Defining Anti-Zionism
Subsequently, the Soviet regime then went a step further, from the erasure of the Holocaust to its inversion, equating Zionism with racism and even Nazism. The notion of Zionism as a form of racism was born in the Soviet Union. The regime understood that the only way to justify Jew-hatred from the left was through anti-racism. That ingenious ideological twist is the Soviet Union’s posthumous gift to Western anti-Zionists.
Is anti-Zionism, then, the latest iteration of antisemitism? Much of contemporary anti-Zionism uncomfortably fits the historic pattern of both symbolization and denialism. In the era of anti-racism and human rights, the Jewish state is turned into the criminal of nations, a symbol of racism and colonialism, and now even genocide. Reaching this conclusion requires a heavy dose of denialism: the erasure of the Zionist narrative, from the millennial-old Jewish roots in the land of Israel to the relentless war against Israel’s existence, which has forced Israel to act in sometimes brutal ways.
According to the anti-Zionist variation of supersessionism, sinful Israel has ceded its story to the Palestinians, who are, in effect, the new Jews, both as victims and as rightful heirs to the Holy Land. We are not only colonialists in our land but, in our story, imposters who must be expelled from both. In their fallen state, Jews have even forfeited the Holocaust; in this retelling, Gaza becomes the “Gaza Ghetto.” When a swastika is painted on the façade of a synagogue, it is no longer clear whether the perpetrators are far-rightists celebrating Nazism or far-leftists branding Jews as the new Nazis.
Astonishingly, the current rise in attacks on Jews coincides with the greatest mass slaughter of Israelis in a century of conflict between Arabs and Jews. The global assault emerged with the first reports of the Hamas massacre—before Israel’s counter-offensive even began. Antisemitism is a response not only to Jewish power, real or exaggerated but also to Jewish vulnerability; a successful attack on Jews rouses the antisemitic appetite.
The pretext offered for the widespread support among anti-Zionists for the Hamas massacre is based on two “denialist” arguments. The first is that the massacre was the inevitable result of the Israeli occupation. This argument ignores the fact that Hamas’ goal is not the end of the occupation of the territories Israel won in the 1967 Six-Day War but the destruction of the Jewish state. And it ignores the complicated history of how we have come to this point, including Palestinian rejection of every offer Israel has made over the years to end the occupation.
The second argument in support of the Hamas massacre is that it was not a massacre at all. There were no mass rapes; children weren’t burned alive. This latest expression of anti-Jewish denialism has taken the macabre form of tearing down posters of Israeli hostages, even blacking out their faces—a literal defacement. Embracing Hamas requires adopting its denial of the humanity of Israelis.
The British Jewish writer David Hirsh argues that the term “anti-Zionism” should be treated like “anti-Semitism,” removing the hyphen and lowercasing the “z.” Similar to the absence of meaning in “Semitism,” he notes “Zionism” for radical progressives is a fantasy construct, a demonic ideology with no resemblance to its actual nature. Historical Zionism incorporates almost the entirety of Jewish political and religious life—from social democrats to Marxists, from theocrats to Reform Jews to secular liberals. To reduce “Zionism” to a form of colonialism not only does violence to the Jews’ attachment to their ancient land but to the complexity of Zionism itself.
Why the Labels Aren’t Always Identical
And yet, the total conflation of anti-Zionism with classical antisemitism is problematic. To begin with, some anti-Zionists are proudly identifying Jews who argue that Zionism has betrayed Judaism by replacing an ethical tradition with nationalism and power. Certainly, many, perhaps most, of the young people demonstrating against Israel on campuses today—even those chanting the Hamas slogan, “From the river to the sea,” which promotes the erasure of the Jewish state—are not inherently antisemitic.
More deeply, the contemporary reality of Jewish power complicates an easy identification of anti-Zionism with antisemitism. In the past, hatred against Jews was based on contrived accusations. “The Jews” did not kill Christ, and no Jew used the blood of Christian children for matzos. But thousands of Gazan children have been killed by a Jewish army.
Like most Israelis, I believe we have no choice but to attempt to destroy the Hamas regime, which has turned mosques, schools, and hospitals into terrorist centers. Still, in reclaiming power after the Holocaust—“hard power” in Israel, “soft power” in the Diaspora—the Jewish people forfeited the identity of the victim. While acting in self-defense against genocidal enemies does not turn us into victimizers, power does deny us the right to dismiss all accusations against us as absurd.
Still, does it really matter whether anti-Zionism is a form of classical antisemitism? Anti-Zionism is the greatest threat facing the Jewish people today; surely, that should be sufficient to treat it as a menace on its own terms.
Anti-Zionism threatens the Jewish people in three ways. First, its vision of the dismantling of a Jewish state would existentially threaten Israel’s 7 million Jews. To conclude, after October 7, 2023—when we experienced a pre-enactment of the consequences of the anti-Zionist plan—Israelis can survive in the Middle East without the protection of national sovereignty and an army defies reason.
Second, anti-Zionism is an assault on the legitimacy of the mid-twentieth-century Jewish story of overcoming annihilation. The fulfillment of the Jewish people’s longing to return home was the foundation of the post-Holocaust recovery. To turn that story of faith, courage, and persistence into a crime is to subvert the pillar of contemporary Jewish identity, shared by the strong majority of world Jewry.
Third, anti-Zionism threatens the historic achievement of American Jewry, which is unconditional acceptance by the non-Jewish mainstream. In the past, Jews were accepted as Americans—provided they “toned down” their Jewishness. Anti-Zionists have reintroduced conditionality; now, Jews must renounce their attachment to Israel as the condition for their acceptance.
Jews and their friends should not be required to prove that a mortal threat is literally antisemitic to be justified in resisting it. We need to shift the conversation over anti-Zionism and focus on its dire implications for the Jewish future.