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We’ve been painted as primitive retrogrades refusing to bow to an enlightened religious order, as cunning revolutionaries plotting against established monarchs, as greedy capitalists sucking away hard-earned resources from the poor, as Marxists toppling the pillars of the global economy, as dirty foreigners polluting the gene pool of a glorious host country.

In the current breakdown of oppressors and victims, we’ve been branded as privileged colonizers seeking to ethnically cleanse a people from their own land. The uptick of anti-Semitic attacks since October 7 — be they in Brooklyn, London, Belgium, or Australia — seems to revolve almost entirely around this theme. Jews are assumed to be Zionists, and therefore unwelcome, unwanted bigots, targets of justified hatred.

It’s a disturbing and disillusioning development for all Jews — but especially for those who see themselves as liberated, socially conscious citizens of the modern world. There are lots of those among our secular brothers and sisters. For those who cast Israelis as Nazis and their genocide-craving neighbors as hapless victims, the definition of “Jew” most certainly does not include affinity for the Jewish country. But suddenly they’re learning that their personal politics don’t really matter.

Turns out, you can write books scolding the settlers, or op-eds excoriating the Zionist enterprise, and your book signing will be canceled anyway. You can loudly and proudly condemn Bibi as a war criminal — subtext: unlike compassionate, liberal me — and you will still find graffiti outside your office. You can studiously avoid any mention of the Middle East conflict among your peer group of fellow therapists and social workers, but they will stop referring clients to you anyway, because you’re an assumed colonizer.