Anti-Zionism is the Newest Manifestation of the World’s Oldest Hatred
While studying politics and history in the Czech Republic in the Spring of 2018, I took a course entitled “Comprehending the Holocaust.” The professor — an amiable, middle-aged Slovak — notified us right off the bat that contrary to the name of his class, there would be very little “comprehending” going on: the horrors of the Holocaust are, he informed us, fundamentally incomprehensible. Instead, his goal was to walk us step by step through the events, ideologies, and people that made the Holocaust possible. A historical analysis of antisemitism was a natural starting point for this journey.
“Every generation,” he lectured in heavily accented English, “creates anew a different form of antisemitism.” In the early Christian era, antisemitism manifested itself in official Catholic doctrine, which held that all Jews were collectively responsible for the death of Christ. Their persecution and marginalization were, therefore, completely justified. During the Middle Ages, antisemitism took the form of blood libel: the wholly fabricated accusation — first made in Norwich, England in the 12th century — that Jews habitually kidnapped and murdered Christian children for ritual purposes. In Europe in the mid-19th and 20th century, Jews were blamed for the immense social upheaval brought about by rapid industrialization. The idea — birthed in the wake of these changing class dynamics — that Jews manipulate global markets to their benefit has to date constituted the prevailing strain of antisemitism. That is, until now.
Today, the world’s oldest hatred has once again transformed itself to fit the needs of a new generation. Today, antisemitism appears in the clever guise of anti-Zionism. This is not to say simply that anti-Zionists are frequently antisemitic (though they are). It is to say that unless practiced by general anarchists or a small sect of ultra-Orthodox Jews, anti-Zionism as an ideology and movement writ large is inherently, necessarily, and definitionally antisemitic.
While anti-Zionists come in many different stripes, most notable among the movement’s ranks (particularly on college campuses) are the pro-Palestinian organizations Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP). Though they differ in several small respects, their fundamental goals are the same. JVP declares in the first sentence of its website’s “about page” that its members are “guided by a vision of justice, equality and freedom for all people. [They] unequivocally oppose Zionism because it is counter to those ideals.” SJP proclaims in even stronger language on its website that “Zionism is ethnic cleansing, destruction, mass expulsion, apartheid and death.” Given the uncompromisingly condemnatory and censorious language adopted by both organizations, one would be forgiven for believing Zionism to be some kind of societal plague or social scourge. Anti-Zionists would certainly relish in your thinking so. Unfortunately for them, facts must rule the day.
Zionism, at the most basic level, is the belief in the Jewish right to self-determination. More specifically, according to the World Zionist Organization, the goal of Zionism is “to re-establish a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel, also known as the Holy Land, Canaan or Palestine.” Simple enough. After 2,000 years of constant persecution — 2,000 years of being subject to the malicious whims of hostile hosts — Jews seek to govern themselves in a home of their own for the first time since they were driven from Israel by the Romans in 73 C.E. If, for example, my professor’s native Slovakia can assert the “Slovak Nation[’s]” right to self-determination in the preamble of its constitution, why mightn’t the Jewish nation do the same? Based on these standard and modest goals, Zionism hardly appears the racist and murderous boogeyman that anti-Zionists so frequently make it out to be. So why the antipathy? There are multiple layers to their misguided beliefs, each with a unique network of underlying fallacies. One will quickly find that, much like a house of sand in the Negev desert, the logic of anti-Zionism is baseless: the slightest prodding will invariably bring the whole structure down.
Anti-zionism can generally be divided into three categories: political, nationalistic, and historical. First, and most importantly, anti-Zionist groups like SJP and JVP are fundamentally opposed to Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza. Their disagreements with Israel are, therefore, primarily policy-based. Given the near-constant state of war between Israel and its neighbors since 1948, and the devastating consequences that these conflicts have had for the Palestinians (thousands have died at the hands of the IDF over the past ten years alone), this is a perfectly legitimate political stance to take.
As a result of their convictions, they believe Zionism to be fundamentally illegitimate, violent, and racist. If this doesn’t add up to you, it shouldn’t.
It is valid to be opposed to Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza, where living conditions are notoriously poor, violence between Israelis and Palestinians is rampant, and where unjustified annexations of Palestinian territory continue unabated, but this opposition in no way justifies eliminating the entire state of Israel or denying that state the right to exist. No one in their right mind would endeavor to deny the United States nationhood over its policy at the southern border, or Turkey nationhood over its recent crackdown on refugees, or Russia nationhood over its annexation of Crimea. To take the comparison to the extreme, neither Myanmar’s horrific treatment of its Rohingya minority nor China’s of its Christian minority have garnered any calls for the dissolution of either state. Any such demand, in any of these instances, would, of course, be completely absurd. And yet, we are expected to believe that anti-Zionists’ unique denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination and nationhood is anything other than antisemitism. We are expected to believe this, even when a similar denial in any other instance for any other people on the planet would offhandedly be dismissed as ridiculous prima facie.
Fortunately, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) — an organization founded in 1998 that is composed of formal governmental delegates from 35 countries — has given us the tools to describe this type of behavior. In its working definition of antisemitism, the IHRA describes antisemitic discrimination as “the denial to Jews of opportunities or services available to others.” If the Americans, Turks, Russians, Myanmars, and Chinese are all entitled to nationhood despite policies with which any reasonable person might disagree, then the Jewish nation should be accorded the same opportunity. If and when it is not, there is only one logical explanation: antisemitism.
