Here I am writing about Jews and words again, but I can’t get this issue resolved in my mind. I wrote about it before, and I still can’t find a construal of “anti-Zionism” that is not equivalent to “antisemitism”? I ask because people who throw the term “anti-Zionist” around, like Zohran Mamdani, adamantly deny that they mean “antisemite.” So that makes it okay for them to tar people as “Zionists” and deny that they mean “Jews.” Or to say that “anti-Zionism is not the same as antisemitism”.
I figure it’s best to look at Jewish interpretations of the words, and the Jewish Center for Justice (JCJ) has a definition that’s similar to that of many Jewish organizations, as well as to the (non-Jew-written) definition in the Oxford English Dictionary. Here’s the JCJ definition:
Today, supporting Zionism means promoting the continued existence of a Jewish state and upholding the right of Jews to live freely in their historic homeland.
As I’ve said before, denying that this is antisemitism makes no sense, for the Jewish sovereign state is already in existence and if you don’t support Zionism then you are denying what already exists—saying, in effect, that the UN made a mistake. You are implicitly arguing that Israel should no longer exist. Yes, there are some Jews, including ultra-Orthodox ones, who don’t think Israel should exist, and you can say they’re anti-Zionist and not antisemitic, but I’d say these people are confused or addled by faith.
As for those who say “anti-Zionists” are simply those who think that Palestinians should have the vaunted “right of return”, that ship too has already sailed. For if that right were exercised as Palestinians mean it, there would be a “one-state solution” in which Jews would eventually either be killed or expelled. That is also antisemitism.
Zionism as a political movement came to an end in 1948, as Israel now exists. This is why I claim that anybody who throws around the term “Zionista” usually just means “Jews.”
Here’s what Grok said in answer to my question, “How many Jews are anti-Zionist: that is, don’t believe the state of Israel should exist?”
A small minority—typically in the low single digits to around 7% in major diaspora surveys, and near zero among Israeli Jews—with the absolute number in the low hundreds of thousands at most out of a global Jewish population of roughly 15.8 million.
Anti-Zionism here is defined (as in the query) as rejecting the idea that the State of Israel should exist, particularly as a Jewish state. Polling distinguishes this from criticism of Israeli governments/policies, emotional distance, or reluctance to use the “Zionist” label (which has become loaded for many). Self-identification as “anti-Zionist” and direct questions on Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish/democratic state track closely.
Quarrel with any policy you want held by Israel (save the right to exist and defend itself), and beef all you want about Netanyahu (you can join me in that). But doing those things is not antisemitism. For sure anyone who said that Pakistanis or Iranians had no right to live in their countries beginning with “The Islamic Republic of. . . ” would be called “Islamophobes.” And I’ve never heard that.
It’s funny: I’ve never heard anyone say that those who say that neither “The Islamic Republic of Iran” not “The Islamic Republic of Pakistan” have a right to exist are not called “Islamophobes.”
It seems to me that anti-Zionism is predicated on the view that the establishment and continued existence of Israel are illegitimate and that, therefore, Israel should not exist. Ultraorthodox anti-Zionists maintain that Israel can only be established by the Divine and therefore the human establishment is illegitimate.
I already dealt with that in my post, and I think you made this comment on an earlier post.
I think anti-zionism actually has a broader reach than being merely anti-semitic (against the Jews). I’m not jewish, but I certainly believe it is right for Israel to continue as a homeland for the Jews. Anybody that dislikes me for holding this position is anti-zionist, but by extension also anti-semitic.
However, the semantics beg a question. Is anti-zionism antisemitic simply because the outcome of “disappearing” Israel is bad for Jews? It is surely impossible a finer homeland could be found or defined by the Jews, as by right and by faith no other land would do…
By the way, for clarity I recommend correcting a typo. You say, >>As for those who say “Zionists” are simply those who think that Palestinians should have the vaunted “right of return”, that ship too has already sailed.<< It should read, “As for those who say Anti-zionists are simply…” (Let’s not confuse the LLM’s as they continue to harvest the writings on the internet).
Yes, if Israel were to disappear by driving out or killing Israelis, then that would be bad for the Jews, and predictably so.
Obviously those denouncing “Zionism” are evading plain speaking about their true target. It provides plausible deniability: “Oh I don’t hate Jews, I’m not an anti-semite … I just say it is wrong for them to colonize the Palestinian homeland.” added on, usually, “…and commit genocide on the Palestinians.”
There is a much larger and more devastating catastrophe of words … “The Religious State,” AKA theocracy.
We should be horrified for the toleration for “A Muslim State, A Hindi State, A Jewish State.”
Until that concept is killed, misery in the world.
