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Anti-Zionism
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Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism, the international Jewish political movement that established a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine (Hebrew: Eretz Yisra'el, “the Land of Israel”), and continues to support the state of Israel. Opposition to Zionism has changed over time and has taken on a spectrum of religious, ethical, political or military forms. Some include, opposition to the creation of a Jewish state prior to the appearance of the messiah, objection to the idea of a state based on maintenance of a Jewish majority, differing democratic values and differing dimensions or rejection of Israel's right to exist in any form.
The legitimacy of anti-Zionist views has been disputed into the present day, along with the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
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Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism, the international Jewish political movement that established a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine (Hebrew: Eretz Yisra'el, “the Land of Israel”), and continues to support the state of Israel. Opposition to Zionism has changed over time and has taken on a spectrum of religious, ethical, political or military forms. Some include, opposition to the creation of a Jewish state prior to the appearance of the messiah, objection to the idea of a state based on maintenance of a Jewish majority, differing democratic values and differing dimensions or rejection of Israel's right to exist in any form.
The legitimacy of anti-Zionist views has been disputed into the present day, along with the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Some commentators argue that anti-Zionism represents fair opposition to Israel or its policies, particularly in the occupied territories. Others contend that to the extent anti-Zionism represents an opposition even to Israel's existence, it is inherently antisemitic, but many Jews are anti-zionists. A range of other views regarding the various forms of anti-Zionism is discussed and debated.
- "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination" assumes that all Jews equate self determination with Zionism. Not only is this not true today, it has never been true. There is a long and respected tradition in Jewish history and culture among all those who have wished or wish today for cultural, religious or other forms of autonomy falling short of a Jewish state; for a binational state in Palestine as did Martin Buber and others; or for a one-state solution today, whatever form it might take – a minority view in Israel today to be sure, but held by numbers of respected Jews. To make the assumption that all Jews hold the same views is in itself a form of antisemitism.
- "Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation." This is a formulation that allows any criticism of Israel to be dismissed on the grounds that it is not simultaneously applied to every other defaulting state at the same time. As campaigners for a just peace in the Middle East we can affirm that it is thrown willy-nilly to stifle any and all but the narrowest criticism of acts of the Israeli government that are in prima facie breach of clause after clause of the 4th Geneva Convention. Or again, the democratic norm that all citizens in a state should be treated equally sometimes sits uneasily with some notions of Israel as a ‘Jewish state’ and it is not antisemitic to point this out or to suggest that Israel should, indeed, be a ‘state of all its citizens’.
- "Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel." This is the flipside of a position, frequently expressed by Prime Minister Sharon and many Zionists, that refuses to make any distinction between the interests of Israel and those of Jews worldwide. Why it is permissible for them to make this elision but evidence of antisemitism when others do so is not clear. It might even be taken as evidence of double standards... In reality it is all too often Zionist rhetoric which fuses the notion of Israel’s interests with those of Jews worldwide and thus fuels what the EUMC identifies (other things being equal) as a potential indicator of antisemitism.
This is not to deny that there are circumstances in which criticisms of the state of Israel might indeed be antisemitic. But the presumption should not be that they are. This requires demonstration on a case by case basis.
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History of Anti-Zionism
Aliyah and Zionism in Jewish thought
Hope for return to the land of Israel is contained in the content of the Jewish religion and Zionists trace their roots to the founding of Judaism. The Hebrew word aliyah, which literally means "ascending" or "going up" is the word used to describe a Jew who has immigrated to Israel, and has been used as such since ancient times. From the Middle Ages and onwards, many famous rabbis (and often their followers) immigrated to the Land of Israel. These included Nahmanides, Yechiel of Paris with several hundred of his students, Yosef Karo, Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and 300 of his followers, and over 500 disciples (and their families) of the Vilna Gaon known as Perushim, among others.
