The Inconvenient Jew Is One of Zionism’s Biggest Problems

by Jason Jones | Jul 14, 2026 

https://original.antiwar.com/jason_jones/2026/07/13/the-inconvenient-jew-is-one-of-zionisms-biggest-problems/

Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter recently offered what he apparently believed was a devastating answer to those decrying the genocide in Gaza.

“Jews do not use children’s blood for rituals,” Leiter said. “Jews do not poison wells. And Jews do not starve populations or commit genocide.”

The smear in this common Zionist talking point is obvious: Those who accuse the Israeli government belong in the same moral category as those who spread medieval blood libels against innocent Jews. To say the regime of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has committed genocide is not merely to criticize a government, an army, or a political ideology. It is to accuse “the Jews.”

But there is a growing problem for Zionism and its favorite smear: the moral indignation of Jews.

According to a new AP-NORC poll, 30% of Jewish adults in the United States say Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Only 49% say it has not. Among religiously unaffiliated Jews, the share rises to about four in ten. Also, only about four in ten Jewish adults believe Israel’s continuing military operations in Gaza are justified, while roughly six in ten view Netanyahu unfavorably.

In light of the grave public perspective of a growing percentage of Jews, the Zionists look more and more foolish. Their go-to argument – if you can even call this substance less insult an argument – has become an argument ad absurdum: Nearly one-third of American Jews, Zionists believe, are secretly medieval antisemites; Jewish critics of Netanyahu believe Jews poison wells; Jews who watch children starve in Gaza and call it genocide are not morally serious observers but morons trafficking in blood libel … against themselves.

But the absurdity is rapidly leading to yet another Zionist offense – as if a genocide were not enough. Since the inconvenient Jew is now one of Zionism’s biggest problems, the Jew himself – insofar as he accepts the universal human principles that genocide flies in the face of – must be treated as an impossibility.

He cannot be debated honestly, because his very existence blows the argument apart. He proves that Jewish identity does not require loyalty to Netanyahu. He proves that revulsion at starving children is not (forgive the grotesque suggestion – it is not mine but Zionism’s) an anti-Jewish prejudice.

So, Zionism does to the inconvenient Jew what it does to every inconvenient person.

It erases him.

He becomes “self-hating,” “brainwashed,” “disloyal,” or – perhaps most insultingly of all – “not a real Jew.”

Insulting, yes. But I should add that to be insulted by a Zionist in 2026 – after nearly three years of genocide in the name of Zionism and yet another bloody campaign explicitly modeled on Israel’s Gaza operation now underway in Lebanon – is a badge of honor.

Let’s look again at Leiter’s formulation. He did not say “The evidence does not prove that the Israeli government has committed genocide.”

He said “Jews do not commit genocide.”

That substitution is doing all the work.

In the place of a morally indefensible government, the Zionist propagandist places an entire people — millions of human beings scattered across countries, cultures, religious practices, and political convictions — summoned as a human shield around the Netanyahu government.

Nothing could be further from a genuine defense of Jews than Zionist rhetoric. It is the opposite: A grotesque use of Jews. And worse: An attempt to make them morally complicit in what – as the polling shows – many of them reject.

Don’t get me wrong, by the way. I’m not addressing myself to Jews, as if I’m in a position to explain their own interests to them. And it should come as no surprise to anyone that, according to the same poll cited above, two-thirds of Jewish adults surveyed already understand (and said in the poll) that criticizing Israel’s military actions is not antisemitic. About half also said anti-Israel protests are not inherently antisemitic.

They get something Israel’s ambassador pretends not to get: attacking a Jewish person because he is Jewish is not the same thing as judging Zionist ideology or the actions of a government operating in its name.

I wrote recently that in light of the spread of the shocking truth about Israel’s conduct in Gaza, the ideology of Zionism is committing suicide by genocide.

This new poll reveals another reason why that’s the case: Jews are among the most convincing witnesses to the genocide. And every time Zionist spokesmen respond by erasing those Jews, they make their own fraudulence more obvious.

And so the Jew now standing in solidarity with the vulnerable Palestinian, is now vulnerable to the same attacks. But – in another twist of fate that makes the Jew very much like the Palestinian – the harder Zionism tries to make inconvenient Jew disappear, the more clearly everyone else can see him.