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Anti-Zionism

Opposition to the existence of a Jewish state. Widely debated for where it shades into antisemitism, a line the IHRA definition tries to draw.

Etymology and scope

Section titled “Etymology and scope”

“Zionism” (Hebrew: ציונות, Tzionut, from Tzion, Zion, one of the ancient names for Jerusalem) was coined in 1890 by the Austrian writer Nathan Birnbaum and adopted as a movement name by Theodor Herzl at the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897. It denotes the belief that the Jewish people, like other peoples, have a right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. “Anti-Zionism,” by extension, denotes opposition to that project, either to its founding in 1948 or to Israel’s continued existence today. The term is distinct from criticism of a specific Israeli government, policy, or war, which is ordinary political speech and not anti-Zionism at all. See Judaism vs. Zionism and Jew, Israeli, Zionist for the distinctions the term is routinely used to blur.

History of the term’s use

Section titled “History of the term’s use”

Organized anti-Zionism predates the state itself: some ultra-Orthodox factions (see Neturei Karta) opposed a secular Jewish state on theological grounds before 1948, a position still held by a small minority today. The term took on a different character during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union and its allies used “anti-Zionism” as an official vocabulary for antisemitic state propaganda while formally banning antisemitism itself. That campaign culminated in UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 (1975), which declared “Zionism is a form of racism,” a resolution the General Assembly revoked in 1991 by Resolution 46/86 after the Soviet collapse. The reversal is a matter of UN record. The pattern the USSR pioneered, that hostility to Jews as Jews could be laundered as hostility to Zionism, is the throughline of what scholars now call new antisemitism.

Where it becomes antisemitism, and where it doesn’t

Section titled “Where it becomes antisemitism, and where it doesn’t”

Not all anti-Zionism is antisemitic. A Jewish or Palestinian critic who argues for a single binational state, or a religious anti-Zionist who objects to Jewish sovereignty on theological grounds, is taking a political or theological position that can be argued with on its merits. The IHRA working definition, adopted by dozens of governments, gives concrete tests: denying Jews alone the right to self-determination, applying double standards not demanded of any other nation, or using classic antisemitic tropes (blood libel, conspiracy, dual loyalty) dressed up as criticism of Israel. Natan Sharansky’s earlier “3D test,” delegitimization, demonization, double standards, covers similar ground. See Is anti-Zionism antisemitism? for the full argument and Anti-Zionism vs. antisemitism for the working distinction.

Misuse in propaganda today

Section titled “Misuse in propaganda today”

The charge of antisemitism against anti-Zionists is itself sometimes deflected by what is called the Livingstone formulation: accusing the critic of “weaponizing antisemitism” to silence legitimate speech, a move named for former London mayor Ken Livingstone. A related tactic is the self-hating Jew as a Jew move, using a Jewish anti-Zionist’s identity to certify the position as beyond reproach regardless of its content. Academics such as Judith Butler, Joseph Massad, and Richard Falk have each drawn scrutiny for anti-Zionist statements that critics and, in Falk’s case, the UN itself, judged to have crossed into classic antisemitic territory rather than policy critique. The word “Zionist” is also used online as a slur standing in for “Jew,” a usage the IHRA definition treats as a textbook example of the line being crossed.

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Sources

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