The conterminous conclusion that ‘Zionism is racism’ can be similarly dismissed without much mental effort. If Zionism — that is, Jewish self-determination — is racism, then so is literally every nationality with an ethnic foundation (which would require us to condemn German, Albanian, and my professor’s Slovak nationalism, to name just a few). In fact, according to the CIA’s World Factbook — which provides a listing of countries along with the statistical prevalence of different ethnic groups — we would therefore have to condemn as racist Egypt (which is 99.7 percent ethnically Egyptian), Albania (82.6 percent Albanian), Ireland (82.2 percent Irish), Japan (98.1 percent Japanese), Lithuania (84.1 percent Lithuanian), Slovakia (80.7 percent Slovakian), Germany (87.2 percent German), and Greece (91.6 percent Greek). The list goes on. Israel, by comparison, is merely 74.4 percent Jewish, rendering it, according to SJP and JVP, the statistically least ‘racist’ of any of the aforementioned countries. Given that no one, once again, would consider any of these places fundamentally racist based on their desire for national existence, we can safely label the assertion that ‘Zionism is racism’ as antisemitic. The IHRA agrees, including in its definition of antisemitism the claim that “the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”
Having addressed political anti-Zionism, let us transition to what can be termed “nationalistic” anti-Zionism. Simply put, organizations like SJP and JVP advocate for an independent state of Palestine. Once again, this is a perfectly legitimate aspiration. In fact, according to a Gallup poll from March 2019, half of the American public supported the creation of an independent Palestinian state, compared to the 39 percent who opposed it. A January 2019 joint poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and Tel Aviv University found that a comparable percentage of Israelis (49 percent) and Palestinians (43 percent) favored a two-state solution that would lead to the creation of an independent Palestine. SJP’s and JVP’s nationalist ambitions are neither marginal nor outlandish and benefit from wide public support across a diverse political spectrum. However, when those national ambitions preclude the existence of Israel, the latent antisemitism of anti-Zionist policies are put on full display.
The existence of an independent Israel and an independent Palestine are by no means mutually exclusive, as public opinion in the United States, Israel, and the Palestinian territories attests to. SJP’s and JVP’s anti-Zionism is akin to the Catalonian independence movement denying the right of Spain to exist, or the Scottish independence movement denying the right of England to exist. Calls for the dissolution of Spain or England as a result of the goals of their respective nationalist movements would be insouciantly dismissed or roundly mocked. Calls for the dissolution of Israel should be met with the same derision.
Finally, there is what can be described as “historical” anti-Zionism. According to this credo, the Jewish/Israeli habitation of what is now the modern state of Israel is a colonial, settler movement. The Palestinians being the “last” ones before the return of the diasporic Jews to inhabit this historically tumultuous land (ruled at various points by the Egyptians, the Israelites, Alexander the Great, the Jewish Hasmoneans, the Romans, the Ottomans, the British, and finally, the Israelis), the Palestinians are now entitled to it. All of it. As an Israeli friend of mine slightly reductively but succinctly put it, “The Jews were there for the first 1,000 years, the Muslims for the last, what are we supposed to do?”
Anti-Zionists would have the Jews abandon their historic homeland, against the stated wishes of nearly half of all Palestinians who believe in a two-state solution. Practically speaking, this would mean the (presumably forced) removal of all 9 million people currently living in Israel (and 45 percent of world Jewry). In terms of numbers, this would be like calling for the dislocation of every Austrian from Austria or Honduran from Honduras. To ask the Jews to leave Israel because they are settlers would be like asking every person in the Americas of European descent to return to Europe for the same reason. Except, of course, to where would the Jews return, if not Israel?
As Bret Stephens of the New York Times wrote back in February, “It is one thing to argue, in the moot court of historical what-ifs, that Israel should not have come into being.” But come into being it has, and to openly advocate for its undoing is not only impracticable, it is unconscionable. And, perhaps most tellingly, it is also contradictory to the wishes of the people SJP and JVP purport to represent, a plurality of whom prefer two states, not one.
Whether political, nationalistic, or historical in scope, anti-Zionism is — based on its unique and unnecessary demand that Jews not have a homeland — fundamentally antisemitic. This does not, of course, mean that criticism of Israel is de facto antisemitic. In fact, one can be a diehard Palestinian nationalist, disagree with every single policy decision made by the Israeli government, and want to reform Zionism to be more inclusive of non-Jewish minorities, and still not be an antisemite. But just as one’s disagreements with President Donald Trump should never logically lead to one’s advocating for the dissolution of the United States, one’s disagreeing with Israel should never culminate in anti-Zionism. Given the global rise in antisemitism (a study conducted by the ADL estimates that more than 1 billion people the world over harbor antisemitic beliefs) and the proven correlation between antisemitic and anti-Zionist beliefs, it is high time that we disabuse ourselves of the notion that anti-Zionism is anything other than the newest manifestation of the world’s oldest hatred.
Which brings me back to my class, “Comprehending the Holocaust.” Despite a life dedicated to education and study, despite his most ardent efforts, my Slovakian professor had had the distinct displeasure of witnessing the creeping resurgence of antisemitism — now so frequently masked as anti-Zionism. In our penultimate class, a fellow student of mine asked when, if ever, antisemitism would be no more. Looking up from his furrowed brow he replied, curling his vowels in typical Slavic fashion: “When the sun goes black.”
