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Notes -
What is the Zionist model of antisemitism*?
Matt Yglesias posted what turned out to be a surprisingly hot take that the downturn in public opinion of Israel is a result of Israeli actions, and that the best way for Israel to fix its public relations problem is to change its actions vis-a-vis the Palestinian issue and foreign policy.
I was surprised at the pushback. This seems straightforwardly true. There was a great chart I saw a few days ago, which I am unfortunately unable to find, which showed that public opinion of Israel has been approximately this low before. It was in 1982 with the invasion of Lebanon and the notoriously brutal siege of Beirut.
Most of the alternative theories fell into two camps.
It’s hard to tell how religious the people in 2. are, but my general impression is, “quite a bit”. Many of them seem to speak of antisemitism as if it were a spiritual fault, another manifestation of the platonic ideal of pure evil. Seen as a spiritual problem, the correct response is to become even more aggressively Jewish. This has the rather large problem of being counterproductive when, e.g. smashing idols goes wrong.
*By “antisemitism” in this post I almost exclusively mean “antizionism”. I use the term to maintain consistency with the pro-Israel literature I am engaging with, not as an endorsement that antizionism = antisemitism.
You're being overly systematic, here- 'antisemitism' in Zionist parlance is a snarl word. There are uses of the term which have a definition, sure, but not the Zionist one. They're not worried about the cause. They're worried about using it as a cudgel against critics. And as long as this lines up with somebody else's interests in the west, it will.
It seems manifestly true to me that they're is a substantial portion of the world's population who believe that Israel as a nation should not exist and who will cheer enthusiastically upon seeing Israeli sons killed and daughters raped.
To dismiss the acknowledgement of this fact as a mere "snarl word" strikes me as either extremely naive or purposefully uncharitable.
This is a real phenomenon, anti-Semitism is a real phenomenon, and obviously a lot of anti-Semites are also anti-Israel, but you can want Israel destroyed without hating Jews qua Jews. Using "anti-Semitism" for - even vicious - hatred of Eretz Yisrael alone frankly is mostly a cudgel - it's trying to discredit all anti-Zionists by equating them to Hitler. (Of course, the NSDAP, while of course horrifically anti-Semitic, wasn't actually notably anti-Zionist - in some cases they supported Zionism in order to get Jews to emigrate.)
To give a similar non-Jew example: I'm very leery of Mainland Chinese expats and exports. This problem does not apply to (South) Korean, Japanese or Taiwanese expats and exports. I have no problem with the Han Chinese as an ethnic group (and remember, most present Taiwanese are Han; the refugees from the Chinese Civil War outnumbered the native population), nor with the nearly-racially-indistinguishable Koreans and Japanese. My problem is with the totalitarian state of the People's Republic of China, which brainwashes its youth and may in the near future enact full-scale cyberwarfare against the West; enemy agents and hardware with enemy backdoors are dangerous.
There are legitimate reasons to dislike Israel and Western support of Israel that have nothing to do with the fact that most of its citizen population is Jewish. I don't happen to think that those reasons justify massacre, but some do. To insistently consider such people "anti-Semitic" is to buy into the Zionists' (and, to some degree, the neo-Nazis') preferred frame that Israel speaks for and is supported by all Jews, which it doesn't and isn't.
Are there true anti-Semites, including in the West? Yes, obviously. But your proffered litmus test for them is inaccurate. And while I'm not attributing malice to you personally, the conflation of anti-Zionists and anti-Semites is to a large degree enemy action - and it's difficult to blame people for refusing to concede to that.
Just to be absolutely clear. You are saying that...
"Do you celebrate when hear about (or see footage of) Israeli citizens getting raped or murdered?"
...is an "inaccurate" litmus test?
For hating Jews qua Jews? Yes. It's not zero correlation, but one does not have to hate all Jews to hate Israelis.
(For hating Israelis, it is of course sufficient.)
If that is sincerely your position, then I am going to once again echo our Vice President by saying I don't really care, I don't want these people in my country.
From my perspective you are attempting to draw a distinction without a difference. It is my opinion that if your reaction to 10/7 was celebratory, you are not just an enemy of Jews or of Israel, but of Civilization, and as such I have a moral responsibility to oppose you.
I despise Israel-the-political-entity and I cheerfully agree with you on this point. 10/7 was an act of barbarism, and the best model for Hamas' behaviour since then has been "identify the most evil thing an insane evil person could come up with, and watch them do it".
If you are going to us methods of barbarism in a somewhat-justified war, you should do so in pursuit of a somewhat-justified military objective and with a somewhat-justified hope of military success. 10/7 was some evil cunts getting off on Jewish pain from the safety of their Qatar hotel rooms with no visible path to military victory, or even a draw.
To be clear, in my post below I was expressing reservations about the idea of trying to deport everyone who cheers atrocities, not about trying to deport (or kill) people who commit atrocities. Thankfully, most of the fuckwits who cheered October 7 do not go out and try it at home, which means we do actually have options in how to deal with them beyond "to defeat the spree killer, shoot at it until it dies".
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