https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/opinion/antisemitism-american-jews-israel-mamdani.html
“What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians,” Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli prime minister, wrote in Haaretz. “We’re not doing this due to loss of control in any specific sector, not due to some disproportionate outburst by some soldiers in some unit. Rather, it’s the result of government policy — knowingly, evilly, maliciously, irresponsibly dictated. Yes, Israel is committing war crimes.”
What many young Jews see is what Olmert sees, and they want no part of it. Are they to defend war crimes? Are they to defend or even accept the use of mass starvation as a tool of war? Are they to believe in equality everywhere but in the state that is meant to be their spiritual home? There are many who bristled at the term “genocide” a year ago but have come to accept it now.
What other Jews see is a world that cares little for Jewish life and has always sought Israel’s destruction. “We’re talking about a country that exists,” Lipstadt said. “So when you say, ‘I’m an anti-Zionist,’ what is Zionism? It’s the right of Jews to have a national homeland. And if you’re saying, ‘I don’t believe in that,’ then on a very practical level, what happens to the six-plus million Jews who live in that country?”
After our conversation, Lipstadt emailed me to underscore a point. “Here’s what I would say to those young people or whomever who question the right of Israel to exist. They may not be — they probably are not — antisemitic in intent, but placing the lives of half of the world Jewish population in danger is absolutely antisemitic in impact.”