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2024 was the year discrimination against “Zionists” went big and brazen. Stigmatising Zionists in the US isn’t new, of course, but it has snowballed.
Since October 7, more Americans have felt emboldened to discriminate against Jews. The examples are numerous, varied and involve both the well-known and the unknown.
Signs reading “Zionists not allowed” and personally targeting the Jewish student body’s president were posted at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Jewish students have been assaulted nationwide, from UCLA to the University of Michigan to Atlanta’s Emory University. It took pressure for Columbia University to suspend – not expel – an undergraduate who asserted on video that “Zionists don’t deserve to live”. And protesters have carried anti-Jewish animus off-campus. In June, a masked anti-Israel protester led a chant in New York City’s subway that Zionists should identify themselves and leave the subway car.
There have been protests outside synagogues hosting Israeli real estate fairs in Teaneck, New Jersey, and Los Angeles; the first attracted a SWAT team and the latter became a brawl.
Jewish businesses have been targeted. Two neighbouring New York stores were defaced with the words “genocide supporters”. A Manhattan restaurant had its Israeli flag defaced with swastikas and then cut four months later. A Philadelphia falafel joint with an Israeli-American owner attracted a large protest. “Free Palestine” and “Stop genocide” were graffitied on a Miami bagel store with Jewish ownership. Signs hung in San Francisco urged locals to avoid six restaurants because of Jewish ownership. Jewish homes have been targeted. The home of the Brooklyn Museum’s director was covered in red paint and a banner with her name and the words “White Supremacist Zionist”. The home and car of a Jewish University of Michigan regent were vandalised, six months after his law firm office was damaged.
Some people feel so comfortable expressing their bigotry, they’ve put it in writing. An administrator at Boston’s Berklee College of Music sought a sub-letter for her shared apartment and said interested parties couldn’t be Zionist. Profiles on hook-up app Tinder and dating platforms specify “no Zionists”.
Earlier this year, a list of Zionist authors to boycott was circulated. There is an Instagram account dedicated to “exposing” and boycotting Zionist authors. And when Jewish CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil dared to ask serious questions of author Ta-Nehisi Coates about his anti-Israel book, network staff accused him of bias. Dokoupil then had to apologise to them.
Healthcare has been tainted. There’s a list of Zionist therapists to avoid. A Congressional panel revealed there’s now “decolonising therapy” in which Jews are treated as oppressors in therapeutic settings and Zionism is treated as a mental illness.
A bar in Salt Lake City, Utah, announced Zionists were banned. One Californian with a woman-focused travel business posted on her website: “Zionists are not welcome on our trips.” And the National Jewish Advocacy Centre has alleged in a lawsuit that “globally ranked professional” gamer Felix Hasson “was banned from a number of” New York-based competitions and “two servers on the popular video game social media platform Discord, because he is a Zionist”.
A (now former) member of Michigan’s Bloomfield Township Trustees labelled Zionists “scum” on social media. When Michigan’s Jewish attorney general brought charges against 11 anti-Israel protesters who’d violated the law at the University of Michigan, Michigan Rep, Rashida Tlaib attacked her, implying the attorney general was biased and unprofessional.
This year’s highest profile attack, though, was on Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. Having spoken about Israel and antisemitism, Shapiro inspired anti-Israel activists to wage an aggressive campaign to torpedo his vice presidential nomination.
2024 was a challenging year for America’s Jews. With the help of the incoming Trump administration and Republican Congress, that should start changing.
Melissa Langsam Braunstein is a writer based in the Washington DC area @slowhoneybee