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Go back to Poland

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Go Back to Poland[1] is an anti-Zionist slogan directed at Israelis. Instances of the slogan generated criticism and accusations of antisemitism when they were heard at pro-Palestine protests in Europe and North America during the Gaza war.[2][3]

Historical Context

Historian Robin Douglas traces back the origin of the sentiment embodied in the slogan "go back to Poland" to nineteenth-century Protestantism. Jews were seen as exiles and inauthentically European. With the wave Jewish immigration to Western Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century, the arriving Jews were again seen as both foreigners and also colonizers of Western Europe. By the 1930s, "go back to Palestine" had become a popular antisemitic insult.[4]

In Palestinian discourse, the notion of Israeli Jews being colonial foreigners in Palestine dates back to the 1960s. It is through this lens that Palestinian nationalists have seen the demand that Jews return to their "land of origin."[4]

Usage

The slogan "go back to Poland" has been used as an attack against Jews since at least the 19th century. In 1938, British politician Robert Bower told London-born Jewish member of parliament Emanuel Shinwell to "go back to Poland."[5]

In 2000, a Jewish student at UC Irvine was told to "go back to Russia."[6] The same slogan was used in 2002 against a pro-Israel rally at Francisco State University.[7][8]

In June 2010, Helen Thomas, former dean of the White House press corps, retired from her Hearst position after remarking that Israeli Jews should "return" to Poland, Germany and America.[9]

The slogan "go back to Poland" was heard at anti-Gaza war protests on university campus protests after October 7, 2023.[4][10][11] In November 2023, the slogan was yelled at Jewish students at Queens College, City University of New York.[12] The slogan was also directed towards students at protests at Columbia University,[13][14][15] at Stanford University,[16][17] and at University College London.[18] In June 2024, protestors at UCLA told a Chabad Rabbi to "go back to Poland or Ukraine" and "go back to Europe."[19]

In Canada, Université de Montréal professor Yanise Arab was suspended after shouting "Go back to Poland, sharmouta! (whore)" during a protest in November 2023.[20] Canadian Member of Parliament Anthony Housefather reported "Go back to Poland" being chanted at university encampments in 2024,[21] and videos showed the expression being chanted at protests in Toronto.[22]

Analysis

Robin Douglas asserts that the slogan is an antisemitic call that should be viewed within the broader historical context of Jews being "alien in Europe" and being externally assigned their own "moral and political visions."[4] Douglas and lawyer Nathan Lewin[23] both contend that the slogans are a continuation of the calls for Jews to move to Palestine[24] during the Nazi period. Lewin reflects on contemporary antisemitic rhetoric, drawing a historical parallel to his father's experience in 1937 Łódź, where he was told to “Go to Palestine.” Lewin argues that both expressions function as exclusionary attacks rooted in enduring antisemitism, then directed at Jews living in Europe, now at Jews supporting or living in Israel.[23]

A Stanford University report on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias calls the slogan "go back to Brooklyn", which was heard during campus protests, "part of the broader antisemitic lexicon."[17] Professor Philipp Lenhard considers the slogan to be a form of "postcolonial antisemitism," which expresses the wish that Jews would "please disappear, preferably to the land of Auschwitz and Kielce."[25] A similar view is taken by Professor James R. Russell, who argued that those chanting "go back to Poland" do not "mean a café in the Glowny Rynek in Krakow or the quiet reading room of the Polin Museum in Warsaw. They mean Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau."[26]

Author Seth Greenland described the "go back to Poland" slogan as "grotesque and willfully misinformed."[27] According to trauma therapists Miri Bar-Halpern and Jaclyn Wolfman, the pejorative is an instance of "excluding as a form of traumatic invalidation [...] sending the message that Jews do not belong and are unwanted."[28]

Edward Said writes that, like the notion of hoping that Palestinians "forget, or give up" on their nationalistic goals, "it is a dream to expect that 'they' [i.e., Israeli Jews] will disappear or go back to Poland, Russia, America."[29]

Sina Arnold contents that the left-wing use of the slogan against non-Israeli Jews is part of a trend of Jews being negatively associated with Israel, and being blamed for Israeli policy. She cites a case of a 2015 Black Lives Matter anti-gentrification rally outside a marijuana dispensary in Seattle, where the Jewish owner was told to "go back to Germany" and "let them Nazis get on you again." The owner was identified in a speech given outside as an Israeli who served in the Israel Defense Forces. The owner, however, was an American who had never visited Israel, and whose family had lived in the neighbourhood for multiple generations.[30]

Rusi Jaspal analyzed the statements and sentiment in the Iranian press that Israeli Jews "should go back to their origins." Jaspal writes that these statements are meant to delegitimize any historical Jewish connection to Israel, in opposition to the "native" Palestinians. The description of Israeli Jews as "Ashkenazi Zionist Jews from Europe," despite that most Israelis are of non-European origin, is meant to cast Israel as a racist occupation rooted in European colonialist policies.[31]

