On the second day of the annual Diversity Forum at the University of Wisconsin, a panel of scholars and activists held a discussion at Union South to shed light on the long history of anti-Zionism in the Jewish community and its connections to the ongoing struggle for Palestinian rights.
The session hosted three UW faculty — Tenured Professor Jill H. Casid, Teaching Faculty Amanda Shubert and Postdoctoral Research Associate Samantha Bosco.
The sessions provided a platform for anti-Zionist Jewish voices often excluded from mainstream discourse around these contentious issues, Casid said.
Casid began the discussion by acknowledging that it was being held more than a year into the war in Gaza, which she characterized as Israel’s campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Casid also discussed Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich’s recently announced plans to annex the West Bank.
Shubert said key terms such as “genocide” and “Zionism” must be defined to ensure a shared understanding of the issues.
“Zionism is a nationalist settler colonial movement that originated in late 19th century Europe with the aim of creating a Jewish national state in historic Palestine,” Shubert said.
Shubert clarified that her use of the term “Zionist” referred to people who support settler colonial and Jewish nationalist policies in Israel-Palestine, not all Jewish people.
Shubert also discussed the weaponization of anti-Semitism by pro-war and Zionist advocates, who she said falsely claim chants like “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea” are a call for the genocide of Israeli Jews, rather than a call for equal rights and an end to the occupation of Palestinian land.
Shubert said this characterization has affected the ability of staff and students at UW to speak out, with some facing disciplinary measures or even losing their jobs for their activism.
Bosco, another anti-Zionist Jew, highlighted the legacy of the General Jewish Labour Bund, a Jewish movement in the early 20th century that advocated for economic justice and promoted secular Yiddish culture.
“The Bund saw that Zionism would be based on ethnic cleansing to create a Jewish majority state that would later become a cancer and consume everything else,” Bosco said.
Bosco drew parallels between the Bund’s philosophy of “doikayt,” or hereness, with the Arabic concept of “sumud,” which translates to steadfastness.
As a descendant of Jewish refugees from Germany and what is now Belarus and Ukraine, Casid expressed a deep personal connection to the topic.
Casid said members of the Jewish community should not use the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust to justify the ongoing brutality against Palestinians.
The speakers also addressed structural inequities within the Diversity Forum itself, with Casid noting that no anti-Zionist Jews were invited to participate in Wednesday’s session on “Antisemitism, Democracy and the Struggle for an Inclusive and Resilient America.”
Casid said this exclusion was part of a broader pattern of de-platforming and sidelining anti-Zionist perspectives, even within spaces ostensibly dedicated to diversity and inclusion.
“I condemned the assaults on artistic, academic and journalistic freedom and the double standards with regard to boycotts and calls for divestment and sanctions … I’m with Palestine still and not just calling for ceasefire, but also naming to dismantle the genocidal apartheid regime of our time, and doing so as a practice of love,” Casid said.
The professors also claimed that Jewish Americans weaponize feeling unsafe as an excuse to not further discuss this uncomfortable topic.
“I think that a lot of what is going to sustain us, besides solidarity bonds, is going to be the work of unlearning a particular trauma pedagogy that confuses discomfort with physical endangerment,” Casid said.
“We must offer through practices of liberation and activities of care, what Judaism means to each of us in diaspora and without Zionism,” Shubert said, quoting artist and activist Virgil B/G Taylor.