Among Jews in the Diaspora Eretz Israel was revered in a religious sense. They thought of a return to it in a future messianic age. Return remained a recurring theme among generations, particularly in Passover and Yom Kippur prayers which traditionally concluded with, "Next year in Jerusalem", and in the thrice-daily Amidah (Standing prayer).
Support for aliyah does not always translate into support of the modern Zionist movement; and as a result some religious Jews, and some secular Jews, do not support Zionism. However, Zionism does have the support of the overwhelming majority of the Jewish religious community, with nearly full support from Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform movements.
It should be noted that non-Zionist Jews are not necessarily anti-Zionists.
Many Hasidic rabbis opposed the creation of a secular Jewish state. The leader of the Satmar hasidic sect, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum's book, VaYoel Moshe, published in 1958, expounds one Orthodox position on Zionism, based on a literal form of midrash (biblical interpretation). Citing to Tractate Kesubos 111a of the Talmud Teitelbaum states that God and the Jewish people exchanged three oaths at the time of the Jews' exile from ancient Israel.
Secular
The Jewish community is not a single united group and responses vary both between and within Jewish groups. One of the principle divisions is that between secular Jews and religious Jews. The reasons for secular opposition to the Zionist movement (where it existed) were very different from those of religious Jews.
Prior to WWII
Prior to the Second World War many Jews regarded Zionism as a fanciful and unrealistic movement. Many liberals during the European Enlightenment had argued that Jews should enjoy full equality only on the condition that they pledge their singular loyalty to their nation-state and entirely assimilate to the local national culture; they called for the "regeneration" of the Jewish people in exchange for rights. Those liberal Jews who accepted integration and/or assimilation principles saw Zionism as a threat to efforts to facilitate Jewish citizenship and equality within the European nation-state context.
WWII and the creation of Israel
Attitudes changed during and following the war. In May, 1942, before the full revelation of the Holocaust, the Biltmore Program proclaimed a fundamental departure from traditional Zionist policy of a “homeland” with its demand "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth." Opposition to official Zionism’s firm, unequivocal stand caused some prominent Zionists to establish their own party, Ichud (Unification), which advocated an Arab – Jewish Federation in Palestine. Opposition to the Biltmore Program also lead to the founding of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism.
The full knowledge of the Holocaust altered the views of many who critiqued Zionism before 1948, including the British journalist Isaac Deutscher, a socialist and life-long atheist who nevertheless emphasised the importance of his Jewish heritage. Before World War II, Deutscher opposed Zionism as economically retrograde and harmful to the cause of international socialism, but in the aftermath of the Holocaust he regretted his pre-war views, arguing for Israel's establishment as a "historic necessity" to provide a refuge for the surviving Jews of Europe. In the 1960s, Deutscher renewed his criticism of Zionism, scrutinizing Israel for its failure to recognise the dispossession of the Palestinians.
Religious
In the early history of Zionism many traditional religious Jews opposed ideas of nationalism (Jewish or otherwise) which they regarded as a secular ideology and because of an inherent suspicion of change. Key traditionalist opponents of Zionism included Isaac Breuer, Hillel Zeitlin, Aaron Shmuel Tamares, Hayyim, Elazar Shapiro (Muncatz), and Joel Teitelbaum, all waged ideological religious, as well as political, battles with Zionism each in their own way.
Arab
Anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist narratives—particularly popular in Arab countries with violent experiences of colonial rule—focus especially on parallels with cases such as French immigration to Algeria or English and Afrikaner immigration to Rhodesia, seeing it in terms of a foreign power encouraging immigration into the country of a group which then sought to dominate the country. According to this view, the natural means of combating Zionism is considered to be Palestinian revolution, and the expulsion or weakening of the Zionist "occupiers". Among Palestinians, examples of notable individuals or political parties that emphasize anti-imperial and anti-colonial narratives in their opposition to Zionism include: Ghassan Kanafani, Edward Said, Leila Khaled, George Habash, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Palestinian Revolutionary Communist Party. Examples of Palestinian solidarity groups that root their activism against Zionism in anti-imperial and anti-colonial terms include: Students for Justice in Palestine, Al-Awda , and Sumoud . Critics of these movements argue that it is a logical fallacy to compare Zionism to imperialism or colonialism, on the grounds that Zionism is focused on a return to an ancestral homeland.
