Zionists commit anti-Semitism

Respected Israeli-American Holocaust scholar professionally martyred as a self-hating "extremist"

Image source: Zeteo

Raz Segal, an associate professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University, had been extended an esteemed position as the head of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota. The university made the offer after going through all of the steps of a multi-step hiring process, which included a period of community input. 

However, after the extension of this offer, two of the Center’s board members resigned to protest his hiring, and the regional Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) intervened with pressurized concern about the position. Within mere days, University of Minnesota rescinded its offer, citing the position’s “public-facing” role.

Speaking to Democracy Now! as well as to MSNBC, Segal described the JCRC’s efforts and the school’s decision as a form of anti-Semitism, as he is being discriminated against as a Jew — a Jew who challenges the dominant idea of what a Jew is or believes.

“This actually might be a case of discrimination, because I’m targeted here specifically as an Israeli American Jew, and I’m targeted because of my identity as a Jew who refuses the narrowing down of Jewish identity to Zionism and to support of Israel, whatever it does,” Segal told Democracy Now’s Juan González.¹

On Ayman Mohyeldin’s show on MSNBC, Segal elaborated.²

Ayman: Do you see this as a type of anti-Semitism on campus that we are not talking about: Jewish scholars and Jewish students punished for being too critical of Israel or being anti-Zionist?

Segal: Absolutely. I think we do indeed see here this is a sort of anti-Semitism. It’s a very unfortunate case where, as I said, we see an attack on Jews and on Israeli Jews because of their identity and because, as I said, they dare to be anti-Zionist. They dare to critique states, a violent state — the state of Israel.

And they dare to object to the narrowing down of Jewish identity in the eyes of organizations like the JCRC in Minnesota and the Dakotas, the narrowing down of Jewish identity only to Zionism and to a loyalty to Israel.

So this attack on other Jewish identities is actually a form of anti-Semitism, and we’ve actually seen an intensification of this anti-Semitism in relation to the attack against the encampments across universities in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, because these encampments in the U.S. included many Jews, as we know. And they included Shabbat prayer services, and they included singing in Hebrew, and they included holiday dinners, Passover seders. Nevertheless, the encampments were attacked as hotbeds of anti-Semitism, which is completely false.

But not only that: we’ve seen an intensification of this discourse of anti-Semitism by accusing the Jews in the encampments as actually not being Jews. So this is a new level of intensifying this anti-Semitic discourse, by deciding that these Jews who are anti-Zionists, who dare to critique Israel, are not Jews anymore.

Because Segal goes against the grain, because he calls Israel’s actions into question, he is rejected for his views. He does not meet the preset standard of what a Jew is. Outside of the mainstream, he is effectively sidelined for his heterodox views.

Not only is Segal a Jew who has criticized Israel, he was one of the first (if not the first) genocide scholars to name Israel’s actions in Gaza for what they were and are.³ For that, he is put in the category of ‘self-hating.’ As Segal puts it, he is being treated as inauthentic, not a real Jew.

“Self-hating,” then, becomes a label for the excommunicated. Those so labeled are dispatched, symbolically slain.

As a form of a corporate body, Zionism, a type of nationalism, can contain only that which is uniform. Those who challenge the core of Zionism must be expelled from the body like tissue rejecting a graft.

Segal, in his very existence, in his vocalism, violates the uniformity required for the sense of unanimity. Remove him from the body of Jews, and once again the semblance of single-mindedness is restored.

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Interesting, that a JCRC chapter was involved in this severance, this lopping off. Matthew Berkman in his dissertation “Coerced Consensus” writes extensively about how JCRCs, in the days before the Internet, served as a rapid response team in a “pyramidal” form of direct community outreach. In the 1960s and ‘70s, JCRCs formed nodes of activity and agitation when it came to rousing the grassroots into tangible political action, specifically as a shield protecting Israel’s image in times of crisis.⁴

In the days when such things counted, JCRCs rustled members into deluging the White House, Congress, and other governmental institutions with telegrams, either for or against the issue of the day. The JCRC in the Minnesota and Dakota region acted with the same urgency and rapidity to insert itself in University of Minnesota’s hiring process, because apparently they saw Segal’s appointment as a political threat.

