Pro-Israel zealots commonly attempt to discredit criticism of the Israeli government by equating such criticism with antisemitism, because Israel is the world’s only state with a Jewish majority.
One way of lifting up this accusation is to say that pro-Palestine leftists hold Israel to a different standard by focusing on Israel and ignoring human rights concerns in other countries. The World Jewish Congress (5/4/22) gives supposed examples of this, such as “accusing Israel of human right violations while refusing to criticize regimes with far worse human right abuses, such as Iran, North Korea, Iraq and Pakistan,” or “rebuking Israel for allegedly violating women’s rights, while ignoring significantly worse abuses carried out by governments and terrorist organizations.”
‘Demonization and double standards’
To the New York Times (6/14/25), saying that people are opposed to Israel and not to Jews is “making excuses.”
The New York Times (6/14/25) recently invoked this in an editorial headlined “Antisemitism Is an Urgent Problem. Too Many People Are Making Excuses.” To the board’s credit, the editorial talks about how antisemitism plays a big role in the Trump administration’s racist and demagogic rule—although it could have gone further into analyzing how antisemitism is at the center of fascism’s other conspiratorial bigotries: that Jewish masterminds are behind mass immigration (FAIR.org, 10/30/18) and Black Lives Matter (Fox Business, 12/15/17).
But the editorialists aim at least as much criticism at the left for its vocal opposition against the ongoing genocide and starvation in Gaza. Yes, the editors admit that “criticism of the Israeli government is not the same thing as antisemitism,” and insist that they themselves “have abhorred the mass killing of civilians and the destruction of Gaza.” They also said that pro-Israel activists “hurt their own cause when they equate all such arguments with antisemitism.”
There’s a “but” coming. “But some Americans have gone too far in the other direction,” the board said, pointing to the “3D test” of “delegitimization, demonization and double standards” that it says is a key test for determining “when criticism of Israel crosses into antisemitism.” “Progressive rhetoric has regularly failed that test in recent years,” they write:
Consider the double standard that leads to a fixation on Israel’s human rights record and little campus activism about the records of China, Russia, Sudan, Venezuela or almost any other country. Consider how often left-leaning groups suggest that the world’s one Jewish state should not exist and express admiration for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis—Iran-backed terrorist groups that brag about murdering Jews. Consider how often people use “Zionist” as a slur—an echo of Soviet propaganda from the Cold War—and call for the exclusion of Zionists from public spaces. The definition of a Zionist is somebody who supports the existence of Israel.
Let’s take these one at a time. It is depressingly telling that the first line echoes a year-old editorial in the right-wing City Journal (4/14/24) that condemned students for not aiming their protests at Syria, Russia or China. The most obvious answer to these “gotcha” scenarios is that the US and US universities are not funding human rights violations or wars initiated by any of these countries. The protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza are growing in the US precisely because of US support for Israel. Students often want to see their universities divest from Israeli entities as a way to put pressure on Israel, the same way activists mobilized against South African apartheid.
The US and its allies have imposed sanctions on Russia (Reuters, 2/27/22; Politico, 2/28/22; Al Jazeera, 4/24/24), and the US is currently in a trade war with China (CNN, 6/11/25); the State Department has declared it will “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese students (Reuters, 5/29/25). The Trump administration’s new travel restrictions ban people from Sudan and highly restrict entry for Venezuelans (NPR, 6/9/25). The Council on Foreign Relations (3/11/25) estimates that the US has given Ukraine $128 billion to defend against the Russian invasion, and the House of Representatives has an entire committee devoted to investigating China’s ruling Communist Party.
The Times next asks us to “consider how often left-leaning groups suggest that the world’s one Jewish state should not exist.” Left-leaning groups generally oppose ethnostates, and tend not to make an exception for Israel, whose ethnic policies have been condemned as “apartheid” by the world’s leading human rights groups. As for expressing admiration for Hamas et al.: You’ll rarely hear US progressives praising Hamas, but you will hear them blaming Hamas’s violence on the thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel prior to October 7, 2023.
Antisemitism as pretext
The Times goes on to complain that the word “Zionist,” which it defines as “somebody who supports the existence of Israel,” is used as a slur. But Zionism hasn’t become a thorny word because of antisemitism. Zionists are defending a political system where rights and freedom depend on one’s religion and ethnicity, a concept the small-d democrats of a liberal paper like the Times would otherwise abhor. The word “Dixiecrat” is remembered today only as a bad word, not because these people were from the American Southeast, but because they advocated for segregation.
The Times, as usual, wrongly equates Zionism with Jewishness. There are many Jewish non-Zionists and anti-Zionists, including sects that view Zionism as a sort of false messianism. There are also many Christian Zionists—who far outnumber Jewish Zionists—who see Israel as a necessary means to the biblically foretold End Times.
The editorial admits that the Trump administration “has also used [antisemitism] as a pretext for his broader campaign against the independence of higher education.” The paper notes: “The combination risks turning antisemitism into yet another partisan issue, encouraging opponents to dismiss it as one of his invented realities.”
The Times is absolutely right that the Trump administration’s vociferous attacks on antisemitism are ineffective, precisely because they are patently just a stick with which to beat his enemies in academia. But that is the exact same problem that the Times editorial has: If you use charges of antisemitism as a pretense to smear critics of a genocidal government, you are doing nothing to protect Jews.
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This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Ari Paul.