Hi Hannah!

Thank you so much for reading and replying. As others have mentioned, it is absolutely not antisemitic to criticize the Israeli government, full stop.

As for the last point on the list, yes, I definitely think there are many Jews who will conflate any criticism of Israel with antisemitism. To be very clear, I think they are wrong. But I don't think there's anything constructive in a non-Jewish person engaging in a conversation with a dogmatic Jewish person who insists upon construing (and probably genuinely does feel it as such) this as antisemitic about why it patently is not. Trauma and emotions run high in these conversations, which is why I think that conversations should be favored in contexts where they are consensual, respectful and open.

It's not to say that all Jews and people in general shouldn't be engaging in these conversations, but the question becomes "To what end?" when they are in contexts that might be more militant (on all sides), angry, accusatory and/or closeminded. So it's less about whether or not a certain Jewish person or group of Jewish people seem to be objectively wrong about whether or not certain concepts are antisemitic, and more about "Why would it even be necessary or productive for a non-Jewish person to attempt to convince an extremely dogmatic and probably traumatized/triggered Jewish person about why their conception of antisemitism is wrong?"

I don't think this is a silly question at all, and I do think conversations about Israel are very important to be had. But I guess the one thing that's hard or rather "nuanced" in the context of these conversations (and explain why some Jews get so triggered) is that anti-Zionism in its upwellings pretty much always include huge bouts of antisemitism. Israel is definitely not the same as all Jews, but it is often perceived as such by much of the world. And Jews have been expelled from or tortured and killed in dozens of countries around the world, and there are very few left that are safe for us to exist in (hence the extreme defensiveness around Israel, aside from its indigenous/ancestral significance). It's reasonable to have conversations about ethnostates, but it rightfully scares a lot of Jews when pretty much every state that exists is an ethnostate, but the only Jewish state in the world (which still is at least 1/4 non-Jewish) is for some reason the only one that begets this level of outrage. And this can fall quickly into the realm of "whataboutism" which is why it's probably not worth going entirely in-depth into, but my point is to illustrate that a lot of Jewish people are constantly towing lines of attempting to assimilate and being afraid that they'll never be able to and won't have anywhere to run and hide. So emotions run high, which is why it's again probably not productive to engage in conversations as a non-Jewish person with a Jewish person who insists upon dogmatically defending Israel and deflecting any valid criticisms as antisemitism. And for the record, I believe those people are a minority. It's incumbent on other Jewish people to discuss nuances with them.

I hope this helps!! Sorry it took a little while to reply, please let me know if you need any additional clarity and thank you again for engaging so respectfully <3