The Israeli Right’s antisemitism towards the left
JVL Introduction
The term “auto-antisemitism” is, apparently in common usage in Israel to mean self-hating Jews. In ways perhaps similar to Zionists outside Israel, the right wing politicians and commentators in Israel regard “leftists” in their midst as not really belonging, “as foreign to their “self,” as hostile to their “us.” This is so whether it involves Benjamin Netanyahu’s iconic whisper into the ear of Kabbalist Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri, telling him that the left has forgotten what it means to be Jewish, or whether it is the common practice of labelling leftists as traitors.”. The common thread is that those on the left are seen as not really being part of the community. Of course, this has worsened dramatically since October 7th 2023. (My emphasis LL)
The writer goes further and cites examples when the hatred towards leftists is expressed with language similar to that used by the Nazis about Jews. In a context where antisemitism is definitely rising, the writer is shocked that Israel has not been spared from this, or certainly from elements of this. But if commitment to Israel and all it does is how we are now to define being Jewish, many of us will fall short. This wonderful Wrong Kind of Jew video with Miriam Margolyes, Michael Rosen & Alexei Sayle will, presumably provide more evidence for the Israeli right wing and their supporters.
This article was originally published by Ha'aretz on Sun 7 Jun 2026. Read the original here.
The Antisemitism of the Israeli Right
As someone who writes in Haaretz, I’ve often been accused of auto-antisemitism. But when right-wingers attack leftists in the same way the Nazis talked about the Jews, it’s not seen as self-hatred. To our horror, the global wave of antisemitism has not spared Israel
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Carolina Landsmann writes that ‘There is definitely a current global wave of antisemitism’. I disagree. To merely assert something without evidence or argumentation throws into doubt the rest of the article.
Who is the Israeli ‘left’ that is referred to in the article? The Zionist left?
Landsmann starts of with a quotation from Berl Katznelson. It is part of what is called the Zionist negation of the diaspora. It is an example of how the differences between Labour and Revisionist were never anything more than tactical.
The reality is that Israel is as Akiva Orr put it the ‘unJewish state’. It is a living embodiment of everything that Jews in their overwhelming majority were opposed to. Today unfortunately, for political and socio-economic reasons major parts of the Jewish diaspora have swung to the Islamophobic right and this has caused what Landmann calls anti-Semitism.
Yes the Israel right talks like Nazis because they are no different ideologically from the Nazis. Except that they are called Jews but could, in another context, have equally been part of the Jim Crow south. The Israeli left that Landsmann talks about is unable to counter them because it too accepts the paradigm that Jews form a nation.
Israeli politics will continue to be Nazified because there is nothing else to counter it. The messianic right will continue to grow in strength because the logic of Zionism is the oppression and ethnic cleansing, leading to genocide of the Palestinians.
What Landsmann calls the Ashkenazi left is the old Labour Zionist left. Yes it sought a certain democratic space for Jews but the logic of settler colonialism and racial purity will always negate that. In short the Israeli left, which cannot break from Zionism, is caught on the horns of a dilemma entirely of its own making.