A troubling story out of Vermont suggests a dangerous new front is opening up in the war on Zionism in the West.

The coordinated and well-funded attempt to make “Zionism” a dirty word isn’t new, of course. Neither is the fact that this particular line of propaganda affects the Diaspora in entirely different ways than it impacts Israelis. After all, BDS is just a modern reincarnation of the anti-Jewish boycott, and such boycotts have always been used to signal to the rest of the population that Jews are to be excluded and isolated by the force of law. Meanwhile, the actual effect of such campaigns on Israel’s economic standing is approximately nil.

But what is starting to look like a hate-crimes hoax in Vermont is being used to further increase the ways anti-Zionism seeks to divide the Jewish world against itself and society against the Jews.

The investigative journalist David Collier and anti-Semitism researcher Rachel Feldman have put together a timeline of how politicians and activists manipulated the narrative around a violent crime in a way that ensured Jews—who played no part in the incident whatsoever—would be scapegoated.

In late November 2023 three college students, two of them wearing keffiyehs, were shot in Burlington. All three survived, though one reportedly was paralyzed.

Collier and Feldman detail what happened next. The local pro-Palestinian organization held a rally for the victims. Although no evidence had emerged that the crime was motivated by anti-Palestinian enmity, a Students for Justice in Palestine-affiliated speaker called the shooting “a crime of unspeakable racist hatred, a crime borne out of white supremacy, out of fascist, genocidal malice, a crime borne out of Zionism.”

Local media reported from the rally that this same speaker “specifically criticized leaders of Jewish and pro-Israel student groups on campus, referring to them as ‘shameless monsters who enabled this.’” The crowd chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” the famous call to ethnically cleanse the Middle East of Jews.

One progressive writer called for Burlington to “make the streets unsafe for Zionist lynchers.”

The police then made an arrest that undermined the “hate crime” narrative and, as the investigation continued, it became clear that there was no connection to any Jewish or Zionist groups. Soon the suspect’s pro-Hamas and anti-Israel social media postings came to light. The politicized use of the attempted murders became clear: as throughout history, local Jews were being scapegoated for a crime at a time of exploding anti-Semitic violence.

Yet just a few weeks ago, the Vermont congressional delegation continued pushing the original narrative. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Pete Welch introduced a Senate resolution claiming the young men “were attacked simply for wearing a scarf using a traditional Palestinian pattern.”

Although the anti-Semitic nature of this narrative is unambiguous—calls to “make the streets unsafe” for Jews spare us any concern that we might be over-interpreting events—there is more going on here.

Zionism is at its core a simple belief in Jewish rights in Israel. Much of the time when pro-Palestinian activists in the West use the word Zionist, they mean “Jew.” But when they attack “Zionism” as a concept, they are making a political and ideological statement about coexistence. Anti-Zionists believe that rights are zero-sum, that Arabs in the historical Land of Israel cannot be free unless the Jews there are unfree.

Similarly, they believe that the safety and security of Palestinians must come at the expense of the safety and security of Jews. Outside of Israel, this includes Zionists—people who support or advocate for equal rights for Jews in their homeland. Anti-Zionism has become a totalizing worldview, an ideology of far greater expanse and application than Zionism itself ever was.

Anti-Zionism is an all-encompassing ideology now. It requires no association with the land of Zion. Anti-Zionism, like ISIS’s infamous “jihad in place” strategy, is about hating Jews and punishing their supporters wherever you happen to be. Think global, act local.

This is why we are seeing the founding of explicitly anti-Zionist political parties in Western Europe, of all places. And it’s why anti-Zionism has swallowed anti-colonialism as a discipline on campus. It’s why we’re even seeing the advent of anti-Zionist coffee shops. Opposition to equal rights for Jews is becoming a lifestyle for a growing number of Westerners. Now there is really no limit to what you can blame on the Jews.