It strikes me as very telling that those on the inside — the gatekeepers of Zionism — are quick to label and to treat critics of Israel or of Zionism as self-hating but brook no psychoanalysis of their own position. To do so is the height of offense. To them, it is axiomatic that rejection of Zionism is a rejection of the self, if the critic is Jewish. But question why it is that an artificial construct such as a nation-state has become an integral part of their psychological selves and the Zionist is likely to construe the entire inquiry as anti-Semitic.

It’s a fair question. A social construct incorporated that closely into the self-concept becomes sacrosanct. This is a fine process for such abstractions and social constructs as, say, marriage. Marriage as an institution is interwoven into the fabric of society, and so valuing one’s own marriage, as well as the institution generally, strengthens society as it is set up as a whole.

But to incorporate nationalism into the self is to subordinate the self to the corporate concept of Self. To be at one in the Body, the nationalist must suppress the personal self. This has profound implications for not only the internal life of that person but also the person’s output — their behavior. It will differ markedly from the non-nationalist.

Remarkable, too, that nationalists for Israel are interfering in the hiring practice of an American institution. Yes, the JCRC itself is American, but it acts to protect the image of a nationalism that is not itself reflective of America. This is not about (dual) loyalty — this is about identity. Raz Segal’s criticisms of Israel’s actions in Gaza challenge the identity cherished by those in that JCRC, as well as those two faculty members who resigned their positions in protest. Segal’s views threatened to contaminate their idea of themselves, because it’s too dissonant to have a Jew criticize Israel. Segal threatens the Self: therefore, he is a Self-hating Jew.

This type of intolerable dissonance was on display at a recent anti-genocide protest, where Orthodox Jews held miniature Palestinian flags in support of the civilians being slaughtered there. A passerby, a woman who identified herself as being from Israel, could not reconcile the apparent discrepancy — that someone of her tribe, someone of her corporate Body, would enact such a symbolic protest. She virtually lost her mind.

To speak in psychoanalytic terms, Israel as a self-object becomes a love object. This external object becomes internalized (a reversal of projection) and thus part of the self.

If a third party comes along and criticizes that object, the person who has internalized it takes that criticism as criticism of the self. When that happens, that affects that person’s behavior. They will respond in a way that is about protecting their self-image, not in a way that addresses the criticism on its own merits.

Take, for example, Robert Knight’s description of identification. Writing in 1940, Knight sought to elaborate on the intricate mechanisms involved in psychology and the building of the self. Here he talks about the “object,” that is, ‘a projected partly valid, partly illusional evaluation which [a person] presumes his friends have of him’:

“The projected self-regard gives the object some of the characteristics of the self, and no doubt a considerable portion of the warmth which we feel toward another individual depends on our liking for his regard for us — a part of which regard we have projected onto him. If events occur which disillusion us in this respect — for example, a rebuff or criticism by the other person — it is as if this projected self-love were in danger of being lost or actually were lost temporarily, and we react with a certain degree of depression.”⁵

In this passage, Knight shed light on the identification that is involved in narcissistic wounding. 

His description extends to individual narcissism as well as what is known as collective narcissism, a phenomenon part and parcel to nationalism and other intense collectivities. (This description can easily be mapped onto a conception of collective narcissism as advanced by Golec de Zavala, some of which I will append just below.)

Knight continues:

“Perhaps we also introject the criticizing, rebuffing object and feel a loss of both the object's and our own love for ourselves. Stable individuals perhaps have less illusional projected self-love and thus are less subject to wounded self-esteem and depression from rebuffs and criticisms. In those individuals however who are less stable, who must provide themselves more reassuring affection both in their illusional self-regard and in the projected self-regard, a rebuff or criticism, or cumulative blows of this sort, can more easily destroy this projected self-love so that the loss of the object is actually the loss of the self as a loved object.”⁶

So, in regards to the Zionist (or member of any other high-intensity, high-devotional group), the identification with the group is so deep that criticism of that group results as “loss of the self as a loved object” and thus elicits or evokes a corrective, often violent (whether physical or verbal) to restore the devotee’s equilibrium.

In “Collective Narcissism: Political Consequences of Investing Self-Worth in the Ingroup’s Image” (2019), Agnieszka Golec de Zavala and colleagues stated:

“When the ingroup’s image is undermined, their self-esteem is destabilized. Given that their emotionality is mostly negative, their sociality is low and their perception of intergroup situations biased, their reactions to ingroup’s image threats are hostile: anger, contempt, and aggression[.]

