Zionism Is Binary – Communicate This

Let me ask you one yes-or-no question. Answer it honestly, and we’ll know exactly where you stand on “Zionism”:

Do you want the State of Israel – the world’s only Jewish state – to continue existing in some form?

• Yes → you are a Zionist.
• No → you are an anti-Zionist.

That’s it. There is no third option.

Everything else you believe – borders, settlements, Gaza policy, Netanyahu, two states, one state – is a separate conversation. The word “Zionism” has always meant only one thing: the Jewish people should have a national homeland in at least part of their ancestral land. That homeland was established in 1948. The movement succeeded. The “-ism” is done.

We don’t call people Canada-ists, India-ists, or Japan-ists because those countries exist and almost nobody seriously demands they stop existing. Once a national project is achieved, the label retires to the history books. It should have happened with Zionism long ago.

Yet in 2025 we still treat it like a spectrum. It isn’t. It’s binary.

This massive misunderstanding poisons every single conversation.

On the Zionist side (people who want Israel to keep existing):

• Israeli leftists who want to end the occupation and evacuate every settler? Zionists.
• The Palestinian Authority that recognizes Israel and negotiates for a state alongside it? Zionists (whether they like the label or not).
• Americans who think Israel’s conduct in Gaza has been catastrophic but still want a Jewish state standing tomorrow? Zionists.
• Every government that maintains an official embassy in Israel – all 166 of them – even though many consistently vote for Palestinian statehood or against Israel at the UN? Still Zionists.
• Bernie Sanders saying in 2016 on Al Jazeera that he supports Israel’s right to exist and not a one state solution with no Jewish state? He’s a Zionist.

On the anti-Zionist side (people who want the Jewish state to cease existing):

• Anyone who seemingly very nicely says they don’t support Hamas but seemingly very nicely want one state that is not called Israel → Anti-Zionist.
• Anyone who demands a single binational state “from the river to the sea” in which there is no Jewish national home, no Law of Return for Jews, and no Jewish symbols or self-determination → Anti-Zionist.
• Anyone who puts a map of Palestine over a map that erases Israel entirely → Anti-Zionist.
• Anyone who endorses Hamas’s 1988 charter (or its 2017 “updated” version that still rejects Israel’s existence in any borders) → Anti-Zionist.
• Anyone who supports the goals of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or the Houthis when they declare their goal is “liberating all of Palestine” and removing Israel off the map → Anti-Zionist.
• Anyone who insists that “decolonization” or “return” means the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state and its replacement with an Arab-majority state → Anti-Zionist.
• Bernie Sanders saying in 2025 that he is not a Zionist. Does that mean he wants Israel to cease to exist?
  • Yet again in this same year he says he believes in the “notion of Israel as a Jewish state” He is clearly playing into this intentionally misunderstood word for his political advantage.

In sum, anyone who wants Israel to cease to exist by way of polite diplomacy or violent military defeat is an anti-Zionist.

Here’s why the confusion runs so deep – and hurts so much:

1. Many people genuinely believe “anti-Zionism” is not binary. They think they can say “I’m not antisemitic, I’m just anti-Zionist” and mean only that they dislike certain policies or the idea of a “Jewish state” in the abstract – without actually wanting the country to disappear. They are mistaken about the definition, but because the mistake is sincere, they feel free to use the phrase.
2. Diaspora Jews, almost universally (87–94 % in every major poll)¹²³ see Israel’s continued existence in some form (or more specifically, its non-destruction) as non-negotiable. To them “I’m anti-Zionist” can only mean: “I want the Jewish state to cease existing” – whether through war, violence, demographic change, or political pressure to dissolve the Knesset.
3. A smaller, louder group knows exactly what the phrase does. They choose “anti-Zionist” deliberately because it inflicts maximum pain on Jews while still giving them cover among people who don’t understand the term’s real meaning.

It’s in the vagueness of this term that it can cause so much pain. Because it specifically means one thing to the vast majority of Jews, and is for some reason open to interpretation to the rest of the world, without much pushback of Jews calling it out, calling oneself anti-Zionist is such an effective weapon to intimidate.

We Jews may see this as glaringly obvious. But it’s really not. The majority of the world does not understand this simple definition. And we aren’t correcting them.

Put together, the sentence you hear in perfectly polite company – “I’m not against Jews, I’m just against Zionists” – lands in Jewish ears as:

“I’m not against all Jews… I’m just against 94% of them, and want the Jewish state to stop existing”

How exactly are Jews supposed to respond to that?

I personally believe the term Zionism should be retired altogether, and part of the blame lies with Israeli political parties themselves. For years they have competed over who is “more Zionist,” putting Zionist in their party names, turning a simple statement of historical fact (the Jewish state exists) into a partisan weapon. Even the left-wing parties that want dramatic concessions for peace are Zionist by any honest definition. We as Jews should stop feeding the confusion too, as it perpetuates the debate.

The word did its job seventy-seven years ago. Israel is here. Let’s put Zionism in a museum with Garibaldi’s red shirts and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and let’s speak plainly:

Do you accept that the Jewish state should exist in even a sliver of its current borders?

Answer yes, and we can argue about everything else like adults.

Answer no, and at least say it plainly instead of hiding behind a word whose meaning you either know or ought to know.

The debate about whether the Jewish state should exist is over.

It exists.

Let’s stop allowing this weapon to be used against us.

Let’s correct this error when we see it.