College and University Monitor

Columbia Iranian Studies Professor Hamid Dabashi wrote in a March 17 op-ed for Al Jazeera that Zionists are “the beneficiaries of anti-Semitism.”

Dabashi began the op-ed by calling for Muslims and Jews to unite against anti-Semitism; however, he proceeded to accuse Zionists of using the anti-Semitism label “to silence, paralyze and neutralize their political opponents.”

“Today, anti-Semitism is real and Zionists are categorically unqualified even to detect, let alone to fight it. Jews are the victims, Zionists the beneficiaries of anti-Semitism,” Dabashi wrote. “The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, freely and openly elected as the top political figure of the Zionists, is a rank racist with a widespread coalition with all other racists, including anti-Semites, chief among them the US President, Donald Trump.”

Dabashi added that Zionists don’t have the “moral authority” to combat anti-Semitism because they are “hardcore or liberal advocates of that ideology of land theft, occupation and incremental genocide of Palestinians.” He went onto write that anti-Semitism is a “deadly European disease” and cited a March 7 op-ed from Peter Beinart at The Forward arguing that anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism.

“Jews and Muslims are natural allies in this battle against racism in the intertwined forms of entrenched anti-Semitism and widespread Islamophobia,” Dabashi concludes his op-ed. “Zionists and racist Europeans know this. The conflation of Zionism and Judaism, as recently staged by [French President Emmanuel] Macron, is a false flag to confuse the issue and prevent the active solidarity of these two main victims of their racism.”...