7-5-26
I. GOOD NEWS AND UPDATES
(1)
Happy to announce that Jim and Sandy Danto of Michigan have pledged generously to help the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism achieve its first-year goals, and beyond! … They join the Lauren and Philip Siegel Foundation and one other currently anonymous seed funder—to whom, all, much thanks!
(2)
I’m writing this en route to Israel, to participate in the now annual Contemporary Antisemitism conference in Haifa this week. Last year’s inaugural conference in London was stellar and this one is shaping up to be as well …
(3)
I received some two dozen expressions of interest in serving on the Editorial Board of our peer-reviewed journal! I’ll be following up on that next week after returning from Israel, so stay tuned as we work to launch the journal!
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II. QUERIES
(1)
A new member in Amsterdam would like to connect with other members who may be in the Netherlands/Belgium regions. If that is you and you’d like to connect, please email me ….!
(2)
If someone has graphic design skills and would volunteer to give this approximately weekly substack a more professional and appealing look, please let me know!
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III. INTERESTING AND PROMISING?
The Center for Antizionism Education has recently launched – I haven’t vetted it or them personally, but on first glance it looks mission-aligned and like it could be a useful resource. I’ve made a connection to the people running it and hope to meet with them soon, and report back.
Check it out here: https://www.cazeducation.com/whoarewe
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IV. JEWISH ANTIZIONISM
(1)
Brown University Prof. Omer Bartov remains (IMHO) the most dangerous Jewish antizionist (maybe Beinart is a tie): as a Jewish, Israeli, IDF-veteran, Ivy League “Holocaust scholar” he takes the “As-a-Jew” phenomenon to the next level, weaponizing his identity to give himself a false air of authority to pronounce on how evil Israel is—as are all Jews who support her. His recent book Israel: What Went Wrong? is offensive starting from its title right through to its final blank page. (OK I haven’t actually read it yet but have read a lot of his published work in the past two years, so it’s an easy inference.)
Happily several prominent reviews have skewered the book, including now this by leading historian Jeffrey Herf. What emerges is not merely that there is material to disagree with, as is common when scholars debate, but rather that the book is really a shoddy piece of garbage, which in turn says a lot about antizionist “scholarship.”
Please check out the review here, and share it widely: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/EDZEPZJIZEANKXKQNFUY/full
(2)
A bonus take-down of Bartov! The more the merrier!
Check out Peter Herman’s review here:
(3)
And then there is Harvard Prof. Shaul Magid … Magid is a serious scholar of Judaism and his erudite views in general merit serious consideration. And yet one cannot help but think, on engaging with his work, that he has hate in his heart toward the vast majority of actual Jews.
Read Rabbi Steven Abraham’s thoughtful critique of Magid here: https://rabbistevenabraham.substack.com/p/magid-loves-judaism-its-the-jews
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V. RECENT BOOKS!
(1) From 2024, this one really is essential reading for any critical scholar of antizionism. Senior editor at the Atlantic Adam Kirsch’s book, On Settler-Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice is perfect. It’s short, accessible, and will tell you both everything you need to know about the discipline of “Settler Colonial Studies” and how it became weaponized against Israel, as well as give you the tools to critique both the weaponization and the discipline as a whole.
Here is a blurb:
This short book is the first to examine settler colonialism critically for a general readership. By critiquing the most important writers, texts, and ideas in the field, Adam Kirsch shows how the concept emerged in the context of North American and Australian history and how it is being applied to Israel. He examines the sources of its appeal, which, he argues, are spiritual as much as political; how it works to delegitimize nations; and why it has the potential to turn indignation at past injustices into a source of new injustices today. A compact and accessible introduction, rich with historical detail, the book will speak to readers interested in the Middle East, American history, and today’s most urgent cultural-political debates.
Buy it (and/or have your university or local library buy it) here:
https://www.amazon.com/Settler-Colonialism-Ideology-Violence-Justice/dp/1324105348/ref=sr_1_1
(2)
I recently met Prof. Ofer Idels and was very impressed, and promptly requested my college library order his book, Zionism: Emotions, Language and Experience. What looks appealing to me is that it appears to analyze Zionism from a perspective quite new to me, and I look forward to reading it.
Here’s a blurb:
Zionism: Emotions, Language and Experience (Cambridge Univ Press) rise to the challenge of how we write, think, and engage with Zionist history in our highly polarized antizionist era. The result is an innovative methodological landscape that steps outside the ubiquitous frameworks of colonialism, power, oppression, and indigeneity that have long saturated public discourse from all sides. Rejecting these reductive universalisms, the text pushes its readers to embrace the historical particularities, raw emotions, and visceral struggles that constituted the creation of the Zionist lived experience. Special significance is given to the linguistic and sensory revival of modern Hebrew as an act of ontological self-fashioning. Ultimately, however, this book serves as a call to let go of the entrenched cynicism of our age and to approach the people of the past with a renewed faith in the human experience. P.S. It is also quite short (academic prose), and, if your institution has a subscription to Cambridge Core, you can grab the digital version for absolutely free.
Buy it (and/or have your university or local library buy it) here:
https://www.amazon.com/Zionism-Emotions-Language-Experience-Histories/dp/1009442929/ref=sr_1_1
(3)
I’m currently writing a book on the history of antizionism and have become convinced that the fundamental cause of the conflict in the Middle East is a truly delusional form of Jew-hatred—so imagine my pleasure at being alerted to a recent book that seems to have precisely that main thesis!
I introduce Prof. David H. Stone’s book, Antisemitism in the Arab-Israeli Conflict: Time to Confront the Elephant in the Room, with an epilogue by great ally to the Jewish people, Col. Richard Kemp.
Here is a blurb:
A failure of collective vision has been responsible for inflicting incalculable suffering on generations of Jews and Arabs. Drawing on scholarly sources, Professor David Stone summarises the overwhelming evidence that eliminationist antisemitism is the ‘elephant in the room’ – the root cause and principal driver of the hundred-year long Arab-Jewish (now misleadingly reframed as Israeli-Palestinian) conflict – and is the main reason it remains unresolved. Until that underlying politicidal and genocidal bigotry is confronted, the conflict will continue. The book concludes with a call to action. There is a moral obligation on all of us – regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion or politics – to acknowledge this perennial obstacle to peace and to insist that the international community takes the necessary measures to neutralise its damaging consequences. The most urgent priority is to alert the world to the existence of antisemitic antizionism. The purpose of this book is to empower readers to help take that crucial first step towards peace and justice not just for Israelis and Arabs but for humanity as a whole.
Buy it (and/or have your university or local library buy it) here:
or in the UK here: https://amzn.eu/d/aKxKtdG
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VI. QUICK HITS
(1)
Kile Jones does it again, on antizionism as a culture:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/is-this-antizionism-identifying-the-culture-behind-the-chants/
(2)
Bob Goldberg on the antizionist political machine – absolutely terrifying must read:
(3) An antizionism mapping project, a little underdeveloped (perhaps) but still useful and promising:
https://az-mapping-project.base44.app/
(4)
The inimitable Liel Leibovitz gives his own quick hit on why the left settled on hating the Jews:
liel leibovitz@liel
A brief and cheerful meditation on Jew-hatred (really): The history of the last 30 years has been the history of the left trying to reinvent itself after realizing that its core argument, Marxism, has been soundly and incontrovertibly defeated. No one who witnessed the horrors
1:16 PM · Jun 25, 2026 · 16.6K Views
28 Replies · 36 Reposts · 216 Likes
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There’s still plenty more, but that’s it, for now.
Remember: We need teams of scholars producing reams of scholarship about antizionism.
We need ICSA.
Andrew Pessin
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