Is Anti-Zionism Antisemitism? | Judith Butler

Robinson's Podcast #233 - Judith Butler: Trump & Harris | Israel & Palestine | Sex & Gender

Judith Butler is Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School and formerly the Maxine Elliot Chair in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley. In this episode, Robinson and Judith discuss three broad topics. First, they talk about Judith’s latest book, Who’s Afraid of Gender? (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024). In particular, they touch on the dynamics of sex and gender, as well as their political dimensions. Second, the conversation turns to the 2024 presidential election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Finally, they broach the topic of Israel and Palestine, with particular attention to the questions of genocide and anti-semitism.

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University.

[Razi]

Judith explains Zionism like she does gender…

I’ll let the comment section fill in the blank on that one.

[taniakol]

Here's the definition when referring to zionism (political ideology, wiki df): Zionism[a] is an ethnocultural nationalist[b] movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a Jewish state through the colonization[2] of a land outside Europe. Not anti-semitic.

Sorry she isn't from the east Med and no ancestral connection to the place so can't talk about how Jews from anywhere else and Palestinians should've made an equal state from the beginning.

Chaim Weizmann, Russian Zionist Org president.. and then first president of Israel, said in 1918 (according to yt: "first pictures from Palestine"): "We Jews intend to live in peace with the Arabs. We don't intend to come to Palestine as conquerors but as a people which returns to its homeland."
Euro-zionists thinking they could go and colonize Palestine, taking it from the British occupiers, is a straight up white supremacist idea, and they're still behaving like murderous brutes.

They should not have expectantly shown up to an occupied people's ancestral land on the verge of gaining their independence after ~430 years of occupation with the thought to steal it, massacring the locals like medieval barbarians. 531 towns and villages in an area the size of NJ/Wales? Seriously?
1.5m Greeks and Armenians fled to Greece after their genocide from the Ottoman empire and didn't think to off the locals and steal their land. Guess cus they thought they were human. Beggars belief hey, just three years after Auschwitz?

Palestine is not the Jewish homeland anymore than the Christian one, which still owns most of the land in Israel after the state. It's a SPIRITUAL place, the holy land for the Abrahamic religions to go on pilgrimages, of which the later two comprise half the world's population, not just for the now 15m to think it just belongs to them. What a conceit. What an outrage, given what is happening now and what's happened for the last year (well, 76..).

[ChannelMath]

"is Judaism Zionism?" If not, then it follows than Anti-Zionism is not Antisemitism.
And moreover, generally, when one word was created within the context of another word, it's because they don't mean the same thing. Just imagine Herzl or Jabotinsky saying to a fellow Jew "Hey, I have an idea! The idea is we re-take Palestine, and I'm calling this idea 'Judaism', so if you don't like it, you're a self-hating Jew. "

[ChannelMath]

"is anti-Trumpism anti-American?" Unlike Israel, Trump does OFFICIALLY represent the USA.
"is anti-Nazism anti-German?" The Nazis did identify themselves with the historical and mythic German nation and culture.
"Is anti-salafism islamaphobic?", etc.

[jameslevitt]

No explanation here of what are “ Jewish values “ but we are led to believe these values are intrinsically good.

[lamegalectora]

So this ‘great thinker’ does not see the difference between anti-zionism BEFORE the creation of the estate of Israel and anti-zionism today?

[funckmasta]

It depends on your definition of Zionism. If you define „Zionism“ as the Jews‘ right to expel Palestinians, then anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism. But if Zionism means the Jews‘ right to MAINTAIN their own state, then yes, anti-Zionism is anti-semitism.
The vast majority of these highly confused pro-Palestine protesters think that Israel has no right to exist, and they call it „anti-Zionism“, but it really is anti-semitism.

[tal-lancer]

I respect Judith Butler very much, but I do not agree with her completely on this. It is true that the discourse and public debate is mirroring the war on the ground. I think that is an obvious statement of fact. But I sense a slight cognitive dissonance in her analysis, which is to say that she thinks Zionism as a diverse movement of different perspectives is not coming to the fore, and should be emphasised more in public debate. At the same time, she is conceding that when the Zionist project was ultimately affirmed almost 80 years ago, it was done through violent dispossession and ethnic cleansing.I don't dispute that there were plenty of Zionists who wanted to create a socialist utopia in the state of Palestine as a safe haven for both Jews and Arabs through their shared history, but those voices were very quickly quashed from early on in the movement. So why should contemporary public discourse give any weight to a view within the Zionist movement that hasn't been valid for almost a century? For 80 years, Zionism has just proven itself to be an anachronism of what I thought was a bygone era where violent colonialism was not just accepted, but even celebrated.

[moraymac]

No - it isn’t. Speak to Professor Finkelstein, Professor Chomsky, Max Blumenthal and Dr Ilan Pappe.

[Gphilly]

If Zionism isn’t antisemitism

Then opposing the existence of numerous Islamic Arab countries isn’t bigoted towards Arabs

Or opposing the existed of independent African nations is not racist towards Africans

[richardwitty]

She didn't address the question for a change, and reiterated anti-zionist cliche talking points.