Pan-Arabist narratives—which enjoyed their heyday in the 1960s in the Nasser era, but have declined since—emphasize the idea of Palestine as a part of the Arab world taken by others (partly overlapping with the previous.) As such, Israel is seen as both a symbol of Arab weakness and—insofar as it geographically cuts the Arab world into two noncontiguous halves—an obstacle to any union of the Arab world. In this narrative, the natural means of combating Zionism is Arab nations uniting and attacking Israel militarily. Pan-Syrian narratives, promoted mainly by Syria, are essentially parallel.
In response to the Pan-Arabist narrative, Israeli historian Benny Morris commented:
Remember another thing: the Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. Not thanks to its skills or its great virtues, but because it conquered and murdered and forced those it conquered to convert during many generations. But in the end the Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view, the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them.
Local nationalist narratives of non-Palestinian Arabs emphasize the idea of Israel as a threat to the nation (commonly citing the extremist Israeli aspiration of a nation stretching "from the Nile to the Euphrates"). Among Palestinians, these emphasize other issues, such as the Palestinian refugee problem, and that in their view, over 90% of the pre-1948 British Mandate of Palestine is controlled by Israel.
Israel on the other hand claims that it controls only 23% of the original mandate, with the rest under the control of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which (if refugees and their descendants are counted) already has a majority Palestinian Arab population.
A poll of Arab-Israelis conducted by the Israeli Democracy Institute in 2007 found that 75% of Arab-Israelis profess support for the existence of a Jewish state:
A vast majority of Israeli Arabs would support a constitution that maintained Israel's status as a Jewish and democratic state while guaranteeing equal rights for minorities. Among the 507 people who participated in the poll, some 75 percent said they would agree with such a definition while 23 percent said they would oppose it.
Muslim
Muslim anti-Zionism generally opposes the state of Israel as an intrusion into what many Muslims consider to be Dar al-Islam, a domain rightfully, and permanently, ruled only by Muslims. Once Islamic rule is established in a country, non-Muslims are given dhimmi status as protected from violence. Thus any sovereign, non-Muslim government in what is now Israel would be anathema.
Palestinian and other Muslim groups, as well as the government of Iran (since the 1979 Islamic Revolution), insist that the State of Israel is illegitimate and refuse to refer to it as "Israel", instead using the locution "the Zionist entity" (see Iran-Israel relations). In an interview with Time Magazine in December 2006, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said "Everyone knows that the Zionist regime is a tool in the hands of the United States and British governments" .
An example of this view is the work of Ismail al-Faruqi (1926-1986). In Islam and the Problem of Israel (1980), he argued that Zionism was a "disease" largely influenced by European romanticism far removed from Judaism. He opposed the Zionist occupation of Palestine and called for the dismantling of Israel and the launch of a jihad. He said that the injustice caused by Zionism is such as to necessitate war. From the standpoint of Islam, Faruqi wrote, Zionism represents apostasy against Judaism.
Western
In the liberal Western world, opposition to Zionism has often focused on the United Kingdom since it was the British government's decision to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The decision was controversial from the start as some British people believed the Balfour declaration undermined Britain's relationship with Muslims in the Middle East and India. Between 1919 and 1939 the British government steadily reduced its support for Zionism. In 1939 Britain formally announced its intention to create an Arab state in the whole of Palestine in the White Paper of 1939, ending its support for the Balfour declaration.
There was little opposition to Zionism in other countries but as Arab states became independent the desire to maintain positive relations with Arab states has often affected attitudes to Zionism.
