A French hard-left MP sparked a political row Sunday by saying Israeli athletes were not welcome at the Paris Olympics because of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, which one senior minister said had "hints of anti-Semitism".In a post on X, Arfi branded Portes's comments "irresponsible" and accused him of "legitimising Hamas", the Palestinian militant group whose October 7 attacks on Israel sparked the Gaza war.
Also being anti-Zionist or anti-Israel doesn’t mean being anti-Jews. Those are two distinct things. One, being Jew doesn’t being being Zionish, second, being Israeli doesn’t mean being Jewish.
It’s basically a giant Venn diagram. You can be one of these things, you can be a combination of them, you can be all three of them, and you can be none of them.
It’s amazing that people question being an anti-zionist. It’s a straight-up fascist ideal. That should be the default setting of human beings.
But the leaders of Israel would love us all to conflate the two, and always encourage it.
And a good portion of the community is enforcing that definition. I’m not sure they realize the extent to which that will open up a can of worms. For more than a decade Zionism was distinctly considered an extremist ideology that should not in Amy way be confused with Juedaism. It’s like saying Opus Dei represents the catholic people. It’s just a terrible propaganda move on so many levels.