‘Anti-Zionism is antisemitism’
Head of pro-Israel Christian group warns of slippery slope
“If the United States is so pro-Israel, then why is there an uptick in antisemitism?” asked Laurie Cardoza-Moore, founder and president of the Tennessee-based pro-Israel Christian advocacy organization Proclaiming Justice to The Nations (PJTN) in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.
Cardoza-Moore is in Israel to participate in the Global Conference on Antisemitism taking place Monday through Wednesday this week in Jerusalem.
“It’s great to be home,” she said. “I hope to glean information from world leaders on how to fight antisemitism at home.”
Cardoza-Moore, focuses her work primarily in the United States on the local and statewide levels. “We are fighting the battle on a local level, which means we are engaging local leaders and mobilizing parents on the ground and it’s taking off.
“Why are we seeing an 86% increase in antisemitic incidents [in America]? This issue is growing and we need to address it.”
Cardoza-Moore and PJTN are also targeting misinformation found in textbooks. “There is a growing [amount] of anti-Israel propaganda found in textbooks in high schools and universities, calling Israel an occupier and publishing historical maps that represent a ‘Palestinian loss land from before 1948 to the present,’” she said, adding that such maps are “delegitimizing the Jewish ties to Israel and dehumanizing Jews.”
“The content published in these textbooks are not as violent as what was found in some textbooks in the Palestinian Authority, but we are headed down a slippery slope.”
Cardoza-Moore, who does most of her work out of Tennessee, asked: “Is the growing antisemitism in Tennessee’s education system due to the indoctrination of our children in our K-12 textbooks? Our research says it is. And the reality is, we cannot afford to lose our children to hatred or wait until antisemitic vitriol and incitement spills over into violence and bloodshed on Tennessee university campuses and beyond into the open community.”
She also pointed to a “disturbing trend in teaching – minimizing the teaching of the Holocaust, which could be increasing antisemitism.”
Cardoza-Moore drew a comparison to education in Nazi Germany: “If you look at what happened in Nazi Germany, they legitimized the murdering of six million. Now Israel is the Jew among the nations.”
“It’s just like what Martin Luther King, Jr. said during the civil rights movement: ‘Anti-Zionism is antisemitism.’ And to deny the land is to deny the covenant between God and his people. So we are reaching Christians and to uphold God’s word and his covenant and to be anti-Zionist is to scapegoat.”
Cardoza-Moore also sees similarities between information published in textbooks and Hitler’s rise to power: “Hitler did not come into power in a vacuum. Professors in Germany were teaching their students that Jews had a lower pain threshold. This dehumanizing rhetoric led to [Josef] Mengele’s experiments and to the death of six million Jews.”
“Today’s professors are dehumanizing the Jews and promoting BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel] on campuses and allowing for groups like SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] to target Jews and spread anti-Zionism”
Cardoza-Moore’s strategy is to work directly with Christians in the United States to eradicate antisemitism: “Educating Christians to stand up and to engage communities. I am asking the church: Are we going to remain silent this time? I am saying, ‘No.’”
“If we can educate Christians to recognize antisemitism and if you see people saying that the Jews are not deserving of their land, the only way to engage people of faith is with the message of faith and the political winds will change”