I suspect it might have to do with how people interpret Zionism. Many may not be aware of the formal definition. A 2024 survey of 588 Canadian Jews produced the following result: “94% support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, but only 51% identify as Zionists.” Perhaps non-Jews would be even more likely to not equate Zionism with support for a Jewish state? Unclear how people are defining Zionism, but clearly not OED. Nonetheless, certainly some people use anti-Zionism to disguise antisemitism.
Curious whether people had addressed this issue. Turns out they have, for example at the following site. Examples of different senses of Zionism and summarizes results of surveys of Jewish communities in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, along with links to studies. As in the Canadian survey, much higher levels of support for Israel being a Jewish state than for describing themselves as Zionists.
https://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org/what-is-zionism-it-depends-on-who-you-ask/
“I can’t be antisemitic: I have nothing against Jews individually, I only hate them by the country.”
Howard Jacobson writing about the delusion discredited by Jake Wallis Simons in his book, “Israelophobia”.
It says all I think anyone needs to know about the distinction without a difference between antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Some people oppose the existence of the State of Israel while at the same time claiming to harbor no animus toward Jews. But everything that follows from opposition to the existence of the (existing) State of Israel would demand restrictions up to and including ending Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish ancestral homeland. It would deny Israeli Jews the right to self-determination. Denying the Jews their right to self-determination is surely antisemitic. (No one claiming to love the Irish would demand an end to Irish sovereignty and self-determination in Ireland. Doing do would surely be anti-Irish.)
Those who claim they are “only” anti-Zionist but not antisemitic are either deceiving themselves or are using the term as a smokescreen for what they really mean.
There’s a difference though with the Irish : they didn’t leave (or were driven out of) their land. They occupied it without discontinuity and “sovereignity” for a very long time. They need not make any claims to reclaim it, or uphold it.
Israel’s founding might’ve been desirable, but was there concrete basis for it to happen beyond “we as Jews are special, give us back our sacred land” ? Because in 1948, I’m sure there were many other people on the planet who would’ve been glad to reclaim lands they lost centuries ago. History had decided, through the Romans, what to do with Jews.
We have a version of this in Canada, the crowd that regards “so called Canada” as an illegitimate nation that should not exist and, funny enough, just so happens to have a vision for society which would be some version of a new racial hierarchy with indigenous peoples on top and everyone else below (assuming we’re allowed to stay). Presumably these folks (commonly academics describing themselves as “settlers” in squishy fields of fashionable nonsense) think they will occupy a position a power to help guide and shape the coming utopia.
Are the two statements, (1) regarding Canada as illegitimate and in need of dismantling and (2) wanting a new racial hierarchy, the same? Well, no. But they’re so strongly correlated that acting like the two are completely separate beasts is silly. Empirically, where you see (1), you find (2) as well.
I don’t know much about the First Nations in Canada, but I do know something about the Native Americans in the western US. And the idiots who proclaim that those tribes lived in a tearful utopia before the arrival of the White folks are as ignorant as the come. They should know something about the wars between the tribes before the arrival of any Europeans, as well as the practices within the tribes. These same people who hold White Americans as carrying eternal guilt for Black slavery ignore the fact that slavery was common in Native society—and no wars were fought to put an end to that slavery.
Of course they’re ignorant. But when has that ever stopped anyone?
I guess I’m getting old and cynical.
Thank you, Frau. It’s been a tough evening and I needed to smile!
Anti-Zionists are against the idea of self-determination for the Jewish People; they deny that the Jews are a people, as opposed to a religion. But even according to the most religious Jewish definitions of Judaism, we were a people before we were a religion. And our connection to the land between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea is thousands of years old, with plenty of historical and archeological evidence backing that up. that is why anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism: removing Zionism from Judaism is revisionism—changing the very idea of Judaism.
Full disclosure: some of my best friends are Jewish.
I think that your raising the idea of Jewish people vs Jewish religion is important. I was reading through the comments before raising that point and that the several millenia of persecution have been against the Jewish people; not going to shul saved nobody I expect in Europe in the 40’s. Having a defensible refuge for the Jewish people so that they do not have to rely on others or suffer due to the latest pols’ whims is what Zionism is about. Whether a Hasid or secular, your jewish tuchus will be in trouble someday unless you live in a jewish state.
The lesson is, I guess, that if you’re tarring somebody with the label “Zionist”, or proclaiming that you’re an “anti-Zionist”, you should define your terms.
Perhaps.
I wonder if a more direct test is to ask “On 8 October, what should Israel have done?” Waffling on behalf of Hamas; equating Hamas with IDF; we shouldn’t act like things started on 7 October; invocation of “genocide” or “apartheid” or “open air concentration camps;” singling out Israeli military response as uniquely bad; etc etc; all of those point to a functional antisemitism no matter the clothes it’s draped up in.
