Three Notes on Anti-Zionism

Few concepts in public discourse about Israel and antisemitism generate as much confusion as “anti-Zionism.” This is especially true in the West. In Israel itself, other terms are often used instead, such as “Israel-hater,” “enemy of Israel,” or sometimes simply “antisemite.” In the West, by contrast, “anti-Zionism” has in recent years become a political identity in its own right. Some people are accused of it, while others proudly embrace the label.

Hovering over all of this is a question that has become one of the most central and contentious issues in contemporary discussions of antisemitism: Is anti-Zionism antisemitism? One could write an entire book about that question. Here, I would like to offer three more limited observations.

First observation: Not everyone who calls themselves an anti-Zionist is actually an anti-Zionist

It is worth beginning with the obvious, which nevertheless gets lost time and again: criticism of Israel is not anti-Zionism. Even very harsh criticism of Israel is not anti-Zionism. Opposition to the Israeli government is not anti-Zionism. Opposition to the settlements is not anti-Zionism. Support for the establishment of a Palestinian state is not anti-Zionism. Even waving a Palestinian flag is not, in itself, anti-Zionism.

One can believe that the Israeli government is pursuing destructive policies, that a particular war it is fighting is unjustified, that the occupation must end immediately, or that the Palestinians have suffered an ongoing historical injustice, and still believe that Israel has a right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Such a person may be an extremely harsh critic of Israel, but is not an anti-Zionist.

Anti-Zionism begins somewhere else: with the rejection of the basic legitimacy of Zionism, meaning the rejection of the right of Jews to national self-determination in the Land of Israel, or opposition to the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state. Anti-Zionism does not necessarily require burning hatred in an emotional sense. One can be a reasoned, dispassionate, thoroughly ideological anti-Zionist. The test is not how angry a person is at Israel, but what that person thinks about the legitimacy of the Zionist project and of Israel as a Jewish nation-state.

This creates a somewhat strange situation in both directions. On the one hand, people who are not anti-Zionists are labeled as such simply because they criticize Israel harshly. On the other hand, and no less interestingly, some people describe themselves as anti-Zionists, yet when asked what they actually mean, it turns out that they support a two-state solution, recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and mainly want to bring about a fundamental change in its policies. One may disagree with them profoundly about Israel, but it is difficult to understand in what sense they are anti-Zionists.

Concepts matter. Not everything negative that can be said about Israel is anti-Zionism, and not everyone who wishes to identify with the anti-Zionist camp actually holds an anti-Zionist position in the full sense of the term.

Second observation: Anti-Zionism can be objectionable even when it is not antisemitic

Once we have defined anti-Zionism, another mistake emerges. Public discourse sometimes creates a kind of binary test: if we can prove that a particular form of anti-Zionism is antisemitic, then it is objectionable; if we cannot prove that, then it must be a legitimate political position with nothing inherently wrong with it.

But “not antisemitic” is not a certificate of approval. Not every objectionable position is antisemitic. Not every form of hatred is antisemitism. Not every form of nationalistic hostility is antisemitism. Likewise, anti-Zionism does not have to be antisemitic for one to oppose it vehemently.

Zohran Mamdani provides a useful illustration. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that Mamdani, or Jeremy Corbyn for that matter, are not antisemites but “merely” anti-Zionists. In Mamdani’s case, precision is important: he has said that Israel has a right to exist, but he has refused to endorse its right to exist specifically as a Jewish state, preferring instead to speak of a state in which everyone enjoys equal rights. Even if we accept that this position does not stem from hatred of Jews, it does not follow that the position is reasonable, moral, or worthy of support. It is perfectly possible to believe that Mamdani is not an antisemite while at the same time strongly rejecting his refusal to recognize Israel’s legitimacy specifically as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

The attitude of several leading Zionist figures toward Arab hostility illustrates this distinction particularly well. Jabotinsky already acknowledged in “The Iron Wall” that Arab opposition to Zionism was a natural form of national resistance. Ben-Gurion, who had not initially recognized it as such, stated after the 1929 riots that “in the political sense it is a national movement,” and in 1935 even referred to al-Qassam as the “Arab Trumpeldor.” Moshe Dayan expressed a similar idea in his famous eulogy for Roi Rotberg. None of them concluded that Arab hostility should therefore be accepted. Quite the opposite: they regarded it as a grave danger and fought it with all their strength. One can understand the origins of hostility, and even determine that it is not antisemitic, without granting it legitimacy.

