Why We Should Stop Saying ‘Pro-Israel’

Imagine a “Miguel,” whose family comes from Brazil, is a sophomore at an American university. In high school, Miguel was part of a youth movement called “Stand with Brazil” where he and his peers learned all about the history of his people and the legal right for his country to exist. In college, he is part of a pro-Brazil student group called Students Supporting Brazil. Here, Miguel is often seen tabling at the student union, handing out fliers explaining Brazil’s right to exist as a sovereign country. He has been at the forefront of bringing pro-Brazilian speakers to his campus. 

Of course, there is no such Miguel.  

There is, however, such a Micah, and a Rachel, and a Max, and a Shira, and a Daniel and a David … you get the point. There is no such Miguel because no other people, no other country is forced to provide a legitimacy slip as often as Israel, the only Jewish country. 

We can, of course, blame our detractors, the massive history of Jew-hatred, but how much are we complicit in this delegitimization campaign? Put differently, how has the past 20 or so years of “pro-Israel” campaigning helped to sustain our dignity? Was it not René Descartes who in 1637 wrote “I think therefore I am” thus solidifying a bond between self-awareness and existence? We exist, therefore we are. Should that not be enough? And yet, much to my chagrin, we participate in our own invalidation when we produce our legitimacy papers at every opportunity for acceptance.  

Let us start with the most basic tool of self-awareness: language. From the Hebraic tradition we learn that God spoke, and the world came to be, thus establishing a relationship between words and reality: The Hebrew words for “thing” (davar) and “speak” (daver) share the same root. Perception of reality is dependent on language. George Berkeley, the 17th century philosopher, understood this well, believing that we do not simply use words to represent the world, but use them to shape it. Later, Ferdinand Saussure, who in the 20th century laid the foundations in the development of linguistics, described language as a “social phenomenon,” a structural organism we participate in through a system of signs. We participate in this social phenomenon through a non-verbal contract in which we agree that objects (the “signified”) and their mental symbols (“signifiers”) coexist as anchors of our personal experiences in a shared language. For example, when we say “tree,” to varying degrees we all envision a “tree” in our minds.

Now, let us apply this thinking to the term “pro-Israel.” What are we signifying when we employ this term?   

I first encountered the term “pro-Israel” around 2002 when I was an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz and co-founded the student group, “Students for Peace in the Middle East,” to combat anti-Zionism — what many Jewish professionals at that time erroneously told me was simply a political disagreement and would most likely “blow over.”

On campus, I began to hear that “America had it coming for all those years of supporting Israel and meddling in the Middle East.” The chants “from the river to the sea/Palestine will be free” as well as “hey hey, ho ho, Zionism has got to go” began to multiply. The American Jewish world was entirely unprepared and, as in the case of Jewish professionals on my university campus, chose to ignore or deny the rise of anti-Zionism. How wrong they were. Today, UC Santa Cruz is the home of the recently launched Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, an academic initiative whose entire aim is to undermine the Jewish state. 

Two major grassroots Israel advocacy groups — StandWithUs and Hasbara Fellowships — formed in 2001, a watershed year for the proliferation of this “new antisemitism” in the wake of three major global events: 9/11, the Second Intifada and the Durban Conference on Racism in South Africa, which galvanized anti-Zionism on the American campuses. Seemingly disparate events, separated by vast oceans and lingual barriers, a common enemy surfaced: the West and Israel. 

It must be noted that anti-Zionism, what many American Jewish scholars and journalists dubbed the “new antisemitism,” was not new at all. In fact, its first victims were Soviet Jews as the Soviet Union constructed a massive propaganda campaign against Israel and Zionism after the 1967 Six Day War. Slogans heard on American and European campuses such as “Zionism is racism” or equating Israel with Nazism were carefully crafted by Soviet propagandists. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the anti-Zionist propaganda campaign seemed to fall with it. Of course, the respite would turn out to be temporary. 

Unlike American Jews, Soviet Jews did not have any political power to fight the state. Those deemed Zionists or who applied for visas to immigrate to Israel were marked for opprobrium, losing their jobs or being thrown into prison. The most notable case is that of Natan Sharansky, who was sentenced to 13 years of forced labor for the crime of Zionism.   

