2025-09-27

So what is "the Jewish nation"?

Some defenders of Israel's actions in Gaza are employing the tactic of 
conflating criticism of those actions with anti-Semitism, e.g., 
asserting that such criticism is motivated by hatred of Jews.
(For example,  https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/10/07/oct7-israel-europe-opinion-00597296 
from no less than the chair and CEO of the publishing house Axel Springer.)
So let's take a step back and make some relevant and necessary distinctions.


The question in the title of this post has two accepted answers:

1. The nation-state of Israel.

2. All Jews worldwide: Google 
Jewish nation 

That ambiguity is what enables the conflation of criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza with anti-Semitism.

In fact a significant number of Jews are highly critical of what Israel is doing to Gaza.
E.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea_Benjamin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Finkelstein
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Weiss

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To complicate the situation further, there are in fact THREE related entities:

1. The Jewish people 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews ,
defined by some solely by ancestry.

2. The religion of Judaism 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism ,
a religion.

3. The nation Israel, sometimes called "the Jewish nation"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel , 
a nation in the usual sense, 
which contains people of varying ethnicities and religions.

For a comparison of the first two entities, see 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew