Is it time to retire the word ‘Zionism’?

Am Yisrael Chai’ (Israel lives) is the rallying call of many of the world’s Jews. As a British Christian and advocate for Israel, I often join the chorus.

Because Israel lives, I have no need to call myself a Zionist. Zionism was a 19th- and 20th-century movement that led to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, which promptly received de jure recognition by several nations, including crucially the USA.

Of course, Israel faces border and territorial disputes, as we do here in the UK, and as do around 150 other nations of the 193 nations of the UN. Israel has tried to resolve territorial  disputes through negotiation and unilateral withdrawal, only to see the vacated areas become terrorist enclaves whose regimes’ explicit goal is to destroy Israel (see, for instance, the Hamas Charter).

Today, Israel is recognized – albeit generally despised – as a sovereign state by all nations of the UN apart from about 30 nations, mainly Islamic. It is because these nations do not recognize Israel that they refer to it not as a nation but ‘the Zionist regime’. Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Malaysia and others will never recognize Israel, due to their ideological commitment that Israel must be eradicated.

In 2020, I wrote a joint essay with my friend the Jerusalemite historian Dr Richard Landes: Genocidal Anti-Israelism – The Ticking Time Bomb. The time bomb went off in October 2023, and today the world is reeling from the consequences as the USA acts to prevent Iran’s acquiring nuclear bombs.

For years, the elder statesman of the Islamic bloc – the 57 nations of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – was the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad, who said in his address to the OIC in Kuala Lumpur in 2003:

“Jews still rule the world by proxy… but 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way…The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million”. 

The OIC believes that Israel should never have been founded. And the 100-plus Christian nations of the UN are also obsessively anti-Israel. The Christian Zionist movement that helped birth the State of Israel is not representative of the majority of the world’s Christians or Christian nations. Traditional Christian theology and liturgy claims to have replaced the ‘perfidious Jew’. The presence of Jewish communities in Europe was long regarded as ‘the Jewish Problem’, a problem that was addressed through expulsions, ghettoization, pogroms, and, ultimately, the Holocaust, in which Christian Germany’s ‘Final Solution’ found willing collaborators across much of Europe.

The belief that God of Israel would, approaching the end of history, ingather the Jews to the Holy Land is a deeply Jewish conviction, not shared by traditional Christianity or Islam. Today, billions of  Christian and Muslim worshippers view the existence of Israel as a theological humiliation to supersessionist doctrines that, for centuries, deemed Jews redundant in God’s plan. For Roman Catholics, the bridge (‘pontiff’) to God lies in Rome, not Jerusalem. The Catholic Church itself only established full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1994.

Just as historically Jews were falsely accused of the most heinous crimes – including sacrificing Christian children to consume their blood, and causing plagues by poisoning wells and desecrating the Christian host (unleavened bread) – today Israel stands accused of apartheid, racism, and genocide. Yet Israel is the only nation in the Middle East without systemic racist or apartheid structures. (See my long essay on what I call ‘The Genocide Libel’.) Persecution of Christians is endemic across much of the Arab world, as is anti-Black racism. Slavery and kafala systems that trap migrant workers persist even in wealthy Gulf states. Israel, by contrast, grants equal legal rights to all citizens regardless of faith or ethnicity. It is the region’s only full democracy, and is the only MENA country offering genuine freedoms for women, minorities, and atheists (including freedom of speech). I agree with retired British Colonel Richard Kemp that the IDF is the world’s most moral armed force, routinely accepting risk to its own personnel to protect civilian lives.

In short, charges made against Israel are often projections of the accusers’ own crimes. Consider Iran for instance. In January 2026, the regime murdered perhaps 30,000 Iranian protesters. About as many Iranian civilians were deliberately killed in days as Gazan civilians were inadvertently killed in over two years of war between Israel and Hamas, which operates from under ‘human shields’ in hospitals, schools, mosques, and civilian housing.

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Here in the UK, the century-old two-party political system is highly certain to end at the next General Election. New parties and, what were fringe parties, and independent Islamists, have suddenly won support from the British public. The UK Green Party was for decades primarily concerned with the environment and ecology, now its main interest seems to be ‘Palestine’, and justice for what they claim is genocide in Gaza. In every age, it seems, antisemitism is an easy sell. In recent polls, the Green Party has overtaken both the two traditional parties of Labour and Conservative.

The prevailing view in the UK’s Green Party is ‘Zionism is racism’. Although a motion to that effect narrowly failed at the latest conference due to technicalities, it enjoys support from the party’s Israel-obsessed socialist (and Jewish) leader, Zack Polanski, who insists that Israel is guilty of genocide.

If the Greens achieve power, how will they define ‘Zionism’? Will I, as a defender of Israel, be labelled a racist Zionist? I do not care. It is inconceivable that being a defender of Israel, or a defender of the Israel PM and government, could be proscribed in any law other than Islamic law. (In 2024, I wrote a piece for the Times of Israel following the ICC’s absurd and corrupt issuing of an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.)

The reason I choose not to call myself a Zionist is not because of the negative connotations the word carries for Islamists, supersessionist Christians, socialists or Greens, but because, in my view, the Zionist project is complete.

Israel’s achievements since 1948 are miraculous. The technology you are using to read this article (and the PC on which I wrote it) likely benefits from Israeli genius, the same ingenuity that gives the tiny Jewish state a vital edge against those seeking its destruction.

It seems to me that God is keeping His ancient promise to protect Israel as ‘the apple of His eye’.

Am Yisrael Chai.