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JEWS AND ISRAEL ARE NOT THE SAME. EQUATING THEM IS A PROPAGANDA
TECHNIQUE  
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Norman Solomon
September 16, 2025
The Guardian
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_ The claim is central to rationales for arming Israel even as
leading human rights groups decry genocide in Gaza _

, Illustration: Lina Jaradat

 

More than nine months after Amnesty International
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Rights Watch
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reports that concluded Israel was committing genocide – and more
than a month since key Israeli human rights groups asserted
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same – the American political establishment remains in rigid denial
while horrors continue nonstop in Gaza. Virtually all Republicans and
most Democrats in Congress still support massive US arms shipments to
Israel, so they certainly can’t admit that the weaponry is making
genocide possible.

Central to rationales for arming Israel
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the nation of “the Jewish people”.

When the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, spoke via video to a
conference in Jerusalem three months ago, he declared
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can be no nuanced separation of hatred of Israel and hatred of the
Jewish people.” Rubio added: “Those who call for the destruction
of Israel are calling for the destruction of the Jewish people.”
Last month, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, reinforced the same
message while visiting Israel, where he reportedly said
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the West Bank was “the rightful property of the Jewish people”.

Such rhetoric – equating Israel with all Jews and Israel’s future
with theirs – is an effort to sanctify Israel and shield it from
criticism by brandishing the charge of antisemitism.

Fusing Israel with “the Jewish people” is a key propaganda
technique. The fact that it’s so ubiquitous makes it no less
ridiculous, or dangerous. A comment attributed to Voltaire applies:
“As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to
commit atrocities.”

And atrocities continue with no end in sight. Israel has persisted
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methodical – and clearly intentional
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killing of Palestinian civilians not only with bombs, missiles and
bullets but also with starvation as a weapon of war
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Blockage or extreme constriction
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humanitarian aid has been the norm. All summer, Israel has ignored the
United Nations warning
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food intake in Gaza had dropped far below “survival” level. By
then, the president of the International Committee of the Red
Cross said
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become worse than “hell on earth”.

Ironically, the country that we’re told is the ultimate target of
antisemitism is now, in reality, the world’s most
powerful _cause _of antisemitism. By insisting that it is the
embodiment of Jews all over the world, the state of Israel seeks to
associate Jews everywhere with its systematic war crimes
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Gaza along with deadly
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cleansing
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Palestinians in the West Bank
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The Israeli government, esteemed by a dwindling number
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conflates itself with Judaism and “the Jewish people” in a
marketing pattern so familiar that it blends into the wallpaper of
media echo chambers. The crux of pro-Israel messaging is to promote a
set of false equations: Israel = Jews. Support for Israel = support
for Jews. Denunciations of Israel = antisemitism. And a functional
subtext of those equations is this one: Israeli government = impunity.

During the 1980s, when activists in the United States and elsewhere
targeted apartheid South Africa with non-violent campaigns for
boycotts, divestment and sanctions, those actions did not provoke
charges of being anti-white. In this century, the nonviolent Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has targeted Israel, a country
condemned as an apartheid state by one
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rights organization after another
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and BDS supporters, even if Jewish, routinely face accusations of
antisemitism. In Congress, the accusers include many liberal
Democrats. The American Jewish Committee is one of many sizable groups
that have long been flatly declaring
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antisemitic”.

Six decades ago, as a child going to Hebrew school, I couldn’t have
imagined that the Jewish faith and reverence for Israel would become
so manipulated. When I asked neighbors to put coins into a
blue-and-white can so more trees could be planted in Israel, little
did I know that the Israeli government would relentlessly kill, maim
and terrorize Palestinian civilians in the name of protecting Jews.
Nor did I have any inkling that the dignity and spirituality
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twisted and desecrated by Israel with policies of genocide.

One of Israel’s Basic Laws
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enacted in 2018, says: “the State of Israel is the national home of
the Jewish people,” adding: “the right to exercise national
self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish
people.” This is codification of standard assertions from the
Israeli government and its ardent boosters doing all they can to
hijack Judaism – claiming to speak for the world’s Jews, whether
they like it or not.

Increasingly, they don’t. Polling
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opposition
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core Israeli policies among Jewish people in the US.

All too often, US government officials amplify the senseless trope
that Israel is the guarantor of safety for Jews worldwide. Speaking at
a Hanukah party at the White House in December 2023, former president
Joe Biden said
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“Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world that
is safe.” The remarkable assertion, which met with loud applause and
cheers, was hardly a one-off. Three months earlier, Biden had said
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“Were there no Israel, no Jew in the world would be ultimately safe.
It’s the only ultimate guarantee.”

The US Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, writes in his new book
Antisemitism in America: “There is a special and almost
indescribable pride that comes from knowing, despite all the horrors,
that after two millennia of wandering the desert, the Jewish people
would finally return home.” It’s a classic conceit of claiming to
speak for “the Jewish people” and insisting that Israel is their
actual homeland – no matter where they live on the planet.

The biggest Jewish organizations in the US automatically extol the
Israeli government, regardless of what it does. And, as Peter
Beinart wrote
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year: “American Jewish leaders don’t just insist on Israel’s
right to exist. They insist on its right to exist as a Jewish state.
They cling to the idea that it can be both Jewish and democratic
despite the basic contradiction between legal supremacy for one
ethno-religious group and the democratic principle of equality under
the law.”

More insidious is the unspoken assumption that, after all is said and
done, Jewish lives are intrinsically much more valuable than other
lives in general and Palestinian lives in particular, while Israel’s
destiny is transcendent. It’s a mindset that Beinart decries in his
new book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: “No matter how
many Palestinians die, they do not tip the scales, because the value
of a Palestinian is finite and the value of a Jewish state is infinite
… Worshipping a country that elevates Jews over Palestinians
replaces Judaism’s universal God – who makes special demands on
Jews but cherishes all people – with a tribal deity that considers
Jewish life precious and Palestinian life cheap.”

Such worshipping of Israel fuels the pernicious concept that “the
Jewish people” are synonymous with Israel. Any such claim can only
be destructive, especially with Israel shamelessly engaged in ethnic
cleansing, mass murder and genocide.

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_Norman Solomon is the director of RootsAction and executive director
of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book is War Made
Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine
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* Isreal/ Palestine
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* Propaganda
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* Genocide
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