Matthias Küntzel wrote, concerning the contemporary European antisemitic form of anti-Zionism, that:
It is a historical fact that since the year 1921 there has been an antisemitic anti-Zionism in existence. [Nazi leader] Alfred Rosenberg wrote his first book against Zionism in that year, and it is completely antisemitic. Second, antisemitism has been a part of Europe for two millennia. And antisemitism is like a chameleon that changes its complexion over time as its environment changes. In such a deeply antisemitic world as Europe, it’s just common sense to look for the ways in which the establishment of a Jewish state would reshape antisemitic thinking.
Soviet
From 1928-1934, during the so-called "Third Period" in the Soviet Union, Zionism was outlawed. But by the late 1930s, the official position of Zionism began to change to a more favourable one. In the Soviet encyclopedia of this time, it was stated that Jewish migration to Palestine had become a "progressive factor" because many of the workers stood on the left and could be used against the "pro-British" Arabs.
At the beginning of 1947, the Soviet Union supported the partition of Palestine. Stalin wanted to use the Jews in Palestine against British imperialism, and to establish a point of support for the USSR in the Middle East. But the Israeli state maintained neutrality and the Soviet Union lost any influence.
During the last years of Stalin's rule, official support for the creation of Israel was replaced by strong anti-semitism. While Stalin's campaigns were officially carried out under the banner of anti-Zionism, they were in fact antisemitic and often borrowed directly from traditional Russian antisemitism. This included a campaign against so-called "rootless cosmopolitans" and the fabrication of a Jewish Doctors' plot to assassinate Stalin. After Stalin's death, anti-Zionist antisemitism continued through the rise of "Zionology" in the 1960s and subsequent activities of official organizations such as the Anti-Zionist committee of the Soviet public.
Zionism was misrepresented in the USSR to conform to policy of the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union: "the main posits of modern Zionism are militant chauvinism, racism, anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism,... overt and covert fight against freedom movements and the USSR."
During the Cold War, the spectre of Zionism raised fears of internal dissent and opposition. The Soviet government liquidated almost all remaining Jewish organizations, and placed synagogues under police surveillance, both openly and through the use of informers. At the same time, the persecution of Soviet Jews emerged as a major human rights issue in the West. See Jackson-Vanik amendment.
In 1975, the Soviet Union sponsored the UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, discussed below.
International
Many of the most important authorities on ethics in the 20th century have contributed to the debate on Zionism, such as Mahatma Gandhi in the 1930s and '40s. . U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall strongly opposed the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 but lost the internal debate in the White House over formal U.S. recognition of Zionism.
In contrast, Martin Luther King is said to have replied to a black student who criticized "Zionists" at a 1968 dinner, "Don't talk like that! When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism." The accuracy of the quote has been verified by U.S. Rep. John Lewis, a Democrat and notable civil rights leader, who represents the 5th Congressional District of Georgia. The claim that this was stated in a letter is widely discounted. However, the accuracy of the quotation itself is now generally accepted.
Paralleling the rise of anti-Zionist sentiment in the west was increased hostility towards Israel at the international level. During the 1950s and 1960s, Israel made great efforts to cultivate good relations with the newly independent states of Africa and Asia, and hostility to Israel was confined to the states of the Arab-Muslim world and the Communist bloc. A combination of inter-related circumstances in the 1970s radically changed this situation.
The first was the increased hostility to Israel following the onset of the Israel-Palestinian conflict in the late 1960s. The second was the decline in the prestige of the United States following the end of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The third was increased economic power of the Arab oil-producing states in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the resulting energy crisis. The fourth was the rise of radical anti-western regimes in a series of African countries. The fifth was the increased diplomatic and economic presence of the Soviet Union, China and Cuba in Africa.
This anti-Zionist trend was manifested in organisations such as the Organization for African Unity and the Non-Aligned Movement, which passed resolutions condemning Zionism and equating it with racism and apartheid during the early 1970s. It culminated in the passing by the United Nations General Assembly of Resolution 3379 in November 1975, declaring that "Zionism is a form of racism." This resolution was passed by 72 votes to 35, with 32 abstentions.
