College and University Monitor

Columbia Professor Joseph Massad, who has a history of criticizing Israel, wrote on an anti-Zionist website that it’s anti-Semitic to refer to Israel as “the Jewish state.”

In an August 24 Electronic Intifada piece titled “Anti-Semitism vs. anti-colonialism,” Massad argued that the ongoing anti-Semitic controversies involving Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party was predicated on Zionists equating criticisms of the Israeli government to anti-Semitism.

“In naming its state ‘the Jewish people,’ the Zionist movement conflated and conflates its colonial project with all Jews, even when the majority of world Jewry did not support the movement and continues to refuse to live in, and become citizens of, Israel,” Massad wrote. “Therefore, it is imperative to emphasize that it is Israel and its supporters who conflate Israel with all Jews, and then claim that condemning Israel, its laws, policies, actions and ideology amounts to condemning the Jewish people.”

Massad added that Palestinians are simply resisting Israel’s “racist and colonial nature.”