Why accusing Saudi Arabia of antisemitism is utterly absurd

For many years, global Zionism - together with the Israeli state - has relied on intimidation as a systematic strategy to suppress criticism. 

Any challenge to Zionist ideology or Israeli policies, regardless of how factual, balanced or evidence-based, is labelled as antisemitism. 

Over the past two years, this tactic has escalated dramatically, to the point where accusations of antisemitism have been directed at countless Jewish philosophers, historians, intellectuals, politicians, journalists and artists - solely for criticising Zionism or condemning Israel’s atrocities, including its prolonged and devastating genocide in Gaza.

In recent days, I myself became a target of this campaign after publishing an opinion article in the Saudi newspaper Al Jazirah, in which I examined and documented Emirati and Israeli political schemes directed against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the broader Arab world. 

The response went beyond attacking me and extended, with striking audacity, to accusing Saudi Arabia itself of antisemitism.

My article made no reference whatsoever to Judaism or Jews. It was a structured analytical piece grounded in documented evidence, drawing on academic studies by reputable scholars and reports published by internationally recognised media outlets, including Euronews and the New Yorker. 

It was neither speculative nor rhetorical, but an evidence-based critique of political behaviour and strategic planning.

Conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism 

Despite this, Barak Ravid, a Zionist commentator writing for the American outlet Axios, published a post on X (formerly Twitter) claiming that Saudi media were promoting anti-Israel conspiracy theories, opposing the Abraham Accords, and employing antisemitic language, citing my article as an example. 

This was followed by coordinated reactions from Zionist commentators and organisations, including the Anti-Defamation League, which issued statements alleging a rise in antisemitic discourse in Saudi public debate.

Its purpose is clear: to deflect scrutiny, obscure documented facts, and intimidate those who expose policies associated with war crimes

This orchestrated outcry represents a familiar pattern: exaggeration, misrepresentation, and the deliberate conflation of political criticism with racial or religious hatred. 

Its purpose is clear: to deflect scrutiny, obscure documented facts, and intimidate those who expose policies associated with war crimes, crimes against humanity and major violations of international law. 

Regardless of the volume or intensity of such accusations, they do not alter the reality: my article contained no antisemitic language, and Saudi Arabia is neither intimidated by pressure campaigns nor guided by external dictates. Its positions are formed independently, based on national interests, moral principles and international responsibility.

From an academic perspective, antisemitism is defined as hostility, prejudice or discrimination against Jews as Jews - that is, as a religious, ethnic or racial group. 

By this universally accepted definition, criticism of Zionist ideology, Israeli state policies or documented political conspiracies does not constitute antisemitism. Conflating the two is intellectually dishonest and analytically indefensible.

Betraying the essence of Judaism

Historically, Zionism itself has been widely criticised by Jewish religious authorities and intellectuals as a departure from Judaism’s ethical and spiritual foundations. 

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, a leading 19th-century Orthodox Jewish thinker, argued that Judaism is a moral and religious mission rather than a political nationalism, warning that transforming it into a nationalist project betrayed its essence. 

Similar critiques were advanced by Rabbi Sholom Dovber Schneersohn of the Chabad movement, and by the renowned Talmudic authority Rabbi Joseph Rosen, who rejected the establishment of a Jewish state through human force as contrary to Torah principles. 

Among the most prominent Jewish critics of Zionism was the American thinker Moshe Menuhin, whose book The Decadence of Judaism in Our Time argued that Zionism reduced Judaism to a secular political ideology, severing it from its ethical core and exacerbating the conflict in Palestine. His humanistic legacy was reflected in the work of his son, the world-renowned musician Yehudi Menuhin, whom I had the privilege of knowing very closely in the late 1980s.

Other influential Jewish figures have expressed similar concerns. Scholar Martin Buber warned that Zionism would generate permanent moral conflict. Noam Chomsky likened Israeli policies to an even worse version of South African apartheid. Albert Einstein rejected the notion of a militarised Jewish state, describing Zionism as a moral danger to Jews themselves.

