From the moment he ambled back into the White House, Donald Trump and the phony philosemites of his administration have been using dubious charges of antisemitism as a sword to attack people and institutions they see as political foes. Checking off the doxxing lists prepared by hardline pro-Israel groups like Canary Mission, Betar and DJHC, Trump has sought to deport Pro-Palestinian student visa and green card holders for routine free speech by instead cynically mislabeling it as having “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” At the same time, Trump’s Justice Department is shamelessly using the cudgel of antisemitism to extort Columbia, Harvard, Brown and other elite universities into modifying admissions, recruiting, curriculum and student speech policies Republicans have long hated.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Just play Donald Trump’s “Deport the Antisemite” game and decide for yourself.

The game is simple. What follows are 10 statements by students, professors, activists and organizations. The point of the game is NOT about agreeing or disagreeing with them. Instead, you are the judge who must rule on each as to whether (a) the remarks are antisemitic, and (b) the speaker or writer in question should be deported for having made them.

Let’s meet the contestants.

Contestant #1: “In this case, the ‘systemic changes’ that the collective voice of the student body is calling for are for the University to end its complicity with Israel insofar as it is oppressing the Palestinian people and denying their right to self-determination — a right that is guaranteed by international law.”

Contestant #2: “As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of ­Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”

Contestant #3: “Every native population, civilized or not, regards its lands as its national home, of which it is the sole master, and it wants to retain that mastery always; it will refuse to admit not only new masters but, even new partners or collaborators…Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized…Zionist colonization must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population.”

Contestant #4: “Starving Gaza is immoral… Of equal concern, far-right Israeli politicians see the aid blockade as part of a broader plan to permanently push most Gazans from northern Gaza and replace them with Jewish settlements…I cannot be silent in the face of the immense suffering of civilians in Gaza, including hundreds of thousands of children.”

Contestant #5: “Gaza Nakba 2023. That’s how it’ll end.”

Contestant #6: “Enough is enough. Israel is committing war crimes…If they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing…It is a concentration camp.”

Contestant #7: “After we become a strong force, as the result of the creation of a state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.”

Contestant #8: “The Jordan [River] has two banks; this one is ours, and the other one too.”

Contestant #9: “My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people…I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.”

Contestant #10: “An examination of Israel’s policy in the Gaza Strip and its horrific outcomes, together with statements by senior Israeli political officials and military commanders about the goals of the attack, lead to the inescapable conclusion that Israel is taking coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip. In other words: Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

Before you order plainclothes ICE agents to grab any or all of our contestants off the street and send them to a detention facility in Louisiana, I thought I would share my own scorecard first. Then we'll reveal their identities.

For starters, I wouldn’t deport any of those responsible for these passages (and, frankly, for commentary far more vile than these), or at least not for the reasons cited by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Relying on a little used section of the Immigration and Nationality Act to claim the speakers constitute a threat to the foreign policy of the United States is a transparent pretext for the Trump administration to simply stamp out political speech with which it disagrees. U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz of New Jersey certainly thought so when he freed Columbia graduate student and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil. Farbiarz concluded Rubio’s claim was “likely” unconstitutional in finding that “as a matter of fact that [Khalil's] career and reputation are being damaged and his speech is being chilled — and this adds up to irreparable harm." (Whether Mahmoud or others may be deported for having made false claims on a visa application is still to be determined.) Short of incitements to violence or actually engaging in violent conduct, the free speech citizens and non-citizens alike—no matter how revolting or heinous--should and must be protected.

All of which brings me back to the first question in Donald Trump’s “Deport the Antisemite” game: Which, if any of these statements are antisemitic?

For three reasons, my answer is none of them. First, none of these 10 statements exhibit or express the vulgar stereotypes, ugly anti-Jewish tropes or disgusting historical calumnies that characterize antisemitism. President Donald Trump and some his closest allies may casually traffic in antisemitic rhetoric about “rich” Jews or the dual loyalty of American Jews to both Israel and the United States, but none of these speakers do.

My second contention (one which Ezra Klein and Adam Serwer among others have thoughtfully discussed) is that opposition to the policies of the Israeli government does not itself inherently constitute antisemitism. Virulent criticism of, say, the Netanyahu government’s approach to settlements in the West Bank, prosecution of the war in Gaza or strikes in Iran is not a slander of the Jewish people. As Thomas Friedman wrote 15 years ago in a message to the Israeli government, “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And right now, you’re driving drunk.” (Even some opposed to the Zionist project itself were not antisemites. After all, many themselves were Jewish.)

And then there’s a third reason to judge all 10 of our contestants not guilty of the charge of antisemitism: Most are in fact Jewish. Some were even leading lights of the Zionist movement and Israel’s own founding fathers.

Let’s meet them:

Contestant #1 is Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University graduate student who was detained by ICE and headed for deportation in response to her March 26, 2025 op-ed in the school newspaper. While her deportation proceedings are ongoing, she was freed on May 9 after the judge concluded Ozturk’s “continued detention cannot stand,” adding it “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.”

Contestant #2 is former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. He delivered his warning about Israel’s potential path to becoming an apartheid state at the annual national security conference in Herzliya in February 2010.

Contestant #3 is Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the author of the influential 1923 essay, “The Iron Wall.” In it, the father of Revisionist Zionism rejects the notion of compromise with the Arab population of Palestine, arguing that they instead will seek peace only after realizing the futility of further resistance against the “Iron Wall” of an impregnable Jewish state in their midst. Jabotinsky’s views were embraced by Benzion Netanyahu and his son, Benjamin.

Contestant #4 is Rick Jacobs, a rabbi and the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, the largest denomination of Judaism in North America. His remarks appeared in a Washington Post op-ed on May 12, 2025.

Contestant #5 is Israeli Agriculture Minister, Avi Dichter. On November 13, 2023—just weeks after the horrific Hamas attacks on Israel, he compared the result of the Israeli campaign against Hamas in Gaza to the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.

Contestant #6 is former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He accused the Netanyahu government of war crimes un his May 27, 2025 op-ed in Haaretz. Days later, he branded as a “concentration camp” plans by Defense Minister Israel Katz to build a “humanitarian city” for 600,000 Gazans on the ruins of Rafah.

Contestant #7 is David Ben-Gurion, a national founding father and the first Prime Minister of Israel. Ben Gurion urged his allies during the British Mandate period to accept partition plans for the territory, arguing they would through the political process and force Israel would take the rest over time. While the attribution of the exact quote above is unclear, Ben-Gurion is quoted as having said in 1937, “A Jewish state in part of Palestine is not the end but the beginning...It will serve as a powerful lever in our efforts to redeem the whole land.”

Contestant #8 is also Ze’ev Jabotinsky. The Russian born Jabotinsky died in 1940, 8 years before the independence of Israel. But his influence lived on in the Likud Party’s 1977 platform which declared, “Between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” Prime Minister Netanyahu echoed that sentiment after the October 7 Hamas attacks, proclaiming in 2024 “Israel must have security control over all the territory west of the Jordan.”

Contestant #9 is Israeli-American scholar Omar Bartov, a professor of the Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. His hotly debated analysis (“Never Again: I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.”) appeared in a July 15, 2025 op-ed in the New York Times. His views are echoed by Avi Shlaim, an Israeli and British historian of Iraqi Jewish descent.

Contestant #10 is actually two organizations, the Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights — Israel. Their report, “Our Genocide,” was published earlier this week.