The 72 votes in favour consisted of 12 Communist countries (including East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Belarus and Ukraine), all 20 Arab states, another 12 Muslim-majority states (including Turkey), 14 non-Muslim African states, and 14 other states (including Brazil, India, Mexico and Portugal).
Those opposing included five African states (one of them Moslem), most of Latin America and practically the entire English-speaking world.
By 1991, this international situation had been reversed following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the American-led victory over Iraq in the Gulf War and the return of the United States to global political and economic dominance.
On December 16, 1991, the General Assembly passed Resolution 4686, repealing resolution 3379, by a vote of 111 to 25, with 13 abstentions and 17 delegations absent. Thirteen out of the 19 Arab countries, including those engaged in negotiations with Israel, voted against the repeal, another six were absent. No Arab country voted for repeal. The PLO denounced the vote. All the ex-Communist countries and most of the African countries who had supported Resolution 3379 voted to repeal it. Only three non-Muslim countries voted against the resolution: Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. The rest abstained (including Turkey) or absented themselves.
International anti-Zionism, like domestic anti-Zionism in many countries, rises and falls in parallel with events in the Middle East, and the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 saw some revival of anti-Zionism in some countries; however, it is also possible that it was not until this time that media attention focused on the phenomenon.
Contemporary Jewish Debates on Anti-Zionism
Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism
In recent years, numerous commentators have argued that contemporary manifestations of anti-Zionism have become a cover for antisemitism, and that a "new antisemitism" rooted in anti-Zionism has emerged. Advocates of this concept argue that much of what purports to be criticism of Israel and Zionism is demonization, and has led to an international resurgence of attacks on Jews and Jewish symbols and an increased acceptance of antisemitic beliefs in public discourse. Critics of the concept argue that the equation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is used to stifle legitimate criticisms of Israel, and trivializes antisemitism.
Many commentators assert that anti-Zionism can be anti-Semitic, but that anti-Zionism is not necessarily anti-Semitism. The difference is rather one of emphasis with some preferring to emphasize the link and others to separate the issues. Others argue that contemporary anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic.
Following the 1992 election, Susan Hattis Rolef, editor of the Knesset website and Senior Researcher in the Knesset Research and Information Center, opined that the Labor and Likud parties differ on foreign policy in two major ways; one concerns content, and the other concerns the use of hasbara. She writes, The Likud… especially its Herut component, does regard the world as hostile by definition, and when our few proven friends in the worst of times happened to criticize Israel, the Likud was inclined to react by saying that they too must be "closet antisemites." According to the Likud any problem can be explained. All you need is a good masbir, or "explainer." … And if the best masbir is not successful, it must be because those being addressed are incurable antisemites.
Dina Porat (head of the Institute for Study of Anti-semitism and Racism at Tel-Aviv University) contends that anti-Zionism is anti-semitic because it is discriminatory:
...antisemitism is involved when the belief is articulated that of all the peoples on the globe (including the Palestinians), only the Jews should not have the right to self-determination in a land of their own. Or, to quote noted human rights lawyer David Matas:
One form of antisemitism denies access of Jews to goods and services because they are Jewish. Another form of antisemitism denies the right of the Jewish people to exist as a people because they are Jewish. Antizionists distinguish between the two, claiming the first is antisemitism, but the second is not. To the antizionist, the Jew can exist as an individual as long as Jews do not exist as a people.
Professor Robert S. Wistrich (head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem believes that Anti-Zionism is not inherently anti-Semitic and
that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are two distinct ideologies that over time (especially since 1948) have tended to converge, generally without undergoing a full merger.
