By Mariam Jooma Çarikci
(Right of Reply to Adam Charnas’ Politicsweb article: “Jewish power: A misleading trope in Çarikci’s narrative”)
The article published on Politicsweb on April 16, “Jewish power: A misleading trope in Çarikci’s narrative,” relies on the formulaic response from Zionist that inaccurately and purposefully conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Adam Charnas’s familiar argument aims to delegitimise principled critique of Zionist ideology and Israel’s policies by labelling such criticism as bigotry—a tactic used for decades to silence advocates for Palestinian freedom. It is an abuse of history that continues to have fatal effects for the occupied people of Palestine.
Let us begin with clarity: Zionism is a political ideology. Judaism is a religion and identity. To oppose the former is not to attack the latter. Many Jewish individuals and organisations have been at the forefront of exposing this very distinction. From Jewish Voice for Peace (USA) and Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) to South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP), the Jewish ethical tradition has produced powerful dissent against the dispossession of Palestinians and the violence of ethno-nationalism.
In South Africa, our lived history speaks of the deep resonance of the issue of ethno-nationalism. It is well documented that Zionist institutions, including the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) and affiliates, aligned themselves closely with the apartheid regime. Anti-Zionist Jewish academics, researchers and social justice advocates have written extensively about the symbiotic nature of relations between Israel supplied military technology, arms, and surveillance systems to Pretoria at the height of global sanctions. The ideological affinity between the two states—one premised on racial separation, the other on Jewish supremacy in a settler-colonial framework—was neither accidental nor superficial.
Globally, Jewish intellectuals like Judith Butler, Ilan Pappé, and Noam Chomsky have also dissected Zionism as a dangerous political project that perpetuates displacement, occupation, and militarism. In her seminal work, Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, Butler reclaims Jewish identity from nationalist entrapments saying, ‘Jewish opposition to Zionism accompanied the founding proposals made by Herzl at the International Zionist Congress in 1897 in Basel and it has never ceased since that time. It is not anti-Semitic or, indeed, self-hating to criticize the state violence exemplified by Zionism.’
Ilan Pappé’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine exposes the foundations of Israel’s statehood in the mass expulsion of Palestinians.
These are not fringe voices—they are respected academics and moral leaders in Jewish thought.
To raise concerns about Zionist influence in foreign policy, arms trade, or corporate lobbying—whether in South Africa or elsewhere—is not to echo “antisemitic tropes,” as the Politicsweb article suggests. It is to demand accountability from political actors who support systems of oppression, whether in Gaza or Johannesburg.
Moreover, Charnas accuses me of erasing independent agency of the MP’s who visited the Apartheid state when it is the agency of the rising tide of Jewish anti-Zionist activism around the world that is being completely disregarded. Jewish critics of Zionism are not self-hating, nor are they unwitting tools of bigotry—they are upholding a vision of Jewish life rooted in justice, humility, and coexistence.
Silencing these voices by weaponizing antisemitism delegitimises real struggles against racism and obscures the need to confront state violence in all its forms. We must reject this tactic to protect the integrity of our moral and political debates.
Mariam Jooma Çarikci is a Senior Researcher at the Media Review Network (MRN), focused on the politics of the Horn of Africa, Zionism in Africa, and Türkiye’s expanding role in the Middle East and Africa. She is the author of Kurdistan: Achievable Reality or Political Mirage (AMEC, 2013).
