Editor’s note: Letters to the Editor and open letters reflect the opinions, concerns and views of University of Wisconsin-Madison students and community. As such, the information presented may or may not be accurate. Letters to the Editor and open letters do not reflect the editorial views or opinions of The Daily Cardinal.
Dear Letter to the Editor:
For the authors of "Jewish UW Faculty, Staff and Students" to deny that antisemitism is conflated with anti-Zionism is to deny 3500 years of Jewish history . ("Letter From Jewish UW Faculty, Staff and Students in Support Of Protestors for Divestment and Ceasefire").
The reality is that Zionism is Judaism and has been for 3500 years. Judaism exists SOLELY within the four squares of the Jewish Bible aka the Old Testament. That Jewish Bible has only ONE foundational narrative: the Jewish people's Return to Zion -- what today is Israel. It is not complicated. Zionism is Judaism and has been for 3500 years. Nothing that mere mortals have done in the last 200 years has changed this fact.
That is why Jerusalem is mentioned 659 times in the Jewish Bible. ( FYI: the word Jerusalem is not specifically mentioned even once in the Koran).That is why for 2000 years Jews -- Orthodox, Conservative, Reform - at the conclusion of every Passover Seder including last month - stand and loudly and proudly pray the ultimate Zionist prayer: " Next Year in Jerusalem".For a jew to deny that Zionism is Judaism is to deny the only foundational narrative that the Jewish people have and to thereby deny the Jewish Bible. Nothing could be more antisemitic.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said with great wisdom and prescience in Cambridge , Massachusetts in October 1967:" When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews; you're talking antisemitism". (" In the Words of Martin Luther King", Harvard Website, 2016, Professor Martin Kramer).
