The Growing Threat of 'Anti-Zionist' Violence

In blessed memory of Rabbi Zvi Kogan, who was kidnapped and murdered in the United Arab Emirates this past weekend. That could have been any one of us Jews.

It’s “resistance by any means necessary” for Palestinians — but “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “colonialism” when Jews defend themselves. (photo: Shai Davidai/X)

Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.

---

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

---

Once upon a time, in the gilded halls of the intellectual elite, a curious notion took root. It was dressed in the finest silks of academic jargon and perfumed with the heady musk of moral superiority.

This notion — let us call it “anti-Zionism” — declared itself a champion of justice, a slayer of colonial dragons, and, above all, a friend to the oppressed. It claimed no quarrel with Jews themselves, mind you, only with the existence of their inconvenient state.

In its telling, “anti-Zionism” was a noble crusade, unsullied by prejudice or malice. Yet, as the fable unfolded, a darker truth emerged: the gleaming sword of “anti-Zionism” had a nasty habit of landing on Jewish necks.

This story begins, as all good fables do, with a clever sleight of hand. “Anti-Zionism,” we are told, is anything but antisemitism. Why, to conflate the two is an intellectual sin, a crude reductionism unworthy of serious debate!

And so, the “anti-Zionist” assures us, their opposition to Israel has nothing to do with the fact that it is the world’s only Jewish state. No, they oppose “settler colonialism,” (nonexistent) “apartheid,” or whatever moral crime du jour can be pinned on Israel’s existence.

But this tidy separation begins to fray when one observes the real-world consequences of this ostensibly high-minded critique. For instance, the “anti-Zionist” claims their quarrel is with Israel’s government, yet their protests mysteriously include chants of “From the River to the Sea” — a slogan that, if realized, would leave no room for Jewish self-determination anywhere.

They insist they are anti-nationalist, yet their outrage burns hottest against the only nationalism born from the ashes of some 2,000 years of relentless persecution. And when they boycott Israeli hummus, one wonders if they think tahini is the true oppressor.

The fable’s most revealing chapter, however, is written in blood. In synagogues vandalized in Paris, in mezuzahs ripped from doorposts in New York, in Jews assaulted on the streets of Canada, the kidnapping and murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan in the United Arab Emirates this past weekend — all in the name of “anti-Zionist” fervor.

These acts of violence do not distinguish between Israeli policies and Jewish identities. They do not pause to inquire whether the victim supports Netanyahu or voted Meretz. The so-called “innocent” critique of the “anti-Zionist” becomes the thug’s righteous excuse.

And herein lies the fable’s most tragic irony: The “anti-Zionist” insists their ideology is a quest for justice, yet it licenses the very injustice it claims to oppose. By painting Israel as a singular evil — a sui generis pariah — they stoke a moral hysteria that spills over into hatred for Jews everywhere. This is not an accident; it is the inevitable consequence of reducing the Jewish state to a scapegoat for the world’s ills.

Of course, the “anti-Zionist” will protest: “But I have Jewish friends!” Perhaps they do. Perhaps these friends even share their ideology, lending a kosher stamp to their vitriol.

But the fact remains: When “anti-Zionism” marches in the streets, it does not distinguish between the Jewish Israeli and the Jew in the Diaspora. It does not pause to ensure its rhetoric does not metastasize into violence. It cannot, for it is built on a foundation of erasure — of Israel’s legitimacy, of Jewish history, and, ultimately, of Jewish safety.

And so, the fable concludes, not with a moral resolution, but with a bitter lesson: The innocence of “anti-Zionism” is a myth. Its high-minded rhetoric may delight the salons of the chattering classes, but its real-world consequences are borne by Jewish bodies and Jewish communities. It is a tale as old as time, dressed in new clothes: the Jew as scapegoat, now rebranded as the “Zionist oppressor.”

On Monday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said that “Netanyahu and the criminal leaders of this regime must be sentenced to death” — after posting on Saturday to his X account in Hebrew: “All the political and military leaders of the criminal Zionist terrorist gang must be prosecuted.”

Unsurprisingly, Khamenei’s Islamic Republic of Iran is rumored to be behind the actual terrorist gang that kidnapped and murdered Rabbi Zvi Kogan, 28 years old, who worked in the UAE for the Orthodox Jewish group Chabad before he vanished last Thursday in Dubai. Rabbi Kogan’s murder had nothing to do with settlements, checkpoints, or Gaza. It was not even about Israel, per se. It was about his unforgivable crime of simply being identifiably Jewish.

Let us not flatter ourselves, dear reader, with the illusion of safety. Rabbi Kogan’s fate could have been any one of us Jews. It could have been the Jewish man walking home from synagogue in Los Angeles, the student wearing a kippah on a Melbourne Metro train, or the young woman donning a Star of David necklace in Montreal.

In the Netherlands, Rabbi Benjamin Jacobs works as another Chabad emissary and the country’s chief rabbi. “A few days ago they threw a stone at my house,” he said. “Every time I leave the house, they shout ‘Free Palestine!’ and other statements at me. And for the last few weeks, there are police around my house for security purposes against threats that exist here all the time.”¹

“For five or six years now,” added Jacobs, “I have not been able to travel by train or public bus. Security officials told me that it is not worth it.”

In Berlin, where Rabbi Yehuda Teichtel serves, “there is a situation in Germany that encourages antisemitism and there is a need for heavy security,” he said. “You have to be careful today walking in the street or in the train stations with a Star of David or a Jewish symbol and not encountering someone who threatens or shouts slogans on the street. The police are very supportive and secure the community, but the reality we live in is different than it was in the past.”

