Letters to the Editor: Is anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism? Readers debate

Graffiti is seen April 29 at the Powell Library on the UCLA campus where pro-Palestinian demonstrators erected an encampment. The campaign of intimidating those who oppose the “keep Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu out of jail” government is doing a great disservice to Israel. They say “Zionist” to refer to Israelis, and they often refer to the country as “the occupation.” Non-Israelis who support the legitimacy of Israel are also called Zionists. To the editor: In one of your articles about UCLA Chancellor Gene Block’s testimony to a House committee, we’re told the following: “Almost as soon as activists set up a Palestinian solidarity encampment. But other Jewish students helped set up the camp, arguing it was not antisemitic, but anti-Zionist.” The slide from the topic of discriminatory checkpoints to the Jews who helped establish them illustrates Orwell’s observation, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” You don’t have to be a Zionist or an anti-Zionist to see that these checkpoints evoked the ghettoizations, expulsions, cleansings and exclusion systems that non-Jewish communities have inflicted upon Jews for thousands of years.