Historically, this distinction also makes sense. Antisemitism in the Arab and Muslim world is not an ancient or timeless phenomenon. It began to emerge only in the late nineteenth century. This does not mean that relations between Jews and Muslims before then were harmonious. Anti-Jewish attitudes existed, negative depictions of Jews can be found in Islamic sources, Jews at various times lived under inferior legal status, and they sometimes suffered violence. But not every negative attitude toward Jews is antisemitism, and it is anachronistic to apply that term to every manifestation of hostility or discrimination against Jews throughout Muslim history. Antisemitism began to take shape in the Arab and Muslim world in the late nineteenth century, partly through the penetration of European ideas and images, and later became intertwined with the conflict over Zionism. It intensified during the twentieth century, especially after the establishment of Israel and after the Six-Day War, as national hostility toward Israel and antisemitism increasingly merged with one another.

Jewish history likewise makes clear that not all anti-Zionism was antisemitic. Before the establishment of Israel, many Jews themselves opposed Zionism: ultra-Orthodox Jews for theological reasons, integrationist Jews who viewed themselves as Germans or Frenchmen of the Mosaic faith, and Communists who opposed nationalism altogether. It would plainly be absurd to call all of them antisemites.

After 1948, however, the question changed fundamentally. Zionism was no longer merely a political proposal to establish a future state. Israel became an existing country in which millions of people live. A call for its abolition is therefore not an abstract discussion of theories of nationalism. It is a call for a dramatic transformation of an existing reality, one that is exceedingly difficult to imagine taking place without enormous violence.

There is another important qualification. The fact that it is possible to be an anti-Zionist without being an antisemite does not mean that there is no close relationship between the two phenomena. It is relatively easy to understand how non-antisemitic anti-Zionism might exist among an ultra-Orthodox Jew who opposes Zionism for theological reasons, or among a Palestinian who sees Zionism as a rival national movement that defeated his own. One can also understand it in the case of a consistent Communist who opposes nationalism of every kind.

But when someone who belongs to none of these groups, and has no direct connection to the conflict, develops particularly intense hostility toward Israel and singles out the Jews’ right to self-determination for rejection, the question becomes more complicated. This is not merely an intuition. Empirical studies have found a clear relationship between hostility toward Israel and antisemitism. In a study conducted by Edward Kaplan and Charles Small in ten European countries, the more extreme a respondent’s anti-Israel attitudes were, the greater the probability that the same person would also hold antisemitic views. A major study by Daniel Staetsky in Britain reached a similar conclusion: anti-Israel attitudes and antisemitism are distinct phenomena, but as the intensity of anti-Israel attitudes increases, so does the likelihood that they will be accompanied by antisemitism.

In other words, anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not synonyms, but neither is there an impermeable wall between them. The more hostility toward Israel becomes totalizing, obsessive, and demonizing, the greater the reason to suspect that we are no longer dealing solely with a political disagreement over Zionism. And yet, even if in a particular case we conclude that what we are dealing with is “only” anti-Zionism, the discussion is not over. The leaders of the Zionist movement understood this very well in relation to Arab hostility: they did not need to prove that their adversary was antisemitic in order to fight what that adversary sought to do to them.

Third observation: Why is it so important to prove that anti-Zionism is antisemitism?

For years I have studied antisemitism, and more recently I have become much more deeply involved in the legal arena. It was there, in particular, that I began to understand more clearly why the question of whether a particular phenomenon is “merely” anti-Zionist or also antisemitic generates such fierce disputes. This is not simply an academic argument over definitions. Classification has real consequences.

