The Anti-Semitic Nature of Attempts to Outlaw BDS and Criticism of Israel in the USA

As a Jew, I have written on this subject before, but after watching the four-part Al Jazeera film on the pro-Israel lobby in the USA, censored under pressure by AIPAC because it exposes their abhorrent methods and objectives, I feel a need to go much deeper. Many Jews, and I am one, have never supported political Zionism or the claim that Israel is a "state of the Jewish people" and, therefore, our state just as many people of European descent never accepted slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation in the USA or apartheid in South Africa. I have blogged elsewhere (and Israeli history professor Shlomo Sand has published an entire book) on the easily disproven myth that there is such an entity as "The Jewish People." Jews are composed of many disparate groups, often with little in common. As a Jew, I lay claim to an absolute right to oppose political Zionism, which is a blatant form of anti-Semitism because it totally incorporates the position of European anti-Semites that Jews do not belong in the countries where they were born. Zionism is thus fundamentally anti-Jewish, and Israel is equally anti-Jewish because political Zionism is the root ideology of Israel. For any one to pass a law making it illegal to question the right of Israel to exist or to oppose Israeli apartheid is to try to deny me (and others) the right to fight back against this pernicious attack on us as Jews, especially when it comes from other Jews. All the same arguments affirm our right to speak out for Palestinian human, civil, and democratic rights in all of historic Palestine. And they affirm our right to participate in and promote the non-violent BDS movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. I call out those behind these ridiculous attempts to redefine anti-Semitism to include criticism of political Zionism, Israel or our assertion that the right of any state to exist is conditional on its behavior, especially toward those it rules. Apartheid states have no right to exist. Therefore, I say unequivocally that AIPAC is anti-Semitic. The Canary Project is anti-Semitic. The many other organizations with the mission of spreading pro-Israel propaganda in the USA and of smearing activists for Palestinian rights are all anti-Semitic. They are the real hate groups, just as the Israeli government and army are the real terrorists. It is past time to set things right side up, and to stand for what is right.