Opportunities, New/Recent Books, Resources
Materials GALORE from the Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism.
This one’s long because there is so much ICSA goodness to share … Please take the time to read it through ….
I. OPPORTUNITIES
(1) ICSA Could Use a Volunteer (or Two)
The good news is that ICSA is growing rapidly. The need is dire, the interest is there, so is the will. But the less good news is that it’s already more than a full-time job. I’m writing a book, editing two volumes of the Encyclopedia (with over 70 chapters!), producing the substack, traveling to give talks (that I have to prepare), meeting with prospective funders, engaging with (more accurately, receiving) many dozens of emails daily, and more. (Very sorry if I am slow to respond, I can’t keep up.) So I can use some help.
I’m not quite sure how to begin delegating responsibilities so
· (1) If anyone has talent at creating organizations (moving from one primary person to more!) please let me know and
· (2) If anyone would like to get more actively involved in building ICSA please speak up! Initially as a volunteer but if we can raise more funding there is the possibility of compensation down the line.
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(2) The first two volumes of the ICSA Encyclopedia still have a couple of gaps. If you or someone you know is competent to address these topics (for compensation!) please let me know asap.
· Antizionism (AZ) in the Entertainment World (I have a tentative lead here)
· AZ in the Republican Party
· AZ in the Democratic Socialists of America
· AZ in the Black community
· A critical examination of Students for Justice in Palestine
· AZ in teachers’ unions and the NEA
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(3) ICSA has received the following query for some compensated work:
I am a retired medical researcher. Currently, I am writing a book—unrelated to my previous work—about flaws in the reporting about Israel in the US media. The book’s goal is to demonstrate the media’s lack of professionalism that has caused the anti-Zionism and antisemitism usually attributed to Israel’s behavior. Instead of identifying individual errors, the approach is to examine patterns of errors in both the selection and presentation of content that reflect on the reporter’s integrity and rigor. Ideally, the final chapter in the book could be a proposal for journalist standards that might help elevate the goal of journalism from advocating to advancing understanding.
I am wanting to hire two types of collaborators. One is an expert to assess whether I’m going in the right direction and what type of changes may make the book more effective. The second is a research assistant who could review the book for clarity, errors, and omissions. (The latter could perhaps be a talented undergraduate?)
If you may be willing to collaborate on this work, please send a message to Arthur Hartz, at hartzarthur@gmail.com.
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(4) Resource AND Opportunity: Short Film on Soviet Antizionism and Propaganda
Resource:
James Rose has produced a terrific 25-minute documentary on Soviet Antizionism and Propaganda, featuring some of the top experts in this area, and has made a special link available for ICSA members to view it. PLEASE DO NOT SHARE THIS LINK:
Password is ICSA!NVC
Short blurb: This timely documentary traces the origins of modern anti-Israel rhetoric to a decades-old Soviet campaign of antisemitic propaganda disseminated by the KGB and its allies worldwide. To date, the film has been selected to 13 festivals with several accolades, community screenings and airing on public television regionally.
Opportunity:
James proposes:
What do you think about this idea: use the movie to tee up community screenings where ICSA could be provide the expert speaker. Happy to work with any ICSA associates on this. Events can be educational like what we did at the Weitzman with Hirsh & Khaykin, or JCC event with Dalia and Liz Berger, or more community building with local clergy, lay leaders, or a facilitator. I do have a viewer guide and discussion guide, both high quality, for anyone that wants to keep it community contained, which I am a fan of. Having local leaders helps to stay focused on the issues of what needs to be done locally as opposed to high level discussion.
Sidenote: I have a couple events coming up you may be able to plug in on, one in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Baltimore. trying to get one rolling in Toronto too.
What people would need to do is find space, synagogue, JCC, local theater, classroom, etc with A/V. Events have drawn between 50 and 75 people, without much promotion. As you know, I offer the film at no charge to educational and social organizations. Any invited speakers or facilitators are at their own fee arrangements, which I can help with in some circumstances but cannot make assurances for. Most community & local people will offer time at no charge.
I think it’s a terrific idea. If after viewing the film you are potentially interested in running a local event (perhaps under the ICSA banner) around the film please let me know and I’ll connect you to Jim. ICSA should be able to provide some modest funding toward such an event.
