Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism

How do we stop anti-Zionism? Recognize how it is like all forms of Jew-hatred.

The predictable anti-Zionist mantra claims “anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.” The mantra is right: Anti-Zionism is not classical antisemitism. But it misses the point: Anti-Zionism is itself a powerful form of Jew hatred. It is different in form, but identical in function. Anti-Zionism, just like antisemitism, is a hate movement that obsessively repeats popular libels about Jews to justify killing them. This cycle of libel leads to violence against Jews — and also against Palestinians, who are repeatedly sacrificed on the altar of its ideology and its endless wars.

To understand anti-Zionism we must first understand that Jew-hatred is a structural feature of monotheistic cultures. It takes on various forms, but its ancient cycle persists: Anti-Jewish libels and conspiracy theories stigmatize Jews and lead to violence, which is then denied.

First came anti-Judaism, which hates Jews for their religion. Its cycle of libel casts Jews as Christ-killers and blood-eaters. Its conspiracy theories told of the corruption of princes and well poisoning. Disguised as piety, anti-Jewish violence erupted in mass burnings, expulsions, inquisitions and pogroms.

Then came antisemitism, which hates Jews for their race. Antisemitic libels cast Jews as communists, capitalists and race-polluters. Conspiracy theories were updated: Jews were turned from well-poisoners to backstabbers. Antisemitism disguised itself behind myths of racial purity and national strength. Far-right violence soon emerged, from the Black Hundreds, to the killing fields of the Holocaust.

Next came anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism hates Jews not for their religion or race, but for their nation. It targets Israel, the single Jewish nation, and libels it: colonizer, apartheid and genocide. Its conspiracy theories accuse Israel of plans for regional or world domination. Its violence has ethnically cleansed Jews across the Middle East and former USSR, and is already spilling into the West, recoding ordinary Jews as “the Zionists” deemed worthy of stigma and violence.

All three iterations of Jew hatred are rooted in the logic of supercessionism — the impulse to eliminate Jews to redeem the world — and all three repeat the same cycle over and over: libel, conspiracy, stigma, violence and denial. Each version merely swaps in new libels and selects a different aspect of Jewish identity to attack. The content of the libels is secondary to how society wields them: repeated obsessively, until they succeed in demonizing the Jews, justifying and sanctifying anti-Jewish violence.

Anti-Zionist war and terror left a long wake of atrocities before Oct 7, as the ideology was born over a century ago. The Yevsektsiya, the anti-Zionist “Jewish section” of the USSR, began purging Jewish culture in 1918. In 1929, anti-Zionist Arabs butchered their Jewish neighbors, after living alongside them for generations. In the 1940s to the 1960s, Arab nations ethnically cleansed 850,000 Jews from their countries. Anti-Zionism drove the tiny remnant of Poland’s Jews from that country in 1968, as just one example. The rest of the Soviet bloc would flee much later. Anti-Zionist terror such as the butchery and mutilation of Israel’s Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972, the Air France hijacking to Entebbe in 1976, targeted Israelis and Jews worldwide for decades. Repeated wars struck Israel whenever the region had the opportunity and the backing. Ordinary Palestinians certainly didn’t benefit from the violence. Every time Israelis and Palestinians stood on the brink of peace, anti-Zionist violence erupted — dragging both peoples back into war. On Oct. 7, its armies once again butchered and rampaged, leading Gaza into yet another devastating war. Since Oct. 8, that violence has been simultaneously denied, justified and celebrated by anti-Zionists worldwide.

That the anti-Zionist movement can claim Jews among its supporters, does nothing whatsoever to rehabilitate it. Even Nazi Germany tokenized Jewish antisemites in the Association of German National Jews, just as the Yevsektsiya pledged allegiance to Lenin. Tokenized Jews benefit from the status quo and recoil at having their comfort unsettled by “troublesome” Jews who call out persecution.

How do we stop anti-Zionism? Recognize how it is like all forms of Jew-hatred before it: an eliminationist hate movement that still depends on the ancient cycle of libel. Expose how it cloaks its evil in a false consciousness and the politics of the era.

But also recognize what is new: Anti-Zionism is an oppression pretending to be anti-oppression. It invokes the language of decolonization and liberation as it murders and persecutes Jews. It is racism for anti-racists, reformatted against an entire nation: Israel. It persecutes Palestinians viciously — consistently choosing libel and war over coexistence. The price is thousands of dead Palestinians, destroyed infrastructure and generations raised in trauma. Its goal is not a better life for Palestinians but the end of Israel. We need you to see through this trick.

Fight the cycle of libel in the media, at work and at school. Fighting for human rights starts with disrupting the anti-Zionist libels that inevitably lead to horrific violence against Jews and Palestinians alike. PJC

Rona Kaufman is an associate professor of law at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University, where she teaches constitutional, employment discrimination, family and gender law. Her views and opinions are her own. They do not represent the position of Duquesne University. This article first appeared on The Times of Israel.