At first he sounded like a refreshing new voice shortly after the horrors of the 7 October 2023 atrocities. Adam Louis-Klein, a doctoral student at Montreal’s McGill University, burst on to social media emphasising that animosity to Jews had become largely focused on Israel. The key problem was no longer old-style anti-Semitism. It was not an original point but it desperately needed to be made in relation to a rapidly changing discussion.
Nearly three years later he is the central figure in the Movement Against Antizionism (MAAZ). That is an organisation that styles itself as “a non-partisan, emergency-response initiative confronting a rapidly escalating antizionist hate movement that is actively endangering Jewish communities worldwide.”
Unfortunately its approach has become increasingly dogmatic and hectoring. It bombards those who follow it on social media with claims that are sometimes right but often misconceived and occasionally simply wrong. Not that MAAZ is unique in making its errors, far from it, but it has gained sufficient profile to be challenged. That is particularly the case with its tone of speaking The Absolute Truth on the subject rather than engaging in a debate.
Here I want to give some indication of key points the organisation gets wrong. These are important matters which need to be discussed openly. My approach here is to highlight 10 of the most serious errors rather than systematically go through every pronouncement made by MAAZ. I will link to many of my previous articles as I have tackled some of the key subjects before. As a reminder, my approach is influenced by Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), the great German-Jewish political thinker, although she would not necessarily reach the same conclusions as me.
1) MAAZ’s central claim that “Antizionism is a hate movement” is flawed. As I have argued several times on this site that is an inadequate characterisation of anti-Zionism. It certainly involves hatred of Israel but it is much more than that. Its central feature is the claim that Israel is the epitome of the supposed evils of the modern world. It is this perception of embodying evil which makes anti-Zionism distinct. Or to look at it from the perception of anti-Israel activists the attitude to Israel is a “litmus test” of whether someone is a good person or not. So it is not just another form of hatred. It is a particular way of understanding the modern world with Jews cast as at its malevolent centre.
2) MAAZ’s claim “the term antisemitism does not fully capture how hostility toward Jews operates today” is a classic straw man argument. Who says that it does? MAAZ makes a serious error in drawing a radical separation between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. It is true that the tropes which characterised classical anti-Semitism from the 19th century onwards were not identical to those used against Israel today. But what both have in common is the perception of the Jews collectively as embodying the evils of the modern world. For classical anti-Semitism these could include financial capitalism and “Judeo-Bolshevism”. For anti-Zionism they can include Israel as a supposed exemplifier of apartheid, colonialism and genocide. But it would be more accurate to define anti-Zionism as a particular form of anti-Semitism. Particularly in an environment where anti-Zionists deny they are anti-Semitic.
3) MAAZ is wrong to argue that the term ‘anti-Semitism’ was coined as a euphemism. That is as a relatively polite way to refer to Jew hatred. On the contrary, the popularisation of the term anti-Semitism in the late 19th century reflected a shift from a religious to a racial perception of Jews. Far from being euphemistic this form of thinking was central to a world view which ended up attempting to exterminate the Jews. It was no longer a question of Jews sometimes being killed in hostile incidents as happened in earlier times. It became central to an attempt to liquidate the Jewish people as a whole.
4) MAAZ’s approach is profoundly ahistorical. In this it is hardly unique. It is simply not helpful to talk of anti-Semitism as “representing a 2,000-year-old civilizational reflex to purge Jews from society and ultimately eliminate them”. This is what Arendt correctly derided as the fallacy of eternal anti-Semitism. Europe saw a profound shift in the 19thcentury both in general and in relation to Jews in particular.
It was only in that period that racial thinking emerged. Before then social inequality was seen as a natural phenomenon. Societies were viewed as hierarchical by nature. But the Enlightenment of the late 17th and 18th centuries opened up the possibility that everyone was potentially equal. Racial thinking then emerged as a way of explaining the persistence of inequality despite the potential for equality.
In relation to European Jews they were generally socially marginalised until at least the late 18th century. They were often legally segregated from the rest of European society. It was only with the process of Jewish emancipation, which began after the French Revolution, that Jews were gradually integrated into mainstream society. Jews began to move from the social margins into the mainstream. Conversely, anti-Semitism emerged as a reaction against that process of emancipation. Anti-Semites were typically opposed both to modernisation and to the entry of Jews into the social mainstream.
5) MAAZ’s conception of the use of libels to demonise Israel - most notably the accusations of apartheid, genocide and colonialism - is useful but insufficient. These are best seen as part of the perception of Israel as epitomising the world’s evils. Contemporary anti-Zionists typically eschew the traditional moral vocabulary of good and evil. Instead they use what is essentially a form of technocratic language in condemning Israel. Typically they will assert that Israel is, without question, breaking international law. Anti-Zionists generally avoid engaging in overt debates about whether Israel’s actions are moral or not. (Incidentally MAAZ is also wrong when it claims “In law, libel concerns false and damaging statements about identifiable individuals.” For example, businesses can sue for libel in American defamation law.)
6) MAAZ is wrong to see anti-Zionism as a form of scapegoating. The notion of scapegoating cannot explain why the Jews, as opposed to any other target of hate, are singled out as embodying evil. It also implies a cynicism on the part of anti-Zionists in singling out Jews and Israel as the embodiment of evil. But the reality is that anti-Zionists’ visceral hostility to Jews and the Jewish state, grotesque as it is, is a genuinely held belief.
7) MAAZ, like many others, fails to see Islamism as a distinct political movement. It either lumps it together as part of a “Nazi-Islamist axis” or conflates it with anti-Jewish violence in the Muslim world. There is no conception of an Islamist movement, anti-modern and anti-nationalist as well as anti-Jewish, emerging first in Egypt in the 1920s.
8) MAAZ takes the flawed concept of Islamophobia at face value . It fails to see that Islamophobia is a deliberately confused concept. It lumps together hostility to individual Muslims, the rejection of Islamic beliefs and opposition to Islamism as a political movement. Proclaiming the need to fight Islamophobia, as MAAZ does, only adds to confusion on the topic.
9) MAAZ does not grasp the centrality of anti-Zionism to identity politics. The contemporary left typically sees Jews as hyper-privileged and Israel as a bastion of white supremacy in the world. This is entirely consistent with their sharp division of the world into oppressed and oppressors. But the newest forms of right wing anti-Zionism are also consistent with a modified form of identity politics. Only the new rightists are not hostile to whites nor do they see Muslims as inherently oppressed. Instead they focus on what they perceive as privileged Jewish identity.
10) MAAZ’s obsession with omitting the hyphen in anti-Zionism is unhelpful. MAAZ’s starting point, that contemporary anti-Zionists are uninterested in challenging Zionist ideas, is correct. Anti-Zionists are instead intent on demonising Israel. But MAAZ’s insistence on omitting the hyphen does not clarify matters. It only reinforces the perception of prescriptive and out-of-touch academics telling people what to think. The important task is to explain that anti-Zionism is not criticism of Israel but the designation of it as epitomising the evils of modernity.