In contemporary scholarship, voices such as Ilan Pappe, Norman Finkelstein, Amos Goldberg and Avi Shlaim have documented systematic displacement, apartheid-like structures, and grave violations of international law, including acts they describe as ethnic cleansing and genocide. Even former Zionists, such as writer Arthur Koestler, have ultimately turned into severe critics of Israel, exposing the ideological and ethical contradictions of the Zionist project.

Opposition to Zionism has also come from organised Jewish movements, including Orthodox Haredi groups such as Neturei Karta and the Satmar Hasidic community, which view Zionism as a theological deviation, and from secular Jewish movements like Bundism and organisations like Jewish Voice for Peace, which advocate Palestinian rights and reject Israeli apartheid.

Supporting peaceful coexistence

Against this backdrop, accusations that Saudi Arabia is antisemitic are not only unfounded, but deeply ironic. Saudi Arabia is the cradle of the Semitic peoples, and its population is almost entirely of Semitic origin. The kingdom has also been among the strongest advocates and supporters of peace and peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews. 

Indeed, it was the kingdom that presented the two most significant peace initiatives for Palestine: the first by the late King Fahd, and the second by the late King Abdullah when he was still crown prince in 2002. The latter initiative was endorsed by all Arab states, and became known as the Arab Peace Initiative. 

Both initiatives stipulated the establishment of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as its capital, and a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. Both the current king and crown prince of Saudi Arabia have repeatedly emphasised the well-established Saudi position on Palestine, which is in complete conformity with numerous UN resolutions. 

Additionally, Islam and Muslims historically provided refuge for Jews when they were persecuted in other parts of the world. Under Muslim rule, Jewish intellectual life flourished. 

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In his work The ‘Golden Age’ of Jewish-Muslim Relations: Myth and Reality, Mark Cohen, a professor emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, wrote: “In the nineteenth century there was nearly universal consensus that Jews in the Islamic Middle Ages - taking al-Andalus, or Muslim Spain, as the model - lived in a ‘Golden Age’ of Jewish-Muslim harmony, an interfaith utopia of tolerance and convivencia.

“It was thought that Jews mingled freely and comfortably with Muslims, immersed in Arabic-Islamic culture, including the language, poetry, philosophy, science, medicine, and the study of Scripture - a society, furthermore, in which Jews could and many did ascend to the pinnacles of political power in Muslim government,” Cohen noted. “This idealized picture went beyond Spain to encompass the entire Muslim world, from Baghdad to Cordova, and extended over the long centuries.” 

And as documented by scholars such as Maria Rosa Menocal, medieval Islamic Spain was a model of coexistence and cultural exchange among Muslims, Jews and Christians - a historical reality that sharply contradicts modern attempts to portray criticism of Zionism as inherently antisemitic.

In contrast, Israel since its establishment has enacted an ugly apartheid rule over Palestine, has suppressed Palestinians and deprived them of their very basic human rights, and has never presented any peace initiative, nor ever declared its political borders. Instead, Israel’s reaction to Saudi Arabia’s peace initiatives was to continue its aggression, expand settlements, commit massacres and atrocities, and boast of its ambitions to establish Greater Israel. 

Ultimately, the instrumentalisation of antisemitism serves one purpose: shielding Israel from accountability, and attempting to pressure states like Saudi Arabia to abandon principled positions on Palestine. Such efforts reflect total ignorance and a fundamental misunderstanding of the kingdom’s history and values. 

Since its founding, Saudi Arabia’s position has remained consistent: occupation and dispossession are unacceptable, and lasting peace cannot be achieved without a full recognition of Palestinian rights, including the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

History demonstrates that systems built on injustice, racism and oppression do not endure. This is not ideological rhetoric, but an observable historical pattern. No campaign of intimidation can alter that reality.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.