It’s Antisemitic To Deny the Jewish Identity of Anti-Zionist Jews

Dan Goldman sucks.

Image source: Tessa Bury, CC

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This week New York centrist congressman Dan Goldman lost his reelection bid to left wing socialist Brad Lander; Lander won by a 65.8% to 34%, a shattering rebuke to the incumbent.

One of the major issues in the election was Israel. Goldman is an enthusiastic Zionist. Lander, a staunch ally of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, also identifies as a liberal Zionist, but he opposes military aid to Israel and has forthrightly characterized the genocide in Gaza as a genocide. He’s said that Israel’s recent atrocities in Lebanon may constitute a genocide as well.

It seems pretty clear that Lander’s position here—and his association with a popular mayor—won out over Goldman’s in the district. Goldman responded by suggesting he lost, not because of his positions, but because of his identity.

“Jews have given so much to this country,” he declared.

As history has taught us, antisemitic tropes and stereotypes, some of which I heard personally on this campaign, will ultimately be the undoing of our democracy if we all don’t lean in and speak out — even if it’s not politically expedient.

Goldman doesn’t say specifically what those tropes are. Maybe he’s referring to Lander pointing out that Israel is committing a genocide. He may also be referring to Lander’s criticism of the Celebrate Israel parade, or to Lander’s explanation of his decision to stop investing in Israel bonds as City Comptroller. Or maybe Goldman’s just saying some people said antisemitic things to him on the campaign trail, which they probably did, because antisemitism is unfortunately pretty prevalent.

But the reason to bring up antisemitism here seems to be to claim that NY-10 somehow embraced antisemitism by choosing Brad Lander over Dan Goldman.

Only Zionists get to be Jews

One thing about Brad Lander—a thing that Brad Lander emphasized over and over in the campaign—is that he is Jewish. He ran a campaign, in fact, centered on his Jewish identity, which he frames in terms of diaspora, making alliances and connections with neighbors across difference. For example, here’s a description in the Forward (a Jewish paper) describing Lander on the campaign trail.

“At the Greek Jewish Festival on the Lower East Side earlier this month, one critic approached him demanding to know his “favorite intifada.” Another began shouting insults. Eventually, Lander said, the first critic turned on the second and urged him to stop yelling so they could have a real argument. “We had a Jewish argument,” Lander said. “Neither of us convinced each other, but we had a respectful conversation across lines of difference.””

In the same article, Lander says, “I am very comfortable being in coalition with people who have a different point of view on Israel and Palestine, who, I know, value everyone’s humanity.” Coalition, argument, diversity, debate—Lander sees these as part of his Jewish identity, as a Jew, which, he will be the first to tell you, he is.

Goldman, though, in presenting his loss as a victory for antisemitism, is suggesting that Lander’s Jewishness doesn’t matter, or isn’t real. This echoes right wing smears and attacks against Bernie Sanders, another left-wing Jewish politician who denounced Israel’s brutalization of Palestinian people.

Both Sanders and Lander identify as liberal Zionists. But their support of Zionism is seen as insufficient to validate their identity as Jews. Zionism for Goldman and for many Zionists (Jewish and non-Jewish) is seen as the core of Judaism; those who fail to affirm their Zionism loudly enough or in the correct ways (or who are, like me, anti-Zionists) are denied Jewish identity and standing as Jews.

Inauthenticity is an antisemitic trope

Part of the reason to deny that Sanders, Lander, and me are Jewish is because Zionists compulsively weaponize Jewish identity, marginalization, and suffering as justification for Israeli policies and Israeli crimes. Zionists claim to speak in the name of all Jews and all Jewish trauma; they say they are justified in any extremes of violence to protect themselves and all Jews. When other Jews speak up and say, “Hey, using past injustice as an excuse to commit more injustice is fucked up,” that is embarrassing and inconvenient. The easiest path past the inconvenience is just saying, “well those people aren’t really Jews.”

This is especially effective because Jewish fakeness is an antisemitic trope. The idea that Jews are not real, that they have no authentic identity, has been core to antisemitic invective that paints Jewish people as liars, manipulators, and parasites, with no real truth to them, and no real connection to a pure volk.

Zionist propaganda often leans into these smears and stereotypes, painting Jews in the diaspora as weak and inauthentic. It is only when Jews arrive in, or embrace, Israel, that they become strong virile nationalist heroes. Jews in Israel are no longer Jews “with trembling knees”—which is to say they have found their strength and their authenticity.

This is why of the most common antisemitic tropes in public discourse today is the antisemitic claim that Jews who are not Zionists are not real Jews. It’s the perfect mirror flipside of the antisemitic claim that all Jews are responsible for what Israel does, or that all Jews are secretly Zionists. And these claims are reinforcing; Zionists and antisemites both insist that being Jewish only means one thing. As a result, Zionist institutions spend a lot of time spreading what is effectively antisemitic propaganda, stridently proclaiming that all Jews everywhere are inseparable from a single state’s policy of war and genocide.

Attacking Goldman’s Jewish identity is wrong; antisemitic attacks on him are wrong. But by the same token, Goldman is wrong, and harms all Jews, when he uses antisemitic tropes to elide or call into question the Jewish identity of Jewish people who oppose genocide and question current US Israel policy.

Zionists—Jewish and non-Jewish—do Jewish people as a whole no favors when they insist on evacuating Jewish diversity. And when Zionists question the authenticity and identity of anti-Zionists, non-Zionists, and even liberal Zionists, they are themselves spreading the antisemitism they decry.