Antizionism Is a Hate Movement That Harms Palestinians and All Western Societies
I am a physician who cares for frail elderly people in their homes. On January 1, 2024, I resigned from the University of British Columbia because it refused to recognize and confront a rising tide of antisemitism and harassment cloaked as antizionism. On social media and within academic spaces, Jews and Israelis were accused of being responsible for all wars in history, organ trafficking and hypothetically killing the “Palestinian Jesus” if he lived in Gaza today. Medical students and physicians implied that “Zionist” faculty were complicit in settler colonialism, apartheid, and genocide. They were depicted as Anti-Palestinian Racists (APR) who should not be allowed to participate in selection committees for graduate positions in the faculty of medicine. I was not alone in my concern. Studies in the United States indicate that 39% of Jewish health workers experience antisemitism in the workplace, and 31% of Jewish Ontario physicians are considering leaving Canada because of it.
Despite surging antisemitism in Canada and around the world, students and faculty would vehemently deny being antisemitic. They insist they do not dislike Jews, only Zionism and the State of Israel. A longitudinal study revealed 94% of Canadian Jews support the existence of Israel as a Jewish State and 83% felt an emotional attachment. Only 1% reported being antizionist. It later demonstrated that the word “Zionism” had undergone a semantic drift from its original meaning, now becoming a pejorative term. A minority of Jews now described themselves as “not Zionist”. However, 88% of this group still supported the right for Jewish sovereignty in Israel—the standard definition of Zionism. Explanations for this discordance could be their fear of social and occupational ostracization following Oct.7.2023.
The word antisemitism, including its IHRA definition, has been distorted for the purposes of obfuscation and weaponization by both sides of the Palestinian -Israeli conflict. I believe that antizionism, the dislike of Israel and rejection of Jewish sovereignty and safety in their ancestral homeland (Zionism) is a far more precise and useful term. Antizionism’s opposition to the State of Israel differs from opposition to any other country. No serious opponents of the USA, Canada, Russia, China or Iran call for the complete or partial dismantling of these states and killing or transferring the various ethnic populations to their ancestral homelands. No one demands that the USA return Texas or California to Mexico. In contrast, antizionists call for eradication of Israel and transfer of Israeli Jews to the birthplaces of their grandparents like Eastern Europe, Germany, Iraq, Morocco, Ethiopia and Yemen, countries to which their distant ancestors were originally exiled during successive diaspora.
I believe that antizionism is a hate movement that targets Jewish communities around the world through their connection to Israel. It needs to be recognized and understood, because it endangers all of society.
Identifying the Problem
Why would the council of Canada’s largest Protestant denomination rationalize violence as understandable resistance, even when committed by a proscribed terrorist organization responsible for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? Why do people committed to inclusion and compassion tear down posters of kidnapped children and elderly peace activists held hostage in Gazan tunnels? Why do feminists demand proof of sexual violence against Israeli women unlike any other victim group? What leads self-described social justice activists to murder young Jews and Israeli diplomats while shouting “Free, Free Palestine” at a gathering dedicated to celebrating American Jewish heritage? How can opponents of genocide, plan and murder civilians including Holocaust survivors at peaceful marches for release of Israeli hostages, synagogues during Yom Kippur, or beaches where families are celebrating Hanukkah? Why do acclaimed authors justify these attacks and blame the victims? And why are police failing to protect Jews while tolerating openly genocidal chants from menacing protest crowds?
From Washington D.C. to Boulder Colorado; from Bondi Beach Australia to Montreal and Manchester UK; from synagogues and Jewish schools to bookstores and seniors’ residences, Jews have been stabbed, shot, beaten, harassed, firebombed, and terrorized. These crimes are not random. Jews are being held collectively responsible for the actions of a country thousands of miles away. The violence is perpetrated in the name of slogans such as “Stop Apartheid,” “Free Gaza,” “End Genocide,” and “Eradicate Zionism.”
