Carson Bonner, Campus Carrier editor-in-chief
For decades, the United States has aligned itself with Israel for a number of reasons: regional stability in the Middle East, military intelligence, and above all, historical recognition. The United States was the first country to recognize Israel as a country after 1948, when the territory known as British Palestine was partitioned to form Palestine and Israel. Jewish settlers were allowed to move into Israel, and those who already resided in that territory were forced to relocate into what is now known as Palestine. In the American political conversation, one misguided accusation gets thrown around: that criticizing Israel, especially calling its actions in Gaza genocide, is often antisemitic. But conflating condemnation of a government with hatred of an entire people is not only intellectually dishonest, it is also deeply harmful.
The Jewish people have survived incredible hardship through the Holocaust and have experienced hate crimes across the globe, and of course, that deserves to be recognized. Antisemitism is a real and dangerous form of hatred. It has fueled centuries of violence, discrimination and mass atrocities against Jewish people. Combatting antisemitism is necessary, but weaponizing the term to silence criticism of Israel’s genocide just as big of a problem.
The United Nations defines genocide as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The destruction of homes, forced displacement, mass killings of civilians, starvation conditions and the targeting of essential infrastructure in Gaza are exactly the kinds of acts that make up a genocide.
Criticizing Israel is not an attack on Judaism. Israel is a nation-state. Judaism is a religion, a culture, and a community that exists far beyond national borders. To equate the two is to erase the voices of Jewish people who themselves criticize Israel’s actions. Across the United States and around the world, Jewish organizations and rabbis have joined calls for a ceasefire and accused the Israeli government of violating human rights. If Jews themselves can make these critiques, it cannot be antisemitic for non-Jews to echo them.
What we are witnessing is a strategy designed to shield a government from being held accountable by framing disagreement as bigotry and antisemitism. It is possible to hold two truths at once: antisemitism must be fought relentlessly, and Palestinian lives must be defended.
Language matters. If we surrender the ability to describe atrocities for fear of being misunderstood, we enable silence in the face of mass suffering. Condemning state violence is not hate speech, it is moral speech. And insisting that Palestinian lives are worth defending is not antisemitism, it is the bare minimum of human decency.
By refusing to conflate critique with bigotry, we honor both the struggle against antisemitism and the fight for Palestinian liberation.