There’s the version that goes something like “initially Israel had the right to respond, but then the response was so brutal and (fill in all of the adjectives here we see from the left side of American politics)..” that often (but not always) is just the first version but more incoherently expressed. A military response is theoretically justified until it actually happens in which case it’s the worst thing in the history of human conflict, scrutiny is hopelessly asymmetrically applied, etc.
Some time ago I wrote the below-inked blog post “Is Antizionism Antisemitic?” I write that, in my opinion, anti-Zionism is usually, but not always, antisemitic. There are good-faith exceptions where it isn’t, and the post spells out these cases.
https://davidcycleback.substack.com/p/is-anti-zionism-antisemitic-15f
I hope you understand that a lot of people, myself included, have no animus to Jews and are ok with Israel existing, but are increasingly turned off by Israeli policies toward Gaza, expanding settlements there and in the West Bank, and Lebanon, all driven by Netanyahu and the hard right who refuse a two-state solution and believe that they have the right to seize more and more land.
I understand the need to decimate Hamas and other terrorist groups funded by Iran, but it’s difficult to stomach the total structural annihilation of Gaza. It will not lead to peace, unless Israel is prepared to kill the entire Gazan population, it will just continue to generate more terrorists.
This, I think, is what most people think of as anti Zionism, not the elimination of Israel but opposition to its most aggressive policies. It’s easy to find ignorant people who side with Hamas without understanding who they are, and it’s easy to paint all opposition to Israeli policies as being pro Hamas, but I don’t think that’s where most people are. We’re just sick of the whole thing. And Israel has to start acknowledging that it is creating a huge PR problem, which is why those of you here increasingly find the need to defend Israel. In the US at least, that’s not going well.
To Phil L.
I offer two points for us to consider. What is Israel to do? And, What is Israel to do?
You write that Israel refuses a two-state solution. No! Israel agreed to two-state solution beginning in 1947 and many times since. The Arabs always rejected that, proclaiming very clearly that they intend the destruction of Israel.
We worry that Israel could kill the entire Gaza population. In fact, that population has grown! How about Hamas and way too many Gazans want to kill the entire Israeli population? (Read the Hamas charter.)
I too don’t want to “stomach” what Israel has to do. But — What is Israel to do?
Actually well before 1947, Jews were accepting and Arabs were rejecting two-states of various forms. The Jewish Agency even floated its own two-state solution.
You say you are sick of the whole thing. I am too, but for me the whole thing is Islam and I am sick to death of that barbaric supremacist ideology and its terrorist aggressions against Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, and any and all other infidels. I am frankly surprised more people don’t feel that way, but then again the Jews have long been a convenient target for scapegoating and blame.
Yes, Islam, ‘that Barbaric supremacist ideology’ is invading the West – raping and murdering.
Israel and the Jews are the bastion against this invasion and
protection of western ideology. Many thanks to them.
“Zionist” has become a smear just like MAGA, antivaxxer, and even Woke have all become lazy smears. Earlier generations had Commie and Pinko and Capitalist as their shortcuts past thinking. It allows one to express dissatisfaction with a set of policies and positions—oftentimes caricatured or imagined ones—and tout that “I am not one of them.”
It’s not that the world lacks Zionists or antivaxxers, or that the words are always inappropriately used, but those who spit out the words as epithets often take the most extreme examples of the opposing tribe and hold them up as illustrative of the whole.
That is why I seldom call anyone an anti-Zionist unless they embrace the term or advocate for the reversal of 1948. If they embrace, then I prod to see whether they are simply posing against a caricatured and historically ignorant view of Zionism. If they are fully aware that what they are rejecting is the present existence of Israel, I have no qualms tarring them as antisemites.
Wait… is it possible that some people simply oppose the establishment of “ethnostates” favoring specific ethnicities, as in Germany for the Germans, China for the Han or some such? Could such persons then, while having no animosity toward Jews or any other ethnicity, still perceive Zionism as support for yet another of the sort of “ethnostate” they oppose?
All this is outside my own realm, but I can’t help but wonder whether it largely boils down to a matter of semantics.
And history.
O geez, the damned history.
From Eastern waters to the Yellow Sea, South Korea will be free? Perhaps we should oppose the existence of Japan, as well? Each is far more homogeneous than Israel. Who would you propose should live in those existing territories? Or are you musing rather than presenting a position in the form of questions?
Musing here. I’m a US citizen. No ethnostate here. Trying to figure out whether persons opposed to “ethnostates” must by definition also be persons opposed to “ethnicities,” see. The matter does seem to generate a lot of heat, if not overmuch light.
You might have a point if the same people complaining about Israel complained equally about the ethnostates of the Arab League. Somehow those 22 ethnostates are perfectly acceptable while Israel is not.
“It’s funny: I’ve never heard anyone say that those who say that neither “The Islamic Republic of Iran” not “The Islamic Republic of Pakistan” have a right to exist are not called “