This is Bob Avakian—REVOLUTION—number 100.

Hatred toward any people, as a people, is something that any decent person should strongly and actively oppose. And this clearly includes anti-Semitism directed against Jewish people—which has taken terrible expressions, and had terrible consequences, for centuries.

But today, while anti-Semitism does exist—and that, of course, should be actively opposed—there is a deliberate campaign of fabricating (outright inventing) anti-Semitism where it does not actually exist, or at least greatly exaggerating anti-Semitism, in order to distract attention from the truly horrific, genocidal crimes being carried out against the Palestinian people by Israel, fully backed by the U.S. government and all its major politicians, of both ruling class parties (Democrats as well as Republicans). This weapon of alleged “anti-Semitism” has been particularly wielded against righteous protests especially among college students—when the reality is that these protests have overwhelmingly been directed against this genocide (and the complicity of U.S. universities, as well as the active involvement of the U.S. government, in this genocide). And there is the fact that significant numbers of people taking part in these protests are themselves Jewish.

Never mind—just claim that opposition to the actions of Israel is “anti-Semitic”—and voilà, you can say that there is a whole wave of anti-Semitism!

The truth is that anti-Semitism has not been anything like a major aspect—and most definitely has not been a defining element—of these protests. Once again, the pretense that anti-Semitism has been a serious problem in these protests is specifically aimed at distracting attention from the truly monstrous crimes being committed, by Israel and the U.S.—and justifying the moves by the ruling powers in the U.S. to systematically suppress protests against these monstrous crimes.

As for the claim that these protests have “disrupted campus life”—that is like arguing that civil rights activists in the 1960s were “disrupting the normal functioning” of a viciously segregated society. Yes—they were disrupting that—rightly and righteously so! And today, to the extent that protests are disrupting the normal functioning of universities, many of which are complicit with genocide, and insofar as these protests are causing disruptions in the country overall, when the government of this country is guilty of fully backing genocide—that disruption, too, is profoundly right and righteous!

Declaring these anti-genocide protests to be “anti-Semitic” is like claiming that it was “bigotry” to oppose the thousands of lynchings of Black people, which went on for basically 100 years in this country after the Civil War, right up into the 1960s. No—the monstrous crime then was the lynchings, not opposition to the lynchings; and the monstrous crime today is the genocide being carried out by Israel and the U.S., not the opposition to that genocide.

No one should be fooled by these dishonest, fabricated and exaggerated, claims of anti-Semitism, whose purpose is to distract attention from genocidal atrocity and to slander and suppress protest against this genocide.

All honest and decent people should be actively taking part in protests against this genocide, working to make these protests even larger and more powerful—and restlessly searching out the fundamental reasons why this genocide, and its backing by the rulers of this country, is going on.