Like the students and physicians from my former institution, antizionist groups insist they are merely political movements striving for social justice. Antizionism does employ political tools—lobbying and advocacy—but it also uses economic and cultural boycotts, intimidation, and violence. Its overarching aim is not policy reform by the Israeli government, ceasefire in Gaza, nor peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. It is the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.
No other nation is treated this way. Antizionists condemn Israel as a religious ethno-state, while ignoring the 23 Christian ethno-states that embed Christianity in their constitutions including Greece, Denmark, Norway, and Argentina. They show little opposition to Muslim-majority countries that enshrine Islam into civil law. Chinese businesses are not firebombed over the oppression of Uyghurs. Russian Orthodox churches do not require heavy security because of the war in Ukraine. Mosques and Islamic bookstores are not vandalized over persecution of LGBTQ+ people in many Muslim-majority countries. Afghan cultural centers are not closed because girls are denied education. There are no loud mass marches in Harvard Yards or most Western universities in support of protestors who risk their lives for human rights in Iran. There is no annual “Darfur Week” on Western campuses. American and European military veterans are not arrested and indicted because of their participation in brutal past wars in the Middle East. Double standards—vilifying one group while excusing or ignoring others—are a hallmark of hate movements.
Like all historic hate movements, antizionism obsessively accuses its target group of extreme moral crimes. In contemporary human-rights language, these include genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism, mass starvation, and revived blood libels like intentional child murder. The conclusion is explicit: Israel is a diabolical entity with no right to exist. Opposition to Israel and Zionism becomes framed as a moral imperative. When Israel and Zionism are portrayed as uniquely evil, hostility toward Jews becomes inevitable. Delegitimization and demonization are defining features of hate movements.
Antizionism is not a peace-movement seeking reform, reconciliation or coexistence. It shows little interest in nuance or engagement with Israelis, including those who oppose their own government. Instead, it demands total boycott, calls for “global intifada,” excuses violence as “legitimate resistance,” and openly praises terrorist organizations. Its slogans—such as “From the River to the Sea”—call for Israel’s destruction, politically or physically. The movement is also broadly anti-Western, burning American and Western flags alongside Israeli ones at protests. Antizionism strips the horrific reality of war of context, inverts intent, and launders libels through organizations like the UN, NGOs and media.
The Threat to Palestinians and Social Institutions – the Example of Health Care
After two years of a brutal war and despite maximalist rhetoric by antizionist protestors, Gaza lies in ruins and peace remains elusive. Tens of thousands of Gazan civilians have been tragically killed and most of the population has suffered privation, food insecurity and displacement. Israel should and will be scrutinized for its role and responsibility like any combatant in war. However, antizionists will rarely acknowledge Hamas’ role in initiating the war on October 7, 2023 which triggered the retaliation, carnage and suffering in Gaza. They are silent or deny the massacre of Israeli civilians including rape, mutilation, murder and hostage taking of infants, children, women and elderly captured on Hamas Go Pros..They ignore Hamas’ documented genocidal aims for Israelis and world Jewry which were hardly amended in their updated Charter. Their use of Gazan civilians as human shields (denying them refuge in 600-1000 miles of bomb proof tunnels), militarization of hospitals and civilian infrastructure or other Hamas war crimes reported by Amnesty International and others are inverted. They never acknowledge that most Gazan civilian deaths could have been prevented and enormous suffering and destruction averted if Hamas returned the 251 Israeli hostages and disarmed at any time after their invasion. Instead, Western antizionist protestors encouraged Hamas with moral support to continue their “resistance”. Arab and Palestinian voices such as Hussein Aboubakr Mansour and Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, have warned that Western antizionist rhetoric only buoys Hamas, harms the Palestinian cause and impedes peace.
