A recent opinion letter in the Wednesday Journal Viewpoints section claims it is antisemitic to believe that Israel should not be a Jewish state because Jews have the right of self-determination under international law. The right of self-determination does indeed grant Jews, such as me, the right to practice our religion and our Jewish culture wherever we live.
However, logically and under international law, the right of religious and cultural self-determination is not tantamount to the right to statehood. Different religious/cultural groups living in the same nation cannot each have the lawful right to require that nation to embody their particular religion and culture. And so, asserting that Israel/Palestine should not be a Jewish state or a Muslim state is not antisemitic or Islamophobic. See //jewishcurrents.org/there-is-no-right-to-a-state and pesd.princeton.edu/node/656.
Jim Poznak
Oak Park