Anti-Zionism Isn't the Same as Anti-Semitism

Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat who is the first Palestinian-American elected to Congress, went public with her support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which seeks to use economic pressure on Israel to secure Palestinian rights. That made her the second incoming member of Congress to publicly back B.D.S., after Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar, who revealed her support last month. Conservatives in the United States — though not only conservatives — have denounced Tlaib and Omar’s stance as anti-Semitic. It is not. The conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is a bit of rhetorical sleight-of-hand that depends on treating Israel as the embodiment of the Jewish people everywhere.