“…the comparison between the alt-right’s white-Christian ethnic politics and the Jewish State is not just misleading, but sinister”

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It is important to emphasize that, in some crucial respects, the comparison between the alt-right’s white-Christian ethnic politics and the Jewish State is not just misleading, but sinister. The history of the Jews — a tiny minority that has faced persecutions, pogroms and the Holocaust — isn’t analogous to that of white Christians. This is an important qualification, and the reason for which, when Richard Spencer speaks of the alt-right as “a sort of white Zionism,” he is promoting a despicable lie. It must be possible to sympathize with Israel and show understanding of Zionism’s historical conditions but to refuse any sympathies to the alt-right. Unfortunately, anti-Zionist critics sometimes fail to be sensitive to this distinction.

Omri Boehm, “Liberal Zionism in the Age of Trump”, The New York Times (20 December 2016) [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/opinion/liberal-zionism-in-the-age-of-trump.html]

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