Except when it’s Jews

When our homeland fell to foreign rule, Jewish people everywhere were sentenced to depend on those who saw us as outsiders.

When antiquity gave way to the medieval era, we became trapped between two hegemonies: the White Christian empires of Europe and the Arab Islamic empires of the Middle East.

We endured pogroms, forced conversions, expulsions, and were reduced to a status barely above servitude. In the Arab world, Jews lived as dhimmis, surviving only at the whim of rulers. From Europe came blood libels, ghettos, inquisitions, and eventually the Holocaust.

Zionism changed all that. It was our emancipation from both White and Arab domination, restoring Jewish sovereignty in our historic homeland and establishing an egalitarian, democratic system centered around our return.

Our unbridled love for our homeland has also uplifted the non-Jews who share it. In Israel, Arabs own more private real estate than at any point in history. There are more Arabs today than ever before. Arab-led institutions — from schools to mosques to cultural centers — receive public funding. Arab Israeli citizens serve at every level of government. Even the minority of Arabs who refuse Israeli citizenship are granted permanent residency. In areas once ruled by Egypt and Jordan — still with an uncertain future — Israel has spent decades supporting Arab self-governance, short of militarized independence. These are the rewards of peace.

Yet to anti-Zionists, this independence remains intolerable. Unable to defeat us in battle, they instead construct a worldview built entirely on double standards — almost a new religion.

They romanticize indigenous rights — except when Jews reclaim our historic homeland.

They celebrate self-determination — but not when it is Jewish self-determination.

They fight passionately for decolonization — until Jews expel Arab armies.

Suddenly, liberation is redefined as “colonialism,” and self-defense as “aggression.”

Anti-Zionists love resistance — except when it is Jews fighting for survival.

They love marginalized voices — except when Jews refuse to be tokenized.

They love peace — except when it is Jews living safely on our own terms.

They love solidarity — except when Jews call out their hypocrisy.

They love multiculturalism — except when Israel welcomes Jews expelled from over a hundred countries.

They love anti-racism — except when the racism targets Jews.

They champion women’s rights — except when Jewish women break free from societies that would steal them from their families.

They celebrate Queer rights — except when Israel is the sole Middle Eastern country protecting them.

They preach freedom of speech — except when it is Jews demanding equal say.

They claim to defend press freedom — except when Israeli journalists expose terror groups.

They praise peace efforts — except when Israel is the one making a deal.

Why the double standard? Because beneath the lofty rhetoric of anti-Zionists, there is an obsession with Jews being powerless. Nothing surpasses that obsession in the anti-Zionist worldview. That is why Queer activists cheer for Hamas, and why similar inconsistencies go unchallenged under the image of the powerless Jew.

Does that obsession trace all the way back to Christianity’s messianic image of a crucified Jewish man? Does it go back to the praise of a Jewish woman being raped by Mohamed after her entire family had been murdered, thereby becoming the Mother of the Believers?

Perhaps. But we can also look at new innovations.

The antisemitic slur “Go back to Poland” encapsulates the same mindset by invoking extermination camps. “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud” summons memories of massacre and expulsion. Each expresses an obsession with Jewish pain as a tool for perfecting the world.

Anti-Zionists rail against the “powerful Zionist entity” yet remain silent about the Palestinian Authority’s explicit racial purity laws — laws banning Jews from citizenship, land ownership, and residence. They invoke “apartheid,” yet conveniently ignore regimes across the Arab world that systematically erased their Jewish populations entirely. Their silence reveals their true agenda: opposition not to injustice, but to Jewish autonomy itself.

The Jewish claim is rooted in unbroken history and identity. The Palestinian claim relies upon appropriating Jewish history, arabizing Hebrew place names, and pretending that a local presence of Arab tribes — continuous with populations across North Africa and West Asia — amounts to an identity distinct from the broader Arab world. In other words, the Palestinian identity depends entirely upon an erasure of ours. The borders of Historic Palestine are exactly the borders of Eretz Yisrael. Palestinian Arab identity could never have existed without Zionism coming first.

For anti-Zionists, it is easier to cling to invented narratives than to acknowledge the uncomfortable reality: Israel stands on the same moral ground as every other indigenous people reclaiming a homeland after centuries of oppression.

Jewish self-determination is not colonialism — it is decolonization. It is emancipation from Arab and European domination. It is our return, our homecoming, and our liberation.

Anti-Zionism, like any strand of Jew-hatred, is not a firm ideology — it is a desperate balancing act of conflicting lies. It requires Jews to be both powerful and weak, and both invaders and eternal outsiders.

The moment one accusation is challenged, another takes its place. The only consistent part of anti-Zionism is the need to blame Jews.

The anti-Zionist worldview is built over Zionist truth. That is its structural shortcoming.

On the other hand, Zionism exists with or without anti-Zionists at all. That has been our structural strength for thousands of years.

And that is why Zionism will outlast the anti-Zionists, exactly like it did their ancestors.