THE FOUR TESTS
Criticism or Antisemitism?
In recent years at universities in London, Paris, New York, and Copenhagen, students march with signs. They sing songs of liberation. They occupy lecture halls and demand that their professors condemn Israel. They paint slogans on walls. They give speeches about injustice. And they use phrases like "From the river to the sea" and "Globalize the intifada" without anyone really asking what they mean.
This is what makes the conversation about Israel and antisemitism so difficult to have. Because some of those signs are saying something that IS political criticism of a state's actions. And some of those signs are saying something entirely different. And it has become politically costly, in some circles especially nearly impossible, to name the difference.
But the difference exists. And if you cannot describe it, two things happen at once. The first is that legitimate criticism of the state of Israel gets shot down as antisemitism, which protects bad policy. The second is that antisemitism gets treated as legitimate political criticism, which protects one of the oldest hatreds in the world. Both are harmful. And both are the consequence of a fundamental distinction no longer being kept clear.
Let me first describe what legitimate criticism of Israel looks like. It is perhaps the most important part of this text, because if you cannot describe it, the rest is meaningless.
You can criticize Israel's government. You can criticize Prime Minister Netanyahu. You can criticize the coalition partners, particularly the most extreme parties in the current government. You can criticize the settlement policy in the West Bank. You can criticize specific military operations. You can criticize the treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories. You can debate the proportionality of a given response to a given attack. You can question ethical choices in warfare. You can be critical of the rising influence of the religious right. You can oppose the entire settlement project as a political strategy. You can criticize the lack of progress toward a two-state solution. You can be opposed to the government's handling of the Supreme Court, the media, the opposition.
All of this is legitimate criticism. It is criticism that is articulated every single day, including by Jews, including by Israelis themselves, including by people who love the country and fear its direction. That kind of criticism is not antisemitism. It is political disagreement about the actions of a state, and it has exactly the same legitimacy as criticism of any other state's actions.
But there is also another kind of talk about Israel that is not criticism of the state. It is an attack on the state's right to exist, on the Jewish people's right to self-determination, and ultimately on the Jewish people's right to be. It is the old hatred that has reinvented its language, and that is what this text is about.
How do you tell the difference. There are four tests. They are simple, they are clear, and they are difficult to evade. Each one can stand alone, but together they leave no doubt.
The first test is the right-to-exist test.
Does the critic acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state. That is the fundamental question. If the answer is yes, then the critic is a political critic, no matter how sharp the criticism is. He can want an entirely different political system in Israel, an entirely different government, an entirely different border, an entirely different approach to the West Bank. It is still criticism of a state one acknowledges. If the answer is no, then you are somewhere else entirely. Then the demand is not that Israel should act differently, but that Israel should disappear. And that demand, that a Jewish state should not exist, is not new. It is the demand antisemitism has always made. The only difference is that it is now spoken in a language that sounds progressive.
"From the river to the sea" is the test in its purest form. It is a geographic claim. From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. That is all of Israel's territory, plus the West Bank, plus Gaza. The sentence says that this entire area must be free, and free in this context means free of Jewish self-determination. It is not a criticism of a policy. It is erasure in geographic form.
The second test is the selectivity test.
Does the critic apply the same standards to other states. It is a simple test, and it is merciless. China today holds at least a million Uyghurs in concentration camps, carries out forced sterilization, systematically oppresses Tibetans. Iran executes homosexuals, stones women, jails dissidents by the hundreds. Saudi Arabia has waged a war in Yemen since 2015 that has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Turkey has occupied Northern Cyprus since 1974 and displaced hundreds of thousands. Russia has annexed Crimea and is waging a war of invasion in Ukraine.
Where are the university occupations against these states. Where are the boycott movements. Where are the UN resolutions in the hundreds. Where are the artists' and academics' demands for exclusion. They do not exist on any comparable scale. It is exclusively one state, Israel, that is met with this intensity of international protest, artistic and academic exclusion, and demands for cultural quarantine. That is not principle. That is selection. And the selection of precisely this one state, among all the states of the world, has a long and documented history that has nothing to do with the specific policies being pursued right now.
The third test is the language test.
What is at the core of what is being said and shouted and written. Political criticism uses political language. It speaks of borders, of laws, of proportionality, of international conventions, of diplomatic solutions. Antisemitism uses an entirely different language. It speaks of elimination. It speaks of violence against Jews as a people, not against a government. It recycles classical antisemitic tropes, often without the speaker knowing it. Dual loyalty, that Jews cannot be loyal citizens of their own countries because they are "really" loyal to Israel. Media control, that Jews control the flow of information. Financial power, that Jews control capital. Blood libel, that Jews sacrifice children, now in the form of claims that Israeli soldiers systematically murder Palestinian children for sport. It is the old vocabulary, and it returns with a regularity that cannot be denied.
"Globalize the intifada" is the test. It is a chant that is not about Israel. It is about Jews everywhere in the world. Intifada means violent uprising. To "globalize" it means to bring it to London, to Paris, to New York, to Copenhagen. Against whom. Against Jews. That is not political criticism. It is a call to violence against a specific people throughout the West, and that is what it is.
The fourth test is the collective-responsibility test.
Are Jews with no connection to Israel's government held accountable for what Israel's government does. Are synagogues attacked across the West as "protest" against military operations in Gaza. Are Jewish students met with threats on campuses in Paris, New York, London, Copenhagen, because a government they never voted for has made decisions they have had no part in. Are Jewish restaurants burned down. Are Jewish gravestones desecrated. Are children of Jewish parents told to hide their Stars of David on the way to school.
If the answer is yes, and the answer is often yes, as is documented daily in police reports from capital to capital, then this is no longer political criticism of a state. It is traditional antisemitism that has found a contemporary excuse. Political criticism keeps the criticism within the political sphere. It addresses governments, politicians, decisions, institutions. It does not address ordinary people of the same ethnic or religious origin who had no part in the decisions being criticized. When you cross that line, you cross from system to Man. And we have a name for that crossing. It is hatred of a people.
When these four tests are activated simultaneously, and they are, again and again, in the movements, demonstrations, and comment threads now filling Western capitals, then this is not criticism of Israel. It is the old hatred that has reinvented its language.
The distinction must be held. Anyone who cannot acknowledge Israel's right to exist cannot also call himself a principled critic of the state. Anyone who sees only one state among all the world's states as the target of artistic and academic exclusion cannot also call himself a principled opponent of oppression. Anyone who chants the language of elimination cannot also call himself a humanist. Anyone who lets Jews around the world bear the blame for a particular government's decisions cannot also call himself free of antisemitism.
It is not complicated.
It is actually quite simple, once you have seen it.
It has just become politically costly to say.
And that is why it must be said.
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