Emma Lazarus is Rolling in Her Grave: how antizionist Jews bastardized “until we are all free, none of us are free”

Spend five minutes on antizionist Twitter and I guarantee you’ll come across the phrases “collective liberation”, “safety through solidarity”, “interconnected/collective struggle'' , and “none of us are free until all of us are free.” These expressions - regurgitated almost verbatim in the mission statements of virtually every antizionist Jewish organization -  implicate a belief system predicated on the idea that oppression anywhere precludes freedom everywhere. In other words, no person or group can truly be considered free while oppression anywhere still exists; a theory inspired by a profoundly misguided interpretation of  Emma Lazarus’ poem, Epistle to the Hebrews (see the excerpt below)

“In defiance of the hostile construction that may be put upon my words…our [Jews’] national defect is that we are not "tribal" enough; we have not sufficient solidarity to perceive that when the life and property of a Jew in the uttermost provinces of the Caucuses are attacked, the dignity of a Jew in free America is humiliated…Until we are all free, we are none of us free”

Lazarus’ message - that Jewish communities everywhere are harmed by antisemitism anywhere - could not have been more specifically targeted toward the Jewish community.  Still, antizionists managed to turn her words of wisdom into a logical fallacy. 

Their takeaway? “As Jews, we understand that our fate is bound up with that of other minorities. We can only find safety through solidarity with other marginalized groups.” In other words, it would be selfish to focus on fighting antisemitism alone. This sentiment echoes itself after every Jewish tragedy, “we condemn antisemitism, racism, sexism, homophobia, islamophobia, and all forms of hate.”

 Does nothing remain sacred?

The second message “safety through solidarity” sends is that focusing on antisemitism alone is not just morally wrong, it is also not practical because Jews are incapable of fighting antisemitism alone, without the assistance of others. The notion that Jews aren’t competent enough to protect themselves is blatantly false. Although relatively new to some Jewish communities in the USA, Jews have utilized community security for decades. For example, take the Community Security Trust (CST). Based in the UK, the CST provides free security personnel, training, and advice to Jewish schools, synagogues, and other Jewish communal centers or buildings. CST is a volunteer-based organization, they understand that we must take control of our own fate. Further, the CST is a drop in the bucket of Jewish communal organizations taking responsibility for our own safety. Much of the diaspora seems to have learned our lesson - that we must take control of our own fate because nobody will come to our aid; opting to tear down our hostage posters instead. 

But who cares about facts, right? 

In a phenomenon not unlike messianism, those pushing a theory of collective liberation consistently reference a utopia they are working towards; a world free of all oppression and violence. And while this barbieland of a world sounds fantastic - it is simply not going to happen. 

Take this approach applied to Israel/Palestine. Recently, a popular influencer and self-described “Jewish educator” attempted to understand the 75-year-old conflict through a lens of collective liberation. She explained that her “years of studying coalition building and solidarity” allowed her to “fundamentally understand” that Jewish liberation cannot occur without Palestinian liberation and vice versa. 

Such an analysis demands a complete renunciation of reality - a historical perversion so inaccurate, so revisionist, that even Mahmoud Abbas is blushing. Forget about history, forget about 75 years of Palestinian rejectionism, the suicide bombings, the murders, and the violence. Today, one need not go further than listening to what Palestinian groups in America are saying. Take Within Our Lifetime (WOL), the organization at the forefront of the Pro Palestine rallies in New York City, who've made their chants available on their website.

“Hey hey, ho ho! Israel has got to go!” 

“From New York to Gaza! Globalize the intifada!”

“Intifada, intifada! Long live the intifada!”

“It is right to rebel! Israel, go to hell!”

“Settlers settlers go back home! Palestine is our home!”

“We don’t want two states! We want ‘48!”

“1 2 3 4 occupation no more! 5 6 7 8 smash the settler zionist state!”

While I have not studied solidarity or coalition building, I am pretty sure that these chants are not ones of Jewish, nor Israeli liberation. If these are considered calls for Palestinian liberation, does that mean that Palestinian liberation means abolishing the state of Israel and having all the Jews “go back home”? 

I know we don’t like facts…or books…or history here but nobody put this better than Einat Wilf, who cites British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin’s address to the United Nations regarding the “question of Palestine.” 

Bevin opened,

 “[we] are faced with an irreconcilable conflict of principles…For the Jews, the essential point of principle is the creation of a sovereign Jewish state. For the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine”

“Irreconcilable conflict”…how’s that for collective liberation?

Collective liberation theory is so flawed because it assumes that one’s definition of “liberation” is freedom as we see it in the West. For example, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, disability rights, bodily autonomy, etc. However, in a world so riddled with post-9/11 guilt, westerners cannot understand that the enemy of their enemy is not their friend. In short, the collective liberation theory fails to consider that “freedom” has different meanings to different people. 

Take the below tweets, both written by religious fanatics:

This tweet suggests that a woman’s right to work is oppressive, and true freedom can only be achieved if a woman decides to be a stay at home mom.

This tweet explicitly states that the Islamic Regime - one of the most oppressive regimes in the world, whose evils are so heinous that describing them would probably get me kicked off this platform- is what brings true freedom. 

How do advocates of “collective liberation” suppose we overcome oppression outside our borders? Should we ask the ayatollah nicely? Maybe Christian nationalists and white supremacists in the US will also change their minds! Elica Le Bon, activist and attorney, describes this western child-like naivety as the “privilege of trust” a phenomenon whereby those who grew up in the West give the same legitimacy to brutal authoritarian regimes as they would to their own governments. 

The appropriation of Emma Lazarus' powerful words exemplifies a troubling trend in ideological discourse. While Lazarus's message was a call to focus specifically on Jewish solidarity, antizionist Jews have repurposed it to do the exact opposite. By enmeshing Lazarus’ words with the theory of collective liberation, antizionist Jews both undermine the Jewish community’s profound ability to protect ourselves, in both Israel and the diaspora.

Truth simply doesn’t matter.