He argues that much contemporary anti-Zionism, particularly forms that compare Zionism and Jews with Hitler and the Third Reich, has become a form of antisemitism:
Anti-Zionism has become the most dangerous and effective form of anti-Semitism in our time, through its systematic delegitimization, defamation, and demonization of Israel. Although not a priori anti-Semitic, the calls to dismantle the Jewish state, whether they come from Muslims, the Left, or the radical Right, increasingly rely on an anti-Semitic stereotypization of classic themes, such as the manipulative "Jewish lobby," the Jewish/Zionist "world conspiracy," and Jewish/Israeli "warmongers."
In July 2001, the Simon Wiesenthal Center reported that during a visit there, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer stated that "anti-Zionism inevitably leads to antisemitism."
Former Soviet dissident and Israeli Minister, Natan Sharansky has suggested a "3D Test of Anti-Semitism: Demonization, Double Standards, Delegitimization"
Brian Klug has argued that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are distinct concepts:
There is a long and ignoble history of "Zionist" being used as a code word for "Jew," as when Communist Poland carried out "anti-Zionist" purges in 1968, expelling thousands of Jews from the country, or when the extreme right today uses the acronym ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government) to refer to the US government. Moreover, the Zionist movement arose as a reaction to the persecution of Jews. Since anti-Zionism is the opposite of Zionism, and since Zionism is a form of opposition to anti-Semitism, it seems to follow that an anti-Zionist must be an anti-Semite.
Nonetheless, the inference is invalid. To argue that hostility to Israel and hostility to Jews are one and the same thing is to conflate the Jewish state with the Jewish people. In fact, Israel is one thing, Jewry another. Accordingly, anti-Zionism is one thing, anti-Semitism another. They are separate. To say they are separate is not to say that they are never connected. But they are independent variables that can be connected in different ways.
European Jews for a Just Peace, an association of Western European Jewish peace organisations, are more forthright in rejecting the association of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism:
Legitimate criticism of Israel, based on its policies against the Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as well as inside Israel cannot be called anti-Semitic.
Such an accusation deliberately mis-uses the term, aimed at awakening fear of anti-Semitism, rather than diminishing it. It would represent the silencing of freedom of speech.
Debates over a "Jewish" state
Most Orthodox religious groups have come to accept the State of Israel, even if they have not adopted "Zionist" ideology. The World Agudath Israel party (founded in Poland) has at times participated in Israeli government coalitions. The main exception are the Satmar Hasidim, which has fewer than 130,000 adherents world wide. Even more strongly opposed to Zionism is the small Haredi Jewish organization known as Neturei Karta., which has less than 5,000 members, almost all of whom live in Israel and Palestine. According to The Guardian, "[e]ven among Charedi, or ultra-Orthodox circles, the Neturei Karta are regarded as a wild fringe". )
Noam Chomsky has reported a change in the boundaries of what are considered Zionist and anti-Zionist views. In 1947, in his youth, Chomsky's support for a socialist binational state, in conjunction with his opposition to any semblance of a theocratic system of governance in Israel, was at the time considered well within the mainstream of secular Zionism; today, it lands him solidly in the anti-Zionist camp. Modern American groups such as J Street are taken as evidence of an "anomalous pattern of internal defection" created as a result of anti-Zionism.
Alvin H. Rosenfeld in his much discussed essay, Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism, , claims that a "number of Jews, through their speaking and writing, are feeding a rise in virulent antisemitism by questioning whether Israel should even exist." :Rosenfeld general claims are:
- “At a time when the de-legitimization and, ultimately, the eradication of Israel is a goal being voiced with mounting fervor by the enemies of the Jewish state, it is more than disheartening to see Jews themselves adding to the vilification. That some do so in the name of Judaism itself makes the nature of their assault all the more grotesque.”
- "Their contributions to what’s becoming normative discourse are toxic. They’re helping to make [anti-Semitic] views about the Jewish state respectable - for example, that it’s a Nazi-like state, comparable to South African apartheid; that it engages in ethnic cleansing and genocide. These charges are not true and can have the effect of delegitimizing Israel."
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