Progressives have increasingly claimed they condemn Zionists, not Jews. However, in practice, their efforts often use a very broad definition of who is a Zionist, unfairly harming Jewish individuals and organizations that are deemed not sufficiently critical of Israeli policies. Thus, they severely limit the Jewish individuals who are acceptable.
The two most visible Jews who have been accepted by the anti-Zionist movement are former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander and activist Abby Stein. Lander only unequivocally embraced the “genocide” claim when he began running for Congress this year, stating:
“Israel’s genocide in Gaza is a desecration. … Every one of those Palestinian kids in Gaza is just as divine as my beloved children. … In Congress, I will not vote for any more U.S. military aid to Israel.”
By contrast, Stein has been an active member of the leading anti-Zionist Jewish group, Jewish Voice for Peace, and has strong personal ties to Palestinian groups in the West Bank. An advertisement for a podcast read:
“Marc Steiner speaks with Rabbi Stein [on] the need to simultaneously fight Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the right’s fascist assault on the rights of LGBTQ+ people here in the U.S.”
What is striking is that her concerns for LGBT rights stop at the U.S. border. She is silent on the lack of these rights in Gaza and in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank, or the severe restrictions Sharia law places on Muslim women. She is silent on the treatment of over a million stateless Palestinians living in Lebanon and Jordan, who experience dire poverty because of housing and employment restrictions they face. And she is silent on the gay and civil rights afforded to Arab citizens of Israel.
Stein and Lander make clear what admission to the anti-Zionist camp requires: a willingness to claim that Israel has committed genocide. This was why Lander condemned his primary opponent, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), for not calling Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide — even though he is outspoken against the Netanyahu government. For Jews, no matter how critical they are of Israeli policies, without acknowledging that these policies are genocidal, you are lumped into the Zionist camp and subject to personal restrictions and abuse.
The most glaring example has been the successful effort to squelch Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D-PA) presidential bid. Though publicly very critical of Israeli policies, because he believes Israel has a right to exist and rejects the genocide claim, he has effectively been blacklisted, even though he is a popular governor of a crucial swing state. But he is not the only Jew to suffer.
Leah Goldstein, a trailblazing Canadian cyclist, was removed from the Ontario International Women’s Day event because she had done her required national service in the Israeli military some 30 years earlier. In Cincinnati, local rabbi Ari Jun was disinvited from an anti-Nazi rally. He has previously written about the need for Jewish empathy toward Palestinian suffering and criticized U.S. policy toward Gaza. Yet, he was canceled because of his belief in the right of Israel to exist as a Zionist state.
The University of California, Berkeley, has been at the forefront of these cancellation efforts. Over 20 student clubs ban speakers who support Zionism or practice forms of Judaism, including Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Judaism, which integrate Zionism into their prayers, practices, and theology. Thus, any practicing Jew is considered a Zionist subject to exclusion.
Israeli Yael Nativ had been invited to teach a course on contemporary dance in Israel but was disinvited after Oct. 7, 2023. The head of the department apologized, saying she was under pressure from faculty and master’s degree students not to bring anybody from Israel or hold courses dealing with Israel. The university subsequently paid him $60,000 for damages.
Dan Kalb, a progressive environmental advocate and longtime Oakland City Council member, had been invited to address a course called Environmental Problem Solving, something he’d done in previous years. After Oct. 7, his invitation was canceled after 30 students sent a letter to the instructor accusing Kalb of “spreading pro-Israeli propaganda, which often equates pro-Palestinian voices as ‘antisemitic.’”
This exclusion has now been attempted in professional organizations. The medical journal The Lancet published a petition from some health organizations calling for the Israel Medical Association to be suspended from the World Medical Association. The IMA warned publicly of the risk of widespread famine in Gaza and the potential for serious harm to innocent civilians during food and medical aid distribution in the region, and called for “ensuring medical equipment and basic humanitarian conditions” for the Gaza Strip’s civilian population. However, the IMA was condemned because it did not call Israeli policies genocidal. While the World Medical Association categorically rejected this proposal, the British Medical Association eliminated its working relationship with the IMA.
This is all in the context of the rejection of genocide claims by the International Court of Justice, the principal United Nations judicial organ. A separate panel was selected by the U.N. Human Rights Council and ruled that genocide occurred. However, it was an ad hoc committee selected by anti-Israel activists that used a more elastic definition of genocide than the recognized one.
The evidence presented demonstrates that anti-Zionists too often embrace anti-Jewish actions. To use any attachment to the state of Israel, however tenuous, makes clear that they believe the overwhelming share of Jews are Zionists whose rights can be severely constrained and suffer personal abuses.
Robert Cherry is an American Enterprise Institute affiliate and author of Arab Citizens of Israel: How Far Have They Come? (Wicked Son Press, 2026).