8 | JUNE 1 • 2023 

PURELY COMMENTARY

essay
The Mainstreaming of 
‘Israelophobia’ in America
W

ith the waning of 
bipartisan support 
for Israel in the 
United States, growing concern 
over the increasing hostility 
toward the Jewish 
state has crept into 
mainstream talk 
around the table.
A recent 
meeting at the 
Jerusalem Center 
for Public Affairs 
(JCPA) brought 
together leading thought leaders 
to discuss the findings of a new 
book published by the center, 
titled Israelophobia and the West: 
The Hijacking of Civil Discourse 
on Israel and How to Rescue It.

The book’s editor, Dan Diker, 
director of the Project on BDS 
and Political Warfare at the 
JCPA, told JNS that the work 
will help “rebrand the unprec-
edented rhetorical assault on 
Israel.
”
“Israelophobia,
” he explained, 
was a term coined decades 
ago by JCPA fellow Fiamma 
Nirenstein to characterize 
Europe’s hostility to Israel, insist-
ing that it’s political criticism.
For Diker, the acceptance of 
radical language condemning 
Israel and the mainstreaming 
of delegitimization of Israel by 
major universities, institutions 
such as the United Nations and 
by some members of the U.S. 
Congress, is a national securi-
ty issue, with the potential to 
destabilize the U.S.-Israel rela-
tionship.
Harvard Law School Professor 
Emeritus Alan Dershowitz 
wrote one of the chapters, titled 
“The Case for Moral Clarity: 
Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, 

and Legitimate Criticism of 
Israel,
” in which he decries the 
singling out of Israel for con-
demnation and demonization as 
“disguised antisemitism.
”
In his remarks to the JCPA 
roundtable, Dershowitz asserted 
that this bias was not amenable 
to reason. “There is no possi-
bility for reasoned debate in the 
United States,
” he said. “In my 
lifetime, we’re going to have to 
live with increasing antisemi-
tism.
”
However, he noted, it was 
antisemitism of a specific type 
that posed the greatest threat.
Right-wing antisemitism, said 
Dershowitz, is “a diversion. It’s 
not a significant issue. Everyone 
condemns right-wing antisem-
itism. No Jew can become a 
right-wing antisemite. What’s 
eating us is coming from with-
in.
”
Other contributors to the 
book include former Jewish 
Agency chairman Natan 
Sharansky; Palestinian affairs 
analyst Khaled Abu Toameh; 
JCPA president and former 

ambassador Dore Gold; 
Malcolm Hoenlein, executive 
vice chairman of the Conference 
of Presidents of Major American 
Jewish Organizations; Professor 
Asa Kasher, author of the 
IDF Code of Conduct; Daniel 
Gordis, senior vice presi-
dent at Shalem College; Yossi 
Kuperwasser, former director 
general of the Israeli Ministry 
of Strategic Affairs; and Luba 
Mayekiso, co-founder of the 
Africa for Israel Christian 
Coalition.
In his remarks to the group, 
Dershowitz said what many in 
the United States and Israel have 
put forth: that the BDS move-
ment has been misunderstood 
by Jewish leaders.
The goal was never to actu-
ally boycott or divest from 
Israeli companies, but rather 
“to propagandize future leaders 
of America. It’s an attempt to 
change the reality of how young 
people see Israel.
” BDS, he 
added, has nothing to do with 
the so-called occupation of terri-
tories or a two-state solution.

It’s also more a tactic than a 
movement, argued Dershowitz 
— “an extraordinarily 
successful” one at that. “It’s 
a tactic based on deception 
and lies, designed to destroy 
the nation-state of the Jewish 
people.
”

‘ABJECT IGNORANCE’
For Israeli journalist Ben-Dror 
Yemini, BDS is not the most 
pressing problem. On his 
speaking tours of American 
college campuses, said Yemini, 
he encounters abject ignorance 
about Israel among Jewish 
students and faculty. It is this 
ignorance, he said, that renders 
them so susceptible to anti-Israel 
messages.
Sharansky said the only 
way to build bridges between 
American Jews, who are 
overwhelmingly liberal, and 
Israelis, whose main interest 
is to defend the Jewish state, is 
through focusing on human 
rights.
According to Sharansky, the 
Israeli government must “show 
there’s no difference between 
antisemitism on the left and 
the right.
” He called on the 
government to fight against all 
those who abuse human rights 
and to ask the United States to 
do the same.
In his concluding remarks, 
Dershowitz had a grim message 
for Israel.
“Do not count on the U.S. 
Count on yourselves. Make sure 
you have the most powerful 
army. We have to show our 
strength. Make alliances but 
be self-interested. Don’t ever 
compromise security on the 
basis of getting good PR.
” 

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz; Dan Diker, 
director of the Project on BDS and Political Warfare at the JCPA; and 
Israeli journalist Ben-Dror Yemini 

JUDY LASH BALINT

Judy 
Lash Balint
JNS.org