Four years later, anti-Zionism was further energized in the United States by a highly efficient tool of delegitimization: The Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement (BDS), founded in 2005. When BDS arrived on college campuses, Jewish students were ill-equipped. Going back to their drawing boards, the Jewish “pro-Israel” nonprofit world redirected their efforts on empowering Jewish students on campus to be strong Jewish voices, able to withstand the tide of BDS, Israel Apartheid Week, and professors who in their courses referred to Israel as a settler-colonial state. From there, came the birth of the term “Israel advocacy,” thus signaling to Jewish students that their job as Jews was to stand up for Israel and against the massive anti-Israel campaign.

Inevitably, the label “pro-Israel” became the individual and collective calling card of this new advocacy. 

It is remarkable, if not remarkably ridiculous, that the Jewish people are compelled to form “pro-Israel” advocacy groups for a foreign country thousands of miles away. It’s less ridiculous when you understand that Jewish identity is inextricably linked to the Land of Israel. This connection becomes an invitation for Jew haters to do their thing. There are no China, Russia or Iran advocacy groups, for example, because no Chinese, Russian or Iranian student on campus has to prepare for an annual bashing-of-their-country week (i.e. Apartheid Week) or prepare for the annual all-night BDS hearing where votes are cast against the Jewish state. 

If we zoom out and consider the totality of Jewish history, we observe our survival in the era of the “Jewish Question” to only find ourselves living in the time of the “Israel Question.”  Two-thousand years of living as guests in host countries produced the Jewish Question: What to do with these Jews who are at once individuals and part of a collective nation? Answers varied, both within the Jewish world and the non-Jewish world. One of the most frightening responses occurred less than 100 years ago: The “Final Solution,” the extermination of the Jewish people led by the Nazis and their collaborators. And now, in the 21st century, we are witnesses to the “Israel Question”: The obsession at the United Nations and throughout much of the world over what to do with Israel. Answers are, likewise, diverse, and once again, some have genocidal aims, as in the case of Iran, whose government overtly states its goal to destroy Israel.  

In the era of the “Israel Question” we have produced several strategies but have underestimated the power of language as a tool of either liberation or oppression. “Language is the armory of the human mind,” Samuel Coleridge wrote, “and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.” How, then, will we strengthen our reality with linguistic trophies of our past and linguistic weapons of our future?

It crystalized for me a few months ago when I attended a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) event at UCLA during Israel Apartheid Week. Advertised as a “History of Palestine through pictures,” it was led by a third-year undergraduate student who came with a PowerPoint presentation and — to be completely honest — a well-prepared talk. Although I was livid, I could not help but be in complete awe of the young student’s tenacity. She did not give up — not once — on language. She only referred to Israel as Palestine or Occupied Palestine, called the IDF the Israel Occupation Forces (IOF), called Judea and Samaria the “West Bank,” referred to the War of 1948 only as ‘the Nakba,’ and never once mentioned Jews in relation to the history of the land. There she was, standing tall and proud, employing the armory of words to conquer the narrative. And conquer she did.

I remember thinking, how singularly incredible it would be if a Jewish student stood up and formed a fortress from words such as “Israel, Judea and Samaria, Palestinian Arabs, the First Arab-Israeli War, Jerusalem, and the Arab-Israeli conflict” during one such presentation on Israel and the Jewish people. And then I thought of the Israel Advocacy world repeatedly using terms such as “Israeli-Palestinian conflict, West Bank, disputed territories, Palestinians, and East Jerusalem.”

Let us use language as a tool of liberation—our liberation.  Conversely, let us take heed of the words that unwittingly contribute to our oppression, one of which is the term “pro-Israel.”

Let us then use language as a tool of liberation—our liberation.  Conversely, let us take heed of the words that unwittingly contribute to our oppression, one of which is the term “pro-Israel.”

In 2002, we were proudly pro-Israel and used this language to emphasize our position. But in doing so, we also undermined, unintentionally, the consequences of calling our movement to fight antisemitism “pro-Israel.” How so?  

When we say “pro-Israel” we imply that there is a “con” to Israel’s legitimacy. Take the case of abortion and women’s rights. If I walk by a protest and see “pro-life” signage, I immediately seek to understand the other side, that is the side of pro-abortion advocates. Second, when we couch our fight against antisemitism by using the term “pro-Israel,” we distance ourselves from the beleaguered history of Jew-hatred. How so? 