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(5) Opportunity To Do a Good Thing:
The story of Prof. Paul Finlayson should shock and outrage you. In one sentence: Shortly after October 7 Paul had the temerity to condemn Hamas publicly, one time, which led to a brutal Kafkaesque witch-hunt against him waged by his own university, a suspension, and finally termination—all while another colleague daily posted brutal anti-Israel lies openly supporting mass violence against Jews, and continues to do so unmolested to this day. I boil with rage every time I think about it, not just for the injustice against this one person who, though not Jewish, was willing to speak up for the Jews, but because it represents how far Canada has fallen in general and what threatens us in the U.S., as antizionism goes unchecked in the university and beyond.
You should subscribe to Paul’s substack (
) where you will find not only his story but his excellent commentary on many topics directly relevant to ICSA’s concerns.
Here’s one account of his story. The details are even worse than my brief summary:
Here is the opportunity to do something good. A kind member of the Jewish community has started a GoFundMe on Paul’s behalf, to help him wage his battle against his university, on behalf not just of himself but of Israel and the Jewish people. Please consider donating a few dollars:
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II. NEW BOOK, RECENT BOOK
(1) You are presumably blissfully unconnected to the internet if you are unaware of the release of Gad Saad’s new book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind. I was honored to share a stage with Saad at the recent Tafsik/StopAntizionism Symposium Against Antizionism, and one cannot deny Saad’s charm, wit, intelligence, overall mission-alignment with ICSA, and overall skewering of postmodernism, progressivism, Wokism. I haven’t read this one yet, and would welcome any ICSA members’ who might be interested in reviewing the book for ICSA, but on its release it was an instant New York Times #1 bestseller and #1 bestseller in numerous Amazon categories, so it is clearly a book to be reckoned with.
Prof. Saad graciously provided a link to a Prager-Institute video introducing the book:
Buy it here:
https://www.amazon.com/Suicidal-Empathy-Dying-Be-Kind/dp/0063446537/ref=sr_1_1
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(2) Another book came out in January that needs much wider exposure as an essential text in understanding Islamic antizionism, a major subfield of the Critical Study of Antizionism. Dr. Andrew Bostom is perhaps one of the world’s leading scholars on the subject, and has done the field a major service by translating, and commenting upon, a foundational text of Islamic antisemitism and antizionism, in his own book called A Modern Qur’anic Kampf Against the Jews. Again, I would love to have ICSA members review this book for ICSA and elsewhere, and help spread the word about it. Please buy a copy if you can, and request your local and university libraries to do the same.
Buy it here:
https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Quranic-Kampf-Against-Jews/dp/B0GFPZBH57/ref=sr_1_1
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III. RESOURCES
(1) Speaking of Dr. Andrew Bostom, I share a very challenging new essay of his responding to the session on Islamic Antizionism held at the Tafsik/StopAntizionism Symposium Against Antizionism a couple of weeks back. As I’ve mentioned previously, I was honored to participate in the Symposium and found it overall excellent in concept and in execution, and I am thrilled for it to mark the start of an eventual mass movement against antizionism. But ICSA aims to be big tent, and there are bound to be disagreements about all sorts of things, and the occasional controversy, and as a scholarly organization we should be open to those.
One of the panelists at the relevant session was Loay Alshareef. In my view he is an extremely bright, extraordinarily courageous person, a Muslim who accepts the State of Israel and openly advocates for its acceptance across the Islamic world. And much of what he says is inspiring, moving, and beautiful, and I have walked away every time I’ve heard him feeling inspired, including the recent session. More about Alshareef may be found here: https://www.resetdoc.org/story/loay-alshareef-a-palestinian-state-if-its-leadership-recognizes-israel/.
Dr. Bostom has a different take on Alshareef’s remarks at the panel, concerned that he has misrepresented authentic Qur’anic, Islamic antisemitism. Though my own admiration for Alshareef, and my gratitude for his activism, remains unchanged, Bostom raises some thought-provoking questions.
“Negating Islamic Antisemitism—An Analysis of Loay Alshareef’s Comments on “Islamic Antisemitism” at “The World Symposium Against Antizionism,” Toronto, Canada, May 17, 2026”
By Andrew Bostom
Self-proclaimed and much ballyhooed “Muslim Zionist” Loay Alshareef, at the May 26, 2026 “The World Symposium Against Antizionism” in Toronto, Canada, made this summary assessment of Islamic antisemitism:
“But when I opened my eyes, I realized the problem is with Islamic antisemitism. It comes from some texts, yes, some texts that are attributed to Prophet Muhammad and they are not in the Qur’an, that [the texts] I don’t believe in, like the Jew will hide behind the tree at the end of days. I conquer this in saying, well, you believe this will happen in Islam, according to us, when Jesus comes back. What if a tree says, there’s a Jew behind me, come and kill him, and that Jew turned out to be Jesus? So this is also problematic.”