---

In the moral calculus of “anti-Zionism,” the distinction between “bad Zionist” and “good Jew” evaporates the moment that the mob needs a scapegoat.

Indeed, there is a reason why so many of these mobsters cover their faces in keffiyehs and other garments. They are not anti-war peace activists opining about idealism. No, their camouflage serves a dual purpose: to protect their identities from the law they so brazenly flout, and, more tellingly, to shield themselves from the faintest whiff of accountability.

While they howl about justice and liberation, they know that their deeds — molotov cocktails hurled at Jewish schools, stores daubed with graffiti accusing “Zionists” of every crime under the sun — would crumble under the slightest scrutiny of their supposed principles.

After all, the anti-war peace activist does not scream for rivers of blood, dream of a utopia cleansed of a specific people, or celebrate the deaths of Jews. They do not romanticize a time when an entire ethnicity can be reduced to the ash of history, and their anger is not sparked by a misstep in policy or some moral failing of geopolitics; it is a rage reserved exclusively for a world in which Jews, of all people, dare to assert themselves.

This is not the studied resistance of principled pacifism. This is tribal warfare masquerading as intellectual rebellion. And make no mistake, the garment they wear is not simply a nod to anti-colonial chic. It is an implicit confession: they fight not for peace, but for the obliteration of a specific target. Their obscured faces serve not only to evade the authorities but also to shield themselves from the mirror. To look oneself in the eye while calling for genocide would require a degree of self-awareness this crowd is determined to avoid.

Let us not pretend these “anti-Zionists” are unaware of the symbolism they wield. Their sartorial choices are not accidental but calculated — a nod to a cause that idolizes resistance, but resistance stripped of the inconvenience of ethics or humanity. Their shouts of “Globalize the intifada!” bear consequences that we can no longer ignore (whether in intention or outcome) — turning every corner of the Jewish Diaspora into a battlefield.

This is not a plea for justice; justice, after all, seeks to heal. This, rather, is a transnational franchise for grievance-based violence, franchised out to mobs of underemployed intellectuals, pseudo-activists, and opportunistic vandals who would prefer to smash a Star of David than read about the complexities of history. This is not about “decolonization” — a term they wield like a cudgel — but about converting every Jewish home, business, and institution into a proxy for their rage against a faraway nation-state they claim to abhor.

The consequences of this intifada-without-borders are anything but theoretical. They manifest in the shattered glass of Jewish businesses, in the fear etched into the faces of children walking to their Jewish day schools, and in the eerie, dissonant silence of intellectuals who are far too preoccupied with drafting another “Open Letter” to condemn such mundane acts of violence.

It manifests, too, in the cold-blooded murder of people like Rabbi Zvi Kogan — whose existence posed no threat to anyone’s sovereignty but whose Jewishness alone rendered him expendable in the eyes of these globalized avengers.

How brave they are to “interrogate power” from their tenured perches, sipping fair-trade coffee while ordinary Jews are left to contend with the fallout of their reckless rhetoric. It is, after all, easy to globalize the intifada when the risks are outsourced to others.

So let us call “anti-Zionism” what it is: a euphemism for a global pogrom, marketed as intellectual resistance. A rallying cry designed to justify rage while absolving its architects of culpability. A strategy that replaces diplomacy with destruction, dialogue with demagoguery, and real-world progress with the seductive simplicity of blaming Jews for everything.

“Anti-Zionism” is not a roadmap to peace. It is an accelerant for chaos, its flames licking at the edges of Jewish life wherever it dares to flourish. And those who shout it — whether in the streets, on campus quads, or from the comfortable distance of their online platforms — know this full well. They are not innocent. They are arsonists masquerading as freedom fighters, torching the bridges of coexistence and standing back to admire the glow.

As for us Jews and our supporters, we must resist the urge to play the part of history’s eternal deer caught in the headlights. We cannot afford the luxury of naivety, the self-soothing belief that this is merely a matter of misunderstood semantics or a debate that will resolve itself through reasoned discourse.

No, the arsonists will not be swayed by our meticulously footnoted rebuttals or heartfelt interfaith panels. Their fire is not fueled by misunderstanding; it is stoked by the thrill of watching what they perceive as a symbol of resilience go up in smoke.

We must recognize that their cries for “justice” are not an invitation to dialogue but a cover for destruction. Their slogans do not seek to persuade but to delegitimize, to strip Jews of the moral and physical safety afforded by our homeland and our communities. To meet this threat, we must stop apologizing for existing, stop acting as though our survival requires the world’s permission.

Instead, we must stand unapologetically tall. We must illuminate the hypocrisy of those who claim to champion human rights while demanding the erasure of Jewish self-determination and autonomy. We must call out the pseudo-intellectual posturing that cloaks bigotry in “progressive” jargon. And above all, we must refuse to be gaslit into believing that this fight is about anything other than what it has always been: the oldest hatred, freshly rebranded for the digital age.

Let them chant, let them march, let them burn with the righteousness of their cause. We will not extinguish their flames by pleading or hiding. We will confront their chaos with clarity, their lies with truth, their hate with the unyielding fact of our survival.

If history has taught us anything, it is that the Jewish People have endured far worse than the cheap theatrics of keffiyeh-clad provocateurs. And we will endure this too, not by shrinking into victimhood, but by standing defiantly in the light of who we are.

---

1. אחרי הרצח, שליחי חב"ד מספרים: "קשה ללכת ברחוב עם סממן יהודי". Ynet News.