In Israel, it can sometimes be difficult to appreciate just how important this is. If someone says that Israel has no right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people, many Israelis do not need someone to prove that this person is also antisemitic in order to regard the position as fundamentally objectionable. They may call such a person an anti-Zionist, an Israel-hater, an enemy of Israel, or simply oppose them because of the substance of the position itself. Ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionism is, of course, an exceptional case, with different internal and historical roots.

In the West, the situation is different. “Antisemitism” is a category carrying a heavy moral, public, and sometimes legal and institutional burden. No respectable university will declare itself supportive of antisemitism. An employer cannot justify discrimination against Jews by claiming that it is merely a political position. Public institutions devote resources to combating antisemitism, and many states have adopted definitions and established mechanisms designed to address it.

Anti-Zionism, by contrast, is sometimes situated in an entirely different moral category. In parts of the Western left, it is not regarded as a necessary evil, or even merely as a legitimate position. At times it is presented as a positively moral stance: an expression of anti-colonialism, anti-racism, resistance to oppression, or solidarity with the Palestinians.

A striking example could be seen on some Western campuses in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre. There were activists and student organizations that did not merely express support for the Palestinians, but celebrated, justified, or described Hamas’s attack in the language of “resistance” and “liberation.” The significance of this framing should not be underestimated. By presenting the massacre primarily as an anti-Zionist act, an attack by the oppressed against the Zionist state, it became possible to place it within a moral vocabulary of liberation, decolonization, and resistance.

Had the same massacre been framed primarily as antisemitic violence against Jews, it would have occupied a very different moral category in precisely those progressive circles. Yet antisemitism cannot simply be removed from the events of October 7. The massacre cannot be reduced to antisemitism alone, since it took place within a national and territorial conflict, but it also contained significant antisemitic elements, and Hamas itself has a long history of explicitly antisemitic ideology. The ease with which some activists could nevertheless frame the massacre as “resistance” helps illustrate just how different the moral status of the categories “anti-Zionist” and “antisemitic” can be in parts of Western political culture.

This helps explain why so many legal and public battles ultimately converge on the question of whether a statement, demonstration, or form of conduct is “merely anti-Zionist” or also antisemitic. If it is only anti-Zionist, it may enjoy the broad protections afforded to a political position, even an extreme and offensive one. If it is antisemitic, it may enter an entirely different category: discrimination, racism, or harassment, depending on the context and the relevant legal system.

The battle over definitions is therefore not semantic. Classification determines, to a significant degree, the moral, institutional, and sometimes legal framework within which conduct will be assessed. This also explains why both sides of the debate cling so tightly to terminology. Those who wish to combat a particular phenomenon often try to demonstrate that it is not merely anti-Zionism but also antisemitism. Conversely, those who wish to defend it frequently insist that it is “only criticism of Israel” or “only anti-Zionism.” Both sides understand very well that words carry consequences here.

Precisely for that reason, however, it is important not to try to solve the entire problem by endlessly expanding the concept of antisemitism. Not every form of anti-Zionism has to become antisemitism before we are entitled to criticize it. Sometimes anti-Zionism is indeed antisemitic: when it employs antisemitic imagery, conspiracy theories, discriminatory double standards directed specifically at Jews, or when “Zionists” are transformed into a mythical embodiment of global evil. At other times, it is simply anti-Zionism. The important point is that even in the latter case, the argument is not over.

One can say that a position is not antisemitic and still ask why it is specifically the Jewish nation-state that is regarded as an entity with no right to exist; why a state born out of war, displacement, and conflict is repeatedly required to justify its very existence while similar demands are almost never directed at other states; and what it would actually mean, in practice, to abolish a country in which millions of people now live. Perhaps one of the central problems in the current debate is that we have turned “Is this antisemitism?” into the only question we are allowed to ask. It is an extremely important question, but it is certainly not the only one.