By Jonathan D. Salant, JNS
“Anti-Zionism can be a framework for justifying anti-Jewish hostility,” Rafaela Dancygier, of Princeton University, told the N.J. Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
The conflation of Judaism and Zionism is contributing to the rise in antisemitism, experts told a government panel investigating Jew-hatred in New Jersey.
Rafaela Dancygier, professor of politics and public and international affairs at Princeton University, told the New Jersey Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that “opposition to anti-Jewish hate erodes when it’s framed in anti-Israel terms.”
“It makes a meaningful share of the public unwilling to condemn it,” she said. “Anti-Zionism can be a framework for justifying anti-Jewish hostility.”
The hearing was the second of three scheduled by the advisory committee as antisemitism continues to grow since Oct. 7.
New Jersey reported 687 antisemitic incidents last year, behind only New York and California, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s annual audit. In 2022, the year before the Hamas attack, there were 409.
And an attachment to Israel is a very important component of what it means to be Jewish in America, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2020 study. Eight in 10 Jews said caring about Israel was an essential or important part of being Jewish.
This relationship has nothing to do with Israeli government policy or politics, said Daniel Nussbaum, a doctoral student and researcher at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and the Steinhardt Social Research Institute at Brandeis University.
But as support for Israel declines nationally—in a recent Quinnipiac University poll, a record high 48% of U.S. voters said that Washington was too supportive of the Jewish state—Jews are being forced to bear the punishment.
“Opposition to anti-Jewish hate erodes when it’s framed in anti-Israel terms,” Dancygier said.
The age-old tropes against Jews are being gussied up and used against “Zionists,” Dancygier said. “‘Zionist’ simply substitutes for ‘Jew,’” she said.
The witnesses testified that antisemitism traditionally spikes when Israel is at war and shrinks at other times. For example, with a ceasefire holding in Gaza, there are fewer antisemitic incidents on college campuses, Nussbaum said, though some of that may be due to administrators finally cracking down on protesters.
“It’s just not on people’s minds,” Nussbaum said. “It’s not in the news anymore.”
In addition, Jews have been called out as Western imperialists, a trope that came from the old Soviet Union as it sided with Arab nations against Israel, Dancygier said.
“These are classic conspiratorial tropes,” she said. “Certainly, there are themes that echo this overall narrative structure that Israel is part of the Western powers that are imperialist in nature.”
Another hearing is scheduled for July. A final report is expected by July 2027.