Any serious student of Jewish history will tell you that anti-Jewish animus is an age-old virus that mutates. As French Jewish philosopher Bernard-Henry Lévi wrote, “Antisemitism is a very special form of madness, one of the features of which has always been, at every step in its history, choosing the right words to make its madness look reasonable.” Keywords here are “the right words.” Yes, the antisemite is a wily creature who markets this age-old hatred in such a fashion as to offer the civilized world a reasonable cause to hate the Jews.  

A vivid example is that of failed German politician Wilhelm Marr who, in 1872 coined the term “antisemitism” precisely to distance himself from the benighted term, Judenhass (Judeophobia), which was rooted in Medieval Christian tenets. A man of reason and science, Marr proudly proclaimed that he does not harbor hatred of Jews for their religion or character, but rather for their racial type. Popularizing the term “antisemitism,” salons around Western Europe proudly used the sophisticated term. Sound familiar? How many times have we heard from the pulpit, “I would like to make it clear: I am not an antisemite and vehemently denounce all forms of bigotry and racism. I am an anti-Zionist because I care about human rights.” Anti-Zionism, thus, is a linguistic camouflage for the most enduring and oldest hatred: Jew-hatred.

Equally detrimental in our struggle to combat Jew-hatred is the statement “anti-Israel,” which becomes an effective fig leaf for Jew-haters who would recoil from overt, classical antisemitism. How easily, then,  we let them off the hook when we, ourselves, do not resolutely state that being against the existence Jewish state is not simply being “anti-Israel,” but anti-Jewish.

 Understanding the shapeshifting profile of Jew-hatred, we identify three distinct historic eras: the era of Judeophobia, antisemitism, and anti-Zionism. In the era of “Judeophobia” the Jew was hated for his religious character; in the era of “antisemitism” he was loathed for his racial impurity; today, and in the era of “anti-Zionism,” the Jew is hated for violating human rights.  

For the past 20 years, we have been doing mental acrobatics, trying to prove to the world that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. They say, anti-Zionism is merely criticism of Israeli policy. But that sounds just about as reasonable as stating that antisemitism, in the 19th century, was a way to criticize Jewish intermarriage rates. Whether you believe in a God that bestowed upon His people the Land of Israel is an irrelevant point; in this era of anti-Zionism, Jewish identity is being tried. Are we a religion, a race, a nation? If we are a nation, we originate from a place.  The sooner we all agree and embrace our Jewish nationalism, the faster and more efficient we will be in uniting around the basic idea that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. 

Imagine for a moment if someone said to a Jewish student on campus, “have you heard about the anti-Israel event next week?” and the Jewish student responds, “you mean the anti-Jewish event?” The rhetorical move is simple, but the impact is significant.

To take back our dignity, we must grasp the power of language and look inward; that is, at our role in creating an optimal reality.

To take back our dignity, we must grasp the power of language and look inward; that is, at our role in creating an optimal reality. We cannot solely blame our detractors for using terms such as “settler-colonialism,” “West Bank,” “Palestine,” “Occupied Territories,” or the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” In fact, it is precisely because we have capitulated to that narrative and those words that we have found ourselves in the defensive position; in fact, it is precisely because we have allowed the liars and propagandists to continue their anti-Jewish campaigns we find ourselves having to defend our very identity. 

Perhaps a useful place to look at is the conflict itself. For far too long, many treated the conflict as one having to do with land. Israelis themselves were willing to give up land in exchange for peace. And what did Israel get in return? Terror. No, it was not reciprocated in kind; in fact, it further emboldened the radical Arab Palestinians. And now, Jews in the Diaspora, who find ourselves besieged on the battlefield of ideas, when we give up on language and narrative, naively think that our efforts will be reciprocated in kind. 

To regain the initiative, enterprising Zionist activists would be wise to start with language and gather experts in the field. We dare not call them pro-Israel.

Naya Lekht received her PhD in Russian Literature and wrote her dissertation on Holocaust literature in the Soviet Union. Naya is currently the Education Editor for White Rose Magazine and a Research Fellow for the Institute for Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy.