit. Here, this Jewish group is advocating for Zionism as providing a homeland for Jewish people, and their view is being rejected as illegitimate. It seems that while we are admonished to “chat with a few Jews”, we are also chastised to exclude this kind of Jewish person from the chat. It appears that this is not the correct kind of Jewish person to chat with, as apparently Barry Purcell insists that we should only chat with another very specific category of Jewish person.
When attempting to justify views such as “all people of good conscience should hate Zionists”, Barry Purcell very often just happens to have an anonymous “my Jewish friend” story, which neatly supports his position. Unlike public groups like JewBelong, these anonymous Jewish friends are evidently the correct kind of Jewish person to chat with. The “my Jewish friend” stories are frequently presented much like a Donal Trump “sir story“, where it turns out that in any given circumstance an unnamed person just happens to have recently verified and validated the desired position.
All of these “my Jewish friend” stories may well be entirely true, but of course this doesn’t matter at all. Even if Barry Purcell knows a small number of Jewish people who are rabidly anti-Zionist, this would demonstrate absolutely nothing. The argument being made here is that anti-Zionism is not synonymous with antisemitism, and the evidence offered to support this position is that anti-Zionist views like those of Barry Purcell are in fact widespread among the Jewish community. How could anyone be accused of antisemitism merely for sharing a position that is broadly held among Jewish people themselves? We are repeatedly told that all we have to do is talk to some Jewish people and we will immediately realise that they hold the same anti-Zionist views as Barry Purcell.
In fact, we don’t need to rely on “my Jewish friend” stories to determine whether or not Jewish people in general share the same position as Barry Purcell on Zionism. Data on this topic is very often openly published.
Broadly speaking, the worldwide Jewish population is divided roughly evenly between those in Israel and those in the diaspora. A significant majority of the diaspora is in the USA, such that Israel and the USA together account for well over 80% of the global Jewish people. The next largest Jewish community is in France, with around 2% of the total Jewish population.
The Institute For Palestine Studies has reported that in Israel, “anti-Zionists are estimated to constitute no more than 8 percent of Israel’s Jewish population”. Much of this 8% is explained by ultra-orthodox religious views, holding that the nation of Israel should only come into existence after the messiah has come to earth. However, I suspect that Barry Purcell was not seeking to align himself with Neturei Kara or other similar Haredi groups. In the USA, research by the Jewish People Policy Institute has found that 80% of Jewish people there identify as Zionists. In France, since an AJC Paris Survey found that 73% of French Jews said October 7th had “strengthened their Zionist convictions”, it also seems fair to assume that anti-Zionist views are held by a tiny minority of the Jewish population there. Overall then, it is very clear that there is no significant part of the Jewish population worldwide that is anti-Zionist, notwithstanding stories about anonymous Jewish friends who agree with Barry Purcell. In fact, the JPPI found that 72% of the Jewish people they surveyed believed that expressions of anti-Zionism were usually antisemitic.
Even those with appalling views such as “all people of good conscience should hate Zionists” will have a story to justify their position, but advocating for hate towards people based on their political opinions is abhorrent. It’s easy to say “chat with a few Jews” or “go talk to some Jews” as cover when promoting such bigotries. However, anonymous “my Jewish friend” stories carry no water when it is easily demonstrable that broadly speaking the Jewish community abhors the position that Barry Purcell is so exercised in promoting. Arguing that a position can’t be antisemitic because Jewish people themselves so often adhere to it, is utterly absurd when such a large majority of Jewish people reject that position and in fact believe it to be overtly antisemitic.
So of course it’s a good idea to chat with some Jewish friends about these issues. The evidence suggests they’re very likely to tell you that the most committed anti-Zionists are very often just garden variety antisemites.