“Unless they can partake in the benefits of feeling happy to be members of valuable ingroups, collective narcissists are not well-equipped to stabilize their negative emotions in the face of adversity, and they respond with hostility to small, and often only imagined, provocations.”⁷

Saying that the state of Israel is engaged in genocide, a charge that Segal continues to level, is not a statement that can be considered in a straightforward way by the committed Zionist. To the true believer, such an assertion is sensed as an attack on their personal self-esteem. They cannot countenance the charge — they must reject it out of hand. Segal’s words threaten to necrose part of their belief system, so, like a back-alley surgeon, they amputate the entire limb in order to preserve the Body.⁸

JCRC of Minnesota and the Dakotas, reacting to the news of the rescindment of Segal’s offer, was clearly pleased. As Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) reported on the matter:

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas praised the school’s decision to halt the process.

“The work of the Center … is too important to be led by an extremist,” council leadership wrote in a statement. “The next Center Director must be a unifying and not divisive figure.”⁹

In his discussion on MSNBC with Ayman Mohyeldin, Segal noted, “There’s an irony here.”

“This issue of Jews deciding that other Jews are not actually Jews has a history in the Jewish world, and that history is actually Orthodox and old Orthodox rabbis accusing Zionists — before the Holocaust in World War II — of being not Jews. And now, of course, the tables have turned, and it’s Zionists who accuse others of being not Jews because they dare not to be Zionists.

“So yes, we are dealing here with a form of anti-Semitism.”¹⁰

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More from Raz Segal:

• “‘A Textbook Case of Genocide’: Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Decries Israel's Assault on Gaza” (Democracy Now!, October 16, 2023)

• “Gaza, Israel and the 2023 War: Are there any red lines?” (Foundation for Middle East Peace, November 3, 2023)

• “Hijacking Memory: The Holocaust and the Siege of Gaza” (Jewish Currents, November 18, 2023)

• “Panel Discussion ‘2023 War on Gaza: The Responsibility to Prevent Genocide’” (United Nations Palestinian Rights Committee, December 15, 2023)

• “Gaza and the Question of Genocide” (ACMCU, January 12, 2024)

• “Genocide in Gaza: MEMO in Conversation with Raz Segal” (MEMO, May 11, 2024)

1. “Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Loses Univ. of Minnesota Job Offer for Saying Israel is Committing Genocide.” Democracy Now!, June 18, 2024.

2. “SHOCK: MSNBC Host Exposes Zionist LIES | The Kyle Kulinski Show.” Secular Talk, YouTube, June 18, 2024, ~ 1:38. (Also available at AymanMSNBC’s X [formerly Twitter] account here.)

3. “A Textbook Case of Genocide.” Raz Segal, Jewish Currents, October 13, 2023.

4. Matthew Berkman, “Coercive Consensus: Jewish Federations, Ethnic Representation, and the Roots of American Pro-Israel Politics,” University of Pennsylvania (2018), dissertation, pp. 282-301.

5. Robert Knight, “Introjection, Projection and Identification,” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly (1940), Vol. 9, No. 3, p. 340.

6. Knight, ibid., pp. 340-341. Emphasis in the original.

7. Agnieszka Golec de Zavala et al., “Collective Narcissism: Political Consequences of Investing Self-Worth in the Ingroup’s Image,” Political Psychology (2019), Vol. 40, Supplement 1, p. 62. Paragraph break added for clarity in reading.

8. Marshall McLuhan, famous for his dictum “The medium is the message,” had this to say in 1968 about the corporate body: “Well, the [Black American] population is not interested in private identity! Any more than the Israeli or the Arabs. They want a corporate identity. I saw, maybe a lot of you saw, that German show the other night; it was a CBS News report on Germany. A really terrifying report, a really terrifying thing, because here are millions and millions of very confident people desperate for an identity. Hitler gave them an identity — tribal — which they’re now ashamed to recover or repeat. And they have no alternative, in their own minds, except a repeat of the Hitler thing, because he was a tribal man who gave Germany a corporate, tribal identity, not a personal, private one at all.” (In “Tribal Retrieval in the Electronic Age” [lecture originally given at Fordham University, September 20, 1968], published by mywebcowtube, YouTube, September 27, 2016, ~ 17:55.)

9. “University of Minnesota delays plan to hire genocide studies director.” Estelle Timar-Wilcox, MPRNews.org, June 14, 2024.

10. Secular Talk, op. cit.