Antisemitism as a weapon
to silence critics of Israel

The accusation of antisemitism has increasingly been instrumentalized as a political weapon to silence criticism of Israel and its policies against the Palestinian people.

This is not an occasional distortion, but a recurring strategy aimed at constraining, intimidating and punishing journalists, academics, activists and movements that denounce practices such as apartheid, military occupation and genocide.

It is essential to state clearly that antisemitism is a real and historically grounded form of racism, responsible for brutal persecutions that culminated in the Nazi genocide. Combating it is an ethical imperative.

The problem arises when this concept is deliberately distorted and expanded to include legitimate political criticism, turning it into a tool of censorship and repression.

Today, this manipulation is particularly evident among sectors aligned with political Zionism, which have turned antisemitism into an automatic label applied to any criticism of Israel.

This operation shifts the debate from the political and legal sphere to the moral realm, creating an environment in which denouncing human rights violations can be treated as an expression of racial hatred. The result is a reversal in which the accuser becomes the accused.

This strategy has also taken institutional form. In Brazil, a bill introduced by Tabata Amaral proposes adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, widely criticized for conflating criticism of Israel with prejudice against Jews. In practice, this opens the door to restricting freedom of expression and criminalizing political positions under the guise of combating racism.

These developments are not isolated. They form part of a broader pattern of intimidation and control over public debate. Instead of argument, there is coercion; instead of refutation, accusation. The aim is not to win the debate, but to prevent it from taking place.

To understand the depth of this distortion, it is necessary to recover the original meaning of the term. “Semites” refers to a group of peoples that includes not only Jews, but also Arabs and other communities from the Middle East. Yet in contemporary political usage, “antisemitism” has been reduced to a selective instrument, applied almost exclusively to shield Israel from criticism over war crimes, apartheid and systematic human rights violations.

This redefinition serves a clear purpose: to prevent Zionism, as a political project, from being critically examined.

By conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, a discursive barrier is constructed that delegitimizes structural criticism. However, criticizing a state or a political ideology is not the same as discriminating against a people or a religion.

This distinction is recognized by many Jews around the world, including Israelis, who denounce the use of Judaism as a justification for domination. In this sense, criticism of Israel is not only legitimate, it is necessary.

Another central element of this strategy is the troubling instrumentalization of Holocaust memory.

The Nazi genocide, which claimed the lives of Jews, Roma, people with disabilities, communists, homosexuals and other groups deemed “undesirable”, should serve as a universal foundation for the defense of human rights. Yet this historical memory is frequently mobilized as an ideological shield to justify contemporary policies of oppression.

Such appropriation not only disrespects the plurality of the Holocaust’s victims, but also weakens the struggle against racism and trivializes one of the gravest crimes in human history.

The result is an environment in which political criticism becomes suspect. Movements, journalists, academics and activists become targets, while denunciations of human rights violations are displaced into the realm of moral controversy.

What presents itself as a fight against racism, in this context, operates as an instrument of power. The accusation of antisemitism ceases to function as protection against hatred and instead becomes a mechanism of political silencing.

It is therefore necessary to reaffirm a fundamental distinction: antisemitism is racism and must be fought without compromise. Criticism of Zionism and of Israeli state policies is legitimate political criticism. Confusing these dimensions is not an error — it is a choice.

Ultimately, what is at stake is the right to name reality. When denouncing injustice is treated as a crime, we are no longer witnessing the defense of human rights, but their denial.

-Sayid Marcos Tenório is a historian, specialist in International Relations, founder and vice-president of the Brazil-Palestine Institute (Ibraspal). Author of the book Palestina: do mito da terra prometida à terra da resistência (Palestine: from the myth of the promised land to the land of resistance). His article appeared in MEMO.