Problematic indeed.
Mr. Alshareef’s two essential statements about the Qur’an and what he refers to glibly as “some texts attributed to the Prophet Muhammad”—namely Islam’s canonical traditions or hadith—were untrue and profoundly deceptive. They had no place in an honest discussion of Islamic antisemitism and in fact appear to be deliberate, calculated examples of taqiyya or sanctioned Islamic dissimulation …
Read the rest here:
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(2) Indefatigable attorney and longtime ally in the battle against campus antizionism and antisemitism, CUNY Prof. Jeffrey Lax has worked up a new legal framework for thinking about the Jews, to help the ongoing lawfare battle. He lays it out succinctly here, in the context of the recent (failed) antisemitism case against MIT, suggesting that the new framework can succeed where the previous frameworks have failed.
P.R.I.Z.E.--How Jews Encompass 5 Different Legally Protected Classes Under the Law
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(3) Ernest Sternberg, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo, is a man of many talents, including being an anti-antizionist scholar extraordinaire. He contributed a spectacular essay to my 2018 volume, Anti-Zionism on Campus, and offers an ICSA original here on the absurdly low level to which antizionist media stoops these days.
“Dog-Rape and Organ Harvesting: The Logic of Humanitarian Blood Libel”
Abstract: This essay argues that extreme anti-Israel accusations, including claims of organ harvesting and sexual abuse, function as modern blood libels amplified through humanitarian discourse. It contends that contemporary progressive humanitarianism, like earlier racial pseudoscience, can become an ideological vehicle for antisemitic demonization and anti-Zionist hostility.
It is a fascinating feature of antizionism that some of the most atrocious claims come from the keyboards of humanitarians, as they wish to think of themselves. This past week in the long annals of antisemitism, the prime example is the claim by Nicholas Kristof that prison guards in Israel are using dogs to sexually assault Palestinian prisoners. Kristof’s main institutional source is Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, easily exposed as a Hamas front organization, which has also claimed that Israel steals Palestinian corpses to transplant organs into Jews.
Here we have two accusations against Israel by Euro-Med: dog-rape and murder-for-organ-harvesting. They have in common that they are among the most disturbing that the human mind can conjure. My easier task (Part I) is to determine whether Euro-Med is a credible source. It is simple to demonstrate that its organ-theft allegation is a lie. The harder work (Part II) is to understand the ideology that turns humanitarianism into a weapon against the most hated of creatures, the Zionist ….
Read the rest here:
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(4) Finally, Sarah Ettedgui, a Canadian attorney, had a terrific tweet that concisely explains our new movement to turn the lens on antizionism:
I have little to no interest in endless debates about what Zionism is.
Israel exists. There is no mechanism in international law to dismantle a state against the will of its population. If you want to discuss the conduct of states, international law already provides the framework for doing so. That conversation is called international law, not antizionism.
The people targeting Jews today have already decided what “Zionism” means to them. Nothing I say is going to change that.
Antizionists love to talk about conduct. So let’s stop talking about definitions and start looking at conduct.
A Jewish woman wearing a Magen David is denied entry to a bathhouse in Barcelona. Jewish students are singled out on campus and expected to answer for Israel. Jews walking to synagogue wearing a kippah are shouted at about Palestine. Jewish businesses are placed on “Zionist” boycott lists. Jewish therapists are scrutinized for alleged Zionist affiliations. Jewish restaurants are targeted because they are perceived to be Zionist. Jewish organizations, schools, synagogues, and community centres are treated as extensions of a foreign state.
Notice anything? A pattern maybe?
The target is not the Israeli government. The target is the Jew standing in front of you. At some point we need to stop asking what antizionists say they believe and start looking at what antizionism produces.
When Jews are expected to justify their relationship with Israel before being allowed to access opportunities, services, institutions, and social spaces that are open to everyone else, we are no longer talking about a “political disagreement”.
We are looking at a system of exclusion built on collective blame and a model of dehumanization.
That is how dehumanization works. Libels become conspiracies. Conspiracies become stigma. Stigma becomes harm. Harm takes the form of discrimination, exclusion, harassment, and, in its most extreme manifestation, physical violence.
Turn the mirror around.
Read the original here:
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That’s it, for now.
Remember: We need teams of scholars producing reams of scholarship about antizionism.
We need ICSA.
Thank you for sharing the James Rose video.
Just curious: why are you letting people know not to share the link to the video? 🤔 Makes it more enticing?