Anti-Zionism is Not Antisemitism

The view that a certain piece of land belongs to one group over another, or that Zionists should not claim that land as a Jewish state, is a political view – daresay an outdated view – but is definitely not antisemitic.

It is with reason that someone could analyze the conflict and believe that the land, which was known as Palestine, belongs to the Arabs. Whether that’s because in WW1 the British promised Arab independence to a well-known Muslim leader, the Shariff of Mecca, if he would lead a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, who Britain was in war with – in which the Shariff of Mecca kept his end of the deal and led the Arab Revolt. Or whether it’s that when Britain promised to make Palestine into a Jewish homeland in 1917 through the Balfour Declaration, and then confirmed it in law in 1922 with the League of Nation’s mandate for Palestine – during both these times, Arabs constituted the mass-majority of the civilian population.

The view that Jews do not have a legitimate right to create a state in such a land is not antisemitic. It seems absurd to just blanket a coherent and reasoned political view as outright Jew-hatred (especially as many Jews say the bible agrees with that view); you do not need to agree with anti-Zionism to understand it has merit to it’s logic. 

At the same time, it’s important to note that anti-Zionism has often been weaponized by antisemites as a useful tool in their arsenal.

For example, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was the leading Arab figure in Palestine during Britain’s Mandate. Husseini was a rabid antisemite but propped up by the British, he became the de-facto leader of Palestinian nationalism and proceeded to hijack the anti-Zionist cause, encouraging violence against Jews. In WW2, Husseini met with Hitler to try gain his support for the Arab cause, and in return would deal with the ‘Jewish question (in Palestine, as) was solved in Germany’.

To know that many people have used anti-Zionism as a cloak of protection of their Jew-hatredness does not change the fact that the political belief of anti-Zionism is not antisemitic.