Seeking Volunteers, Services Available, Great Examples of Critical-Scholarship-on-Antizionism, News and Recommendations
Another Week of Critical-Study-of-Antizionism Goodness!
6-24-26
So much critical-study-of-antizionism to report!
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I. SEEKING VOLUNTEERS
(1) LAST CALL: Now that the Foundational Encyclopedia chapters have been assigned, we are about ready to create a peer-reviewed Journal for the Critical Study of Antizionism!
We will need several people to serve on the Editorial Board. Job description details TBA, but please email me if you are interested and willing, and feel free to add a couple of sentences explaining why you are particularly qualified. Our first choice will be people with Ph.D.s who are active or retired professors, but we may be open to independent scholars as well with the right experience.
Thanks to those who have already reached out – stay tuned for updates.
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(2) If anyone has graphic design skills and would like to take the rough draft of this approximately weekly ICSA substack and make it visually interesting and professional looking, please get in touch!
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ICSA seeks to become a community and a network, so we are pleased to post notices such as this one:
II. SERVICES AVAILABLE
Hello, my name is Simon Lichter, and I’m looking to take on one additional remote consulting client (10–15 hours/week). I have over 10 years of experience in nonprofit consulting and hold an MBA from Johnson & Wales University.
I currently serve in two part-time leadership roles as Founding Executive Director of Urban Dor (Connecticut’s largest young Jewish adult organization for 20s & 30s) and Co-Founder / Director of Operations & Strategic Partnerships at Scholars Circle (which hosted ICSA’s inaugural webinar series), where I’ve helped build both organizations from the ground up—including developing their websites, driving strategy, and leading growth initiatives.
My expertise includes nonprofit program development, membership growth, strategic planning, community engagement, website creation, and operational systems.
If your organization is looking for support launching a new initiative, growing an existing program, or strengthening operations, I’d love to connect.
References and resume available upon request.
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonlichter/
Email - Simonlichter@gmail.com
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III. Three Great Examples of Critical Scholarship on Antizionism
(1)
Elder of Ziyon examines how the socialist Jewish Bund reacted to the 1929 Hebron massacre, arguing that many Bundists interpreted anti-Jewish violence through an anti-colonial framework, prioritizing opposition to Zionism over condemnation of the massacre itself—exactly as many progressive Jews responded to the October 7 massacre—and much to the discredit of both groups.
Read it here:
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(2)
I haven’t read either the book review mentioned or the book it is about – I have ordered both from my college library – but it looks by the summary of the book review provided here that it is just the kind of work we need more of.
Jessica Roitman writes:
Maya Wind’s Towers of Ivory and Steel has become The Bible for academic boycott advocates. Since October 7, it’s been cited in university senate debates, faculty referenda, and BDS resolutions as the empirical foundation for severing ties with Israeli universities. It’s been praised as “groundbreaking” work based on “meticulous archival research” into “previously inaccessible Hebrew texts.”
There’s just one problem, as a devastating new review by Johannes Becke and Iris Idelson-Shein in the *Journal of Israeli History* (June 2026) shows. The book doesn’t meet basic scholarly standards.
“Not meeting scholarly standards” sounds, on reading the rest, like a dramatic understatement. And based on the descriptions, it sounds like we have a classic example of a major technique of antizionists: someone writes something, lots of people cite it, then lots of people cite them, and suddenly the original thing seems like an established piece of academic knowledge—even if, in fact, it amounts to nothing.
Read the summary of the review here (which links to the review):
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7475141015973265411/
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(3)
A recent report by the New Zealand research group WERO (Working to End Racism and Oppression) makes the broad claim that racism and oppression are serious concerns in psychology across all levels of the discipline. The researchers claim that science itself is a social construct of white Europeans, and that it is this association with perceived white power and prestige alone that justifies the dominance of scientific ways of knowing in the practice of psychology. This supposed truth is interpreted as an injustice against what they see as indigenous Māori ways of knowing. The researchers go on to claim that in order to eradicate racism and oppression in psychology, Māori ways of knowing should be given equal weight to scientific ways of knowing in the training and practice of psychologists in New Zealand.
As far as I can see, this is “wokeness” dismantling science. While not directly about antizionism, the reasoning here reflects the exact patterns of thinking that underlie progressive antizionism, starting with the idea that the Palestinian “narrative” must be given equal weight to (what I would call) the actual and true narrative about Jews, Israel, and the conflict.
Happily, Arna Mitchell is having none of it. Mitchell subjects the WERO report to serious academic critique, thereby dismantling it, precisely as we need to do with so many aspects of antizionism.