See also

References

  1. ^ Alternative toponyms used in the slogan include: America (James 2010), Brooklyn (Douglas 2024), Germany (Walker 2024), Ukraine, Europe (Starr 2024), or Russia (Marcus 2015).
  2. ^ Hernon, Ian (2020-01-15). Anti-Semitism and the Left. Amberley Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1-3981-0224-8.
  3. ^ Schumer, Chuck (2025-03-18). Antisemitism in America: A Warning. Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5387-7164-8.
  4. ^ a b c d Douglas, Robin (2024). Hirsh, David; Freedman, Rosa (eds.). Where Are Jews at Home?. London New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 37–43. ISBN 9781003497295.
  5. ^ "Shinwell Slaps M.P. in Commons for Taunt, 'go Back to Poland'". 5 April 1938. Archived from the original on 3 May 2014.
  6. ^ Marcus, Kenneth L. (2015). The Definition of Anti-Semitism. Cary: Oxford University Press USA - OSO. ISBN 9780199375653.
  7. ^ Xia, Rosanna (21 June 2017). "Lawsuit alleges hostile environment for Jews on San Francisco State campus". Los Angeles Times.
  8. ^ Lasson, Kenneth (2011). Pollack, Eunice G. (ed.). Antisemitism on the campus: past & present. Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press. pp. 292–316. ISBN 978-1-934843-82-6.
  9. ^ James, Frank (7 June 2010). "Helen Thomas 'Retires' After Anti-Israeli Jew Remarks". NPR.
  10. ^ Bickerton, James (15 June 2024). "Jewish students told "go back to Poland" at campus rallies". Newsweek. Newsweek.
  11. ^ "Opinion: How to confront antisemitism, deal with protests — and respect free speech". Washington Post. 29 April 2024.
  12. ^ Walker, Jackson (21 June 2024). "NYC college officials attended anti-Israel lecture school slammed as 'abhorrent'". CBS Austin.
  13. ^ Heath, Elliot (October 23, 2024). "A year of protests at Columbia". Columbia Daily Spectator. Columbia Spectator.
  14. ^ Ferré-Sadurní, Luis; Edmonds, Colbi; Cruz, Liset (22 April 2024). "Some Jewish Students Are Targeted as Protests Continue at Columbia". The New York Times.
  15. ^ "Biden condemns 'blatant' anti-Semitism at Columbia pro-Palestine protests". Al Jazeera.
  16. ^ Diamond, Larry; Koseff, Jeffrey. "How Stanford can do away with campus antisemitism". Washington Post.
  17. ^ a b Diamond, Larry; Koseff, Jeff; Brest, Paul; Einav, Shirit; Gurwitz, Emily; Hahn-Tapper, Laurie; Kirschner, Jessica; Levav, Jonathan; Levine, Emily J.; Rosten, Rachel; Stone, Jeffrey; Smith, Gaby. ""It's in the Air": Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias at Stanford, and How to Address It" (PDF). Stanford University.
  18. ^ Bolton, Will; Barton, Alex (5 May 2024). "Pro-Palestine demonstrators 'spat and spewed anti-Semitic remarks' at counter-protesters". The Telegraph.
  19. ^ Starr, Michael (11 June 2024). "UCLA Chabad rabbi assaulted, told to go back to Poland". The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com. Jerusalem Post.
  20. ^ Lowrie, Morgan (November 10, 2023). "Université de Montréal suspends lecturer filmed at Israel-Hamas protest | Globalnews.ca". Global News. Global News. The Canadian Press.
  21. ^ Riga, Andy (May 27, 2024). "Antisemitism is a 'significant problem' on campus, McGill and Concordia admit". Montreal Gazette.
  22. ^ "Globe editorial: When protests become acts of intimidation". The Globe and Mail. 5 January 2024.
  23. ^ a b Lewin, Nathan. "Opinion: 'Go Back to Poland!' Resonates With Me". WSJ.
  24. ^ "Norway - Photograph". Holocaust Encyclopedia.; Malul, Chen (30 January 2019). "Hate in Nazi Germany as Photographed from the Back of a Motorcycle". The Librarians. National Library of Israel.
  25. ^ Lenhard, Philipp (1 December 2024). ""Go Back to Poland!" Der Zionismus, Palästina und das Paradigma des Siedlerkolonialismus". Historische Zeitschrift. 319 (3): 585–600. doi:10.1515/hzhz-2024-0035.
  26. ^ Russell, James R. "The Blogs: "Go back to Poland"". blogs.timesofisrael.com.
  27. ^ Greenland, Seth (6 May 2024). "Opinion: Have we learned nothing? The protester's taunt, 'Go back to Poland,' is grotesque". Los Angeles Times.
  28. ^ Bar-Halpern, Miri; Wolfman, Jaclyn (13 May 2025). "Traumatic invalidation in the Jewish community after October 7". Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment: 1–28. doi:10.1080/10911359.2025.2503441.
  29. ^ Said, Edward W. (2000). The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-42852-3.
  30. ^ Arnold, Sina (2022). From occupation to occupy: antisemitism and the contemporary American left. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-06312-0.
  31. ^ Jaspal, Rusi (15 April 2016). Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism: Representation, Cognition and Everyday Talk. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-18031-9.
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