That isn’t the claim that was made, though… unless you conflate Zionists in government outside Israel (claim actually made) with Jews in governments outside Israel (claim not actually made), thereby making my point. And it’s a conflation that Mike Huckabee — as just one trivial example — puts the lie to.
Observing that AIPAC both exists and has significant influence over American politics — especially the side of American politics that started an illegal and unjust war with Iran absent a legitimate casus belli — isn’t the same thing as putting on the tinfoil beret and screaming about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and hasn’t been for quite a while.
It’s also important to remember that some of the most virulently antisemitic (meaning anti-Jewish) people alive are now, and long have been, actively Zionist precisely simply because they believe that restoring Jewish control over Israel will bring about the Christian-centric apocalypse of whomever claimed to be John of Patmos and thus delivery into eternal conscious torment any and every Jew that didn’t convert before the [entirely fictitious] Rapture.
That’s the fatal problem with equating Zionism and antisemitism in the first place… nothing stops someone from being rabidly both simultaneously.
And that’s all before we get to the nuance of there being plenty of Zionist-identifying Jews who are dead set against the specific form and flavor of Zionism currently controlling the Knesset.
Observing that AIPAC both exists and has significant influence over American politics — especially the side of American politics that started an illegal and unjust war with Iran absent a legitimate casus belli — isn’t the same thing as putting on the tinfoil beret and screaming about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and hasn’t been for quite a while.
It’s also important to remember that some of the most virulently antisemitic (meaning anti-Jewish) people alive are now, and long have been, actively Zionist precisely simply because they believe that restoring Jewish control over Israel will bring about the Christian-centric apocalypse of whomever claimed to be John of Patmos and thus delivery into eternal conscious torment any and every Jew that didn’t convert before the [entirely fictitious] Rapture.
That’s the fatal problem with equating Zionism and antisemitism in the first place… nothing stops someone from being rabidly both simultaneously.
And that’s all before we get to the nuance of there being plenty of Zionist-identifying Jews who are dead set against the specific form and flavor of Zionism currently controlling the Knesset.