Last month, University of New Mexico Honors College Interim Dean Leslie Donovan sent an email to all Honors College members reporting that antisemitic messages were found written on a whiteboard in the Honors College building.
According to Donovan’s email, the messages on the whiteboard said that “folks with Zionist perspectives are not welcome here.” Donovan asked recipients of the email to "immediately report information if they know who was responsible for writing the messages.”
UNM anthropology professor Les Field told the Daily Lobo that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are completely different — and outlined the distinctions between the two.
“To criticize Israel, it's like criticizing any nation state: criticizing China, criticizing Australia, criticizing Canada, criticizing the United States, all nation states and their policies,” Field said.
As a Jewish person himself, Field said he is sensitive to antisemitism.
Anti-Zionism
Zionism is a nationalist movement of the Jewish people that started in the 19th century among other nationalist movements that emerged as major European empires disassembled, according to Field. Zionism was only one of the movements among Jewish people in the 19th century, he said.
A number of other movements among Jewish people during this time “conceptualized themselves as anti-Zionist,” according to Field.
Field cited the International Jewish Labor Bund as an example of a Jewish-led movement that rejected the concept of a separate Jewish homeland.
“They certainly didn't believe in establishing a separate Jewish homeland in Palestine; they thought of themselves as anti-Zionist," he said. “Anti-Zionism is part of Jewish history.”
The first Zionist Congress stated that “Zionism strives to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law,” according to Britannica.
Zionism encouraged large numbers of Jewish people from Europe to migrate to Palestine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, according to National Geographic.
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In 1917, the Balfour Declaration announced British support for the “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” according to Britannica.
In 1948, Israel was recognized as an independent state. For Palestinians, this marks the “Nakba,” Arabic for “catastrophe” — a day of “mass expulsion” of over 700,000 Palestinian people from their homes to refugee camps, according to PBS. Field said the departure of these Palestinians from the territory made a Jewish-majority state possible.
“Whether that was executed as a plan (or not), the outcome was one that very much suited the idea of a Jewish majority state,” Field said. “That outcome was not lamented by the Zionist leadership.”
Antisemitism
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines antisemitism as the “prejudice against or hatred of Jews.”
Antisemitism dates as far back as Medieval Europe, when Jews were wrongly accused of spreading bubonic plague by poisoning water wells, according to an article published in “The Journal of Law & Economics.”
“This is a racist doctrine that identifies people through concepts of race that come out of the history of European colonialism,” Field said.
According to Field, antisemitism came from Europe as part of an overall complex of racial doctrines that rank the peoples of the world and variously vilify non-European peoples or inferior peoples as “necessitating control or genocide.”
The roots of antisemitism are also linked to the conquest of the Spanish Peninsula with the concepts of purity of blood, he said.
During the Spanish Inquisition, which started in the 1400s, Jews, Muslims and Moors were expelled from Spain because of racialized concepts of “the purity of Spanish blood,” Field said.
There are some Zionists who are antisemites, according to Field. Some people don’t think Jewish people should live in the United States, he said.
“What they seem to be saying is, ‘We're so pro-Israel because we want the Jews of the United States to move there, because we don't want Jews in this country,’” Field said.
Field said he sees the incident at the Honors College as an “educational moment.”
“I might not think that it was the best thing to do — to write that graffiti on a blackboard — but my response to that is not to repress it or to punish it,” Field said. “My response is to say, no, we've got to figure out a way to talk about this with our students.”
Field said he always tries to detect antisemitism.
“And I'll tell you: I've never detected it amongst the people who have been involved in the Palestinian movement here on campus,” he said.
Leila Chapa is the social media editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at socialmedia@dailylobo.com or on X @lchapa06
Paloma Chapa is the multimedia editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at multimedia@dailylobo.com or on X @paloma_chapa88
Leila Chapa is the social media editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at socialmedia@dailylobo.com or on X @lchapa06
Paloma Chapa is the multimedia editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at multimedia@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @paloma_chapa88