Anti-woke gadfly Bruce Gilley, who a few years back wrote a really fascinating and against-the-tide book called The Case for Colonialism, summarizes Mitchell as showing that the very concept of “indigenous ways of knowing” is a racist concept. I’m not sure that’s a 100% accurate take on Mitchell, but it’s certainly in the ballpark.
Read Mitchell’s article here:
https://zenodo.org/records/16743836
Gilley’s comment is here:
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IV. NEWS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
(1)
A very troubling story that is a sign of what’s coming down the pike. In Canada there is a movement to get “anti-Palestinian racism” officially recognized as a form of hate, which perhaps would be fine if it weren’t the case that the people defining it basically make any objection to the racism that Palestinians direct toward Jews count as a form of racism against Palestinians!
In a very similar vein, here is a story where a presentation from our friends at StopAntizionism about a very important form of antizionism—Islamic antizionism, which is deeply grounded in Islamist Jew-hatred—was hit with accusations of “Islamophobia,” as well as (wait for it) antisemitism!
Read it here:
By Toby Moneit: “Naming Antizionism Begets Claims of Islamophobia”
By Toby Moneit: "Naming Antizionism Begets Claims of Islamophobia"
The 34th annual Symposium on the Holocaust and Genocide took place at my public junior college in Montreal, Canada in late March, 2026. The theme this year was “generations” and included, as one would expect, the stories of children and grandchildren of survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides and pogroms. The Symposium also considered the generat…
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(2)
Speaking of Islamic antizionism, it has long seemed clear to me that we should frame it as a matter of “Islamic supremacism” (often conjoined with “Arab supremacism”). The book I’m writing in fact uses and defends precisely that framework, so it was quite exciting when I came upon this fine article by a Haverford College alum, Barak Bacharach, to his college blog in response to the rampant antizionism he saw there. The article could use a little development and polishing, and the author requests that if anyone on this list would like to help him improve it, he would welcome the assistance! (Email me and I’ll connect you.)
Abstract: The essay argues that much contemporary antizionism is shaped by unexamined assumptions of Arab political and cultural primacy in the Middle East. The author contends that anti-Zionist discourse often denies Jewish indigeneity, minimizes the historic persecution and displacement of Middle Eastern Jews, and treats Jewish national self-determination as uniquely illegitimate. Drawing on personal experience, the essay calls for “unlearning Arab supremacy” in the same way other forms of ethnic or colonial privilege are critically examined. Its central thesis is that genuine justice and reconciliation require recognizing both Palestinian and Jewish national histories, rejecting ethnic hierarchies, and moving beyond narratives that portray Jews solely as colonial outsiders.
Read it here:
Barak Bacharach
On Antizionism and Unlearning Arab Supremacy
https://pols.sites.haverford.edu/alumni-corner/on-antizionism-and-unlearning-arab-supremacy/
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(3)
You may recall a few months back there was some discussion on this substack about whether to frame the battle against antizionism as one of being a “defense of Western civilization.” There was much to chew on there, but I came across this piece by Israeli graduate student Ron Avraham spelling out particularly clearly just why so many antizionists are also anti-capitalists (thus tightening the link between antizionism and anti-Westernism).
Read it here:
Ron Avraham
Why do Anti-Zionism and Anti-Capitalism Go Hand in Hand?
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-do-anti-zionism-and-anti-capitalism-go-hand-in-hand/
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(4)
Adam Louis-Klein, who has done more than anyone to get “antizionism” front and center and under the critical microscope, came out with two articles this week.
The first explicitly responds to the foundational objection that antizionism should be assimilated to antisemitism:
A Reply to Brad Rudin
https://isgap.org/flashpoint/a-reply-to-brad-rudin/
The second marks his first appearance in the Atlantic. Unfortunately it’s behind a paywall, but if you can access it, it’s an excellent read. (I guess their style guide requires the hyphen that he himself opposes! …)
The Left Wing Case Against Anti-Zionism
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/left-against-antizionism-israel/687616/
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(5)
Finally, a chilling piece in Tablet by first-rate legal scholars Jon Michaels and Matthew Segal.
Abstract:
The article argues that a recent federal court decision involving Jewish and Israeli plaintiffs at Columbia University applied civil-rights law differently than it would for other protected groups. It contends that the court discounted evidence of discrimination expressed through anti-Zionist or anti-Israeli rhetoric, despite civil-rights law’s longstanding recognition of coded forms of bias. The author’s central thesis is that legal standards used to identify discrimination are being applied inconsistently when Jews are the alleged victims, potentially weakening protections against antisemitism.
Read it here:
Jon Michaels and Matthew Segal
Zionists Don’t Have Civil Rights
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/civil-rights-discrimination-jews-columbia
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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.