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Yesterday, I led a session dedicated to the history of antizionism. Throughout the talk, I was repeatedly interrupted. Following the event, the individual who drove these interruptions sent me an email detailing a litany of "criticisms" and claiming I left several questions unanswered.
Before responding to each point, it is necessary to name the sender: Dr. Mansoor Malik, a psychiatrist and the 2026 Chester M. Pierce Human Rights Awardee. Dr. Malik regularly deploys genocide and colonizer libels at any given opportunity.
Below is my open response to his email.
Dear Dr. Malik,
Before addressing your specific questions, I must note a serious concern regarding our exchange. At the outset of the event, I explicitly asked that my presentation not be interrupted. Despite that request, I was interrupted multiple times. Because the platform automatically muted me during these disruptions, I had to repeatedly unmute myself, which severely fractured the coherence of the presentation. I would appreciate greater respect for basic boundaries in future discussions.
I would also note that after a presentation strictly devoted to the history of antizionism, its ideological development, and the relationship between antizionist libels and violence against Jews, none of your questions engaged with the substance of the lecture itself. Instead, they focused exclusively on familiar accusations directed at Israel and Zionism. This choice suggests that your primary interest was not understanding the scholarly argument presented, but advancing a preexisting political position.
Finally, this subject is not merely academic for me. My family, like approximately two million other Soviet Jews, was forced to flee the Soviet Union amid a state-sponsored campaign of antizionism. I approach these issues not only as a scholar, but as someone whose family was directly impacted by the ideology under discussion.
Your criticisms are difficult to take seriously because a substantial portion of the lecture was spent defining antizionism and tracing its historical development. My specific responses to your assertions are outlined below.
1. On the Alleged "Failure to Define Antizionism"
I explicitly defined antizionism as the third era of anti-Jewish hostility: a modern demonization project that recasts Jews, through the Jewish state, as violators of the highest moral values of our age. I argued that antizionism relies on a set of recurring libels—most prominently the accusations of colonialism, apartheid, genocide, and racism—to transform Israel into a symbolic embodiment of evil, thereby justifying hostility toward Jews and the denial of Jewish self-determination.
I did not merely assert this claim; I documented it historically:
The Genealogy of Accusations: I demonstrated that key antizionist libels predate Israel's reestablishment in 1948.
The Colonialism Libel: I showed how this narrative was deployed by Nazi and Arab propagandists in the 1930s and 1940s.
The Genocide Libel: I traced this rhetoric back to Haj Amin al-Husseini, before it became a central component of Soviet antizionist propaganda in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Rather than engaging with this historical evidence, you simply repeated the assertion that antizionism had not been defined. That is a refusal to engage with the material, not a rebuttal. Furthermore, you failed to address the contemporary examples I raised involving real-world harm, where individuals were denied professional opportunities, excluded from public life, harassed, or denied medical care because they were labeled "Zionists."
If an individual is denied treatment, employment, or basic dignity because of a political or ethnic marker attached to Jewish identity, that should concern anyone genuinely committed to human rights. The central question is whether the evidence supports the conclusion that antizionist narratives and practices cause demonstrable harm to Jews. That argument deserved engagement rather than dismissal.
2. On the Accusation of "Ignoring Anti-Muslim, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Palestinian Hatred"
This was a lecture specifically about antizionism. I explicitly stated during the talk that each form of hatred deserves its own distinct attention and scholarship. What is striking, however, is the expectation that a lecture on hatred directed at Jews must first justify itself by addressing other forms of bigotry.
We do not impose this standard elsewhere:
A lecture on misogyny is not criticized for failing to discuss misandry.
A lecture on anti-Black racism is not faulted for failing to address prejudice against white people.
A lecture on anti-Muslim bigotry is not expected to devote equal time to its opposites before examining its own subject matter.
Yet, when Jews gather to discuss a specific form of hostility directed at them, there is an immediate demand to shift the focus. That instinct is worth examining. Expanding the conversation to encompass every form of hatred would not have enriched the analysis; it would have obscured it.
3. On the Claim of "Selective Use of Soviet History" and the Bund
The history of anti-Zionism (with a hyphen) is critically different from antizionism (without a hyphen), which functions as a totalizing hate movement. The General Jewish Labour Bund was anti-Zionist; they opposed the concept of a Jewish state before it was ever established. The Bund was a Jewish socialist movement operating in a period when no sovereign Jewish state existed, believing instead that Jews should pursue cultural autonomy within the diaspora.
To cite the Bund as evidence that contemporary antizionism is simply a continuation of a legitimate Jewish political tradition is historically misleading:
Before vs. After: The Bund debated whether a Jewish state should be created. Contemporary antizionism seeks the elimination of a state that already exists and is home to millions of citizens.
The Analogy: There is a profound difference between a couple debating whether they should have a child, and that same couple debating whether their living, breathing child deserves to continue existing after birth. The moral, political, and historical circumstances are entirely different.
Once a state exists—with generations of citizens, institutions, culture, and national life—opposition to its continued existence becomes a fundamentally different proposition than pre-1948 conceptual debates.
4. On the Alleged "Historical Distortion Regarding Palestinians and the Holocaust"
Not once in my lecture did I state that Haj Amin al-Husseini played a operational role in the Holocaust. What I did demonstrate was that he was inspired by Nazi propaganda, helped translate it into Arabic, and broadcast it to Cairo and Baghdad via radio. I also showed how he was responsible for incitement and violence against Jews during the 1929 Hebron massacre and the 1941 Farhud in Baghdad—neither of which are stories about the Holocaust.
However, since you raised his connection to the Holocaust, I would direct your attention to mainstream historical scholarship, most notably the work of Professor Jeffrey Herf, which details his ideological involvement in the genocide of European Jewry.
5. On the "Conflation of Jewish Identity and Zionism"
Nowhere in my talk did I define Zionism, and I avoided doing so precisely for this reason. The history of Jew-hatred is replete with constructing an imagined villain to create a permission structure for violence.
As I explicitly stated: just as one does not need to define "Semite" to understand antisemitism, one does not need to define "Zionism" to recognize antizionism. The classic antisemite imagines the Jew as a sinister "Semite" wielding nefarious power; the contemporary antizionist imagines the Jew as a "Zionist" who acts as a colonizer and imperialist, violating the sacred moral tenets of our time.
6. On "The Consequences of Equating Judaism with Zionism"
I find it deeply alarming when a non-Jew attempts to dictate to a Jew, and a scholar of Jewish history, how Jewish people should or should not define their own identity.
Imagine the reaction if we applied this patronizing standard to any other group:
Telling an Arab Muslim that equating Islam with Mecca or Mohammed is incorrect.
Dictating to a woman how she should understand her femininity.
Telling a transgender individual how they must interpret their identity.
Informing a Palestinian that they are conflating Islam with Palestinian identity and therefore denying Islamophobia.
The autonomy of self-definition belongs to the community in question, not to outside critics.
7. On the Claim of "Justifying Occupation Through Zionism"
I have no framework for what you are referring to here, as I never justified any military or political actions, nor did I speak about the ongoing geopolitical conflict during my talk.
By inserting this accusation, you are deploying the "occupation libel" that is central to modern antizionism. Your failure to recognize this betrays an inability to process objective scholarship. This specific libel functions to mark Israelis and Jews globally for emotional and physical harm.
8. On Your Note Regarding "Silence Regarding Settlement Expansion"
To reiterate, this was not a lecture about the territorial conflict; it was a lecture about how systemic narratives mark Jews for harm.
However, since you brought up the topic of "settlements," I must ask for clarification: Are you referring to the illegal Jordanian occupation of the West Bank from 1949 to 1967 and their respective population movements in that area? Or perhaps you are referring to the genocidal wars of 1948 and 1967 waged against Israel by neighboring Arab states long before any Israelis moved into those territories?
9. On the Accusation of "Justifying the Siege of Gaza"
The presentation explicitly addressed the suffering of Gazan civilians. I reiterated multiple times that their suffering is real and must be recognized.
What you failed to engage with, however, is the documented reality of how Hamas maintains a siege over its own population. I offered several distinct examples of Hamas actively diverting international food and medical supplies away from civilians. You refused to engage with those facts during the lecture, and your email continues to ignore them now.
Naya Lekht Phd
Naya Lekht is a scholar on contemporary antisemitism and works with the
Jewish community to foster pride in the history of the Jewish people.
Naya received her PhD in Russian Literature from UCLA where she wrote
her dissertation on Holocaust literature in the Soviet Union. In 2018,
Naya was a Scholar-in-Residence at Oxford University through the
Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism (ISGAP). A passionate
educator and curriculum developer, in 2019 Naya joined as Director of
Education at Club Z, a Zionist youth movement. Under her leadership,
Club she developed a curriculum on Jewish peoplehood, Zionism, and
Advocacy that is currently being used across the nation. In 2022, Naya
was a presenter at the National Teachers Seminar at the Victims of
Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC), where she taught Soviet Literature
and Film. Naya is likewise a published author and most recently, joined
as Educator Editor for White Rose Magazine, a non-partisan
digital publication dedicated to exposing extremism and reteaching
classical liberalism. Naya is currently teaching Zionism, the history of
antisemitism, and working on her book, tentatively titled Zionism in the Diaspora: Reclaiming Israel Education.
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