Once again: why anti-Zionism is antisemitism

Of. course I’ll get raked for putting up this post, but I’m frankly sick of people denigrating others as “Zionists”, which in most cases is simply a euphemism for “people who are pro-Israel” or even “Jews”, so that “anti-Zionist” becomes a euphemism for “anti-Israel” or “antisemitic”. My contention, echoed by Natasha Hausdorff and Douglas Murray in a fairly recent Munk debate, is that, at present, “anti-Zionism is antisemitism”.

Why do I say this? Well, look at the definitions of “Zionism” and “anti-Zionism” in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), my touchstone for language.

Here’s anti-Zionism in the OED:

So you have to look up “Zionism,” and when you do, you get this:

Note that “anti-Zionism” does not mean “opposition to some of Israel’s policies” or “opposition to Netanyahu”. Rather, it means “opposition to the sovereignty of Israel and the right of the state to exist and defend itself against attacks.” (You might add “the right of the state to exist as, in part, a place for Judaism to thrive”,: but then all the Muslim nations of the Middle East are also places for Islam to thrive. In fact, Christianity and Judaism are not tolerated in most Muslim states, which, unlike Israel, criminalize the practice of other faiths. Note too the existence of official names like “The Islamic Republic of Iran” and “The Islamic Republic of Pakistan”.) There are a gazillion states in the Middle East where Islam is the official religion and other religions aren’t tolerated.

But I digress. Israel was established as a sovereign state by the United Nations in 1948.  Before that, Palestinians were offered their own state but rejected it, and have rejected it nearly a half-dozen times since. As Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf argue in a 2020 book, The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, the Palestinians don’t want a two-state solution. Rather, they want a one-state solution: a single state in which all descendants of Palestinians who left Israel in 1948 would be allowed to return to the present country of Israel, which would then become a Palestinian state. (The “right of return,” which is unique to Palestinians among all who fled their land in the past, is their key demand that they know, if exercised, would lead to the disappearance of Israel. Read the book, a meticulous and scholarly history of this neglected concept.)

A “Zionist,” then, is someone who believes that Israel, now established, should be allowed to remain a sovereign state on territory considered the Jewish homeland but also the homeland of the Arabs who are Israeli citizens.  As Natasha Hausdorff argues below, the state of Israel is a fait accompli. To argue against its existence now is to argue that its Jews should either be expelled or—more likely if the “right of return is exercised”—killed.

Since other groups have sovereign states, too, so singling out the Jewish people as the only group undeserving of an established sovereign state in their ancestral land is anti-Semitic because it’s discriminatory. Remember that Israel is to a large extent a secular state in which there is freedom of religion: about 20% of its inhabitants are Arab Muslims, who have full rights as citizens. 

If Netanyahu disappears as Israel’s Prime Minister, as I hope he will, it’s certain that anti-Zionism will remain, for it is really opposition to Israel, not Israel’s politics.

The video below eloquently expresses the equivalence of anti-Zionism and antisemitism. In this Munk debate, the claim that they are equivalent did indeed “win”, changing the minds of the audience more towards equivalence than to non-equivalence. Have a listen to Hausdorff’s short but telling argument:

See also the discussion of this issue by the World Jewish Congress.

I have lost friends, and will probably lose more, for being sympathetic to Israel and its right to exist. (Only a handful of American Jews—around 7%—say they are “anti-Zionist”, though there is disagreement about the term’s meaning.). One friend, an excellent scientist with whom I had a good relationship, told me he wanted to unsubscribe to this website because of my views on Israel. (I don’t have the ability to unsubscribe people.) Another, an old paramour whom I still care about, told me she doubted we could get along because of “the Israel thing.” And of course Maarten Boudry and I were disinvited to a biology discussion at the University of Amsterdam because of “our views on Israel,” which are simply that it has a right to exist and defend itself when attacked.

I’m not beefing here, as I regret nothing I’ve said. I just want to reiterate the point once again that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, for it is the view that Israel should not exist and should be eliminated. The sentiment will persist regardless of what Israel does or who is Prime Minister.