Antizionism also threatens Western civil society. Beyond harassment, vandalism and violence, it seeks to purge institutions of “Zionist influences.” Schools, playgrounds, neighborhoods and towns are asked to become Zionist free zones by elected politicians and institutional leaders in the UK, France and Western countries. There are efforts to make antizionism state policy in Spain and Ireland. In health care for which I am familiar, attempts to shun and harm Zionist patients and colleagues have been reported in community care, hospitals , training programs and in professional associations. Prestigious medical journals have abandoned impartiality and factual rigor, publishing hyperbolic claims like the deaths in Gaza exceed those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. World renowned Western medical researchers are dis-invited from conferences where knowledge and discoveries are shared. Antizionist physician groups demand bans on Israeli-made medications that may benefit public health. Non-Jewish leaders within Médecins Sans Frontières and the World Health Organization have accused their trusted institutions of abandoning neutrality and displaying systematic bias against Israel. A co-founder of Doctors Against Genocide publicly stated that supporters of Israel worldwide must be “taken out and neutralized.”
The Foundation and Dynamics of Antizionism and its Intersection with Progressive Ideology
Antizionism is rooted in centuries of Christian and Islamic Jew-hatred, and European nationalist and racial antisemitism. It was adapted by Arab nationalist leaders, Soviet propagandists and the anti-colonial New Left. It has been modernized in Western universities by postmodern critical theorists who teach that Israel is the quintessential evil White European settler colonial state. These vilifying narratives are spread on social and mainstream media by Islamists and Progressive Western activists. Antizionism seeks to erase Jewish history and eliminate the Jewish state—home to nearly half of world Jewry—and targets 80–90% of Jews worldwide who view Israel as part of their identity.
Antizionism is rooted in a simple oppressor/oppressed narrative in which oppressors are irredeemably evil, and oppressed victims have no agency and can do no wrong. Others, like Adam Louis Klein have written that hate ideologies like religions, offer moral certainty and a path to righteousness. Antizionism has one article of faith: Zionism is uniquely and conspiratorially evil and threatens social goodness. It has one dogma: Israel and by extension, Zionist Jews must be eradicated. It offers absolution for Western societies’ historical sins—settler colonialism, slavery, and even the Holocaust—by projecting these ultimate evils onto the sole Jewish state. By marginalizing Israel and its supporters, adherents believe they can achieve redemption and place themselves on the “right side of history.” And like with many religions, there is no room for heretics.
History teaches the opposite lesson. Demonization of groups leads to dehumanization which erodes empathy and unleashes violence. When political, religious, and academic leaders tolerate or legitimize vilifying rhetoric and mob behavior, atrocities invariably follow. Crusaders, inquisitors, pogromists, European fascists, Nazis, Soviets, and the Khmer Rouge, as well as Islamist extremists like the Taliban, ISIS and Hamas, all believed their causes were righteous. Each harassed, oppressed, expelled, or murdered groups they believed obstructed progress toward utopia—a Greek word that literally means “no place.”
Countries that have incorporated antizionism into institutional policy like the former Soviet Union and its Marxist allies, as well as many Arab and Muslim States have failed their populations politically and economically, not unlike civilizations and countries from the past that adopted antisemitism and faded into history. When hate movements disguise themselves as social justice, then othering, exclusion, and violence inevitably spread. Speech and actions from the Left and Right, that would never be tolerated against any other group have become normalized. Jews and Zionists increasingly face ideological purity tests. As Elie Wiesel warned, atrocities like the Shoah begin not with violence, but with words and ideas.
Conclusions
Disliking government or state policies is legitimate. Calling for a countries’ destruction is hatred. Jewish communities are not asking for thoughts and prayers after violent attacks. Nothing will change until society recognizes antizionism for what it is: a hate movement identified by its obsessive intent to eradicate Israel and by its use of historical erasure, delegitimization, demonization and double standards to achieve its goal. Antizionists who detest Israel and Zionism, reject part of the identity of >90% of world Jewry. They need to embrace this simple fact- hatred of Zionism means contempt for most Jews.
Jews cannot confront this problem alone. Marginalization, purity tests, harassment, and violence will continue—and the social fabric of the West will further erode—until this ideology is named and challenged. Institutional and political leaders must publicly reject vilifying misinformation and libels, prosecute social aggression and civic disruption, and promote truth and respectful discourse. Until then, Palestinian and Israeli suffering will continue, peace in the Middle East will be a pipe dream and no one should be surprised by the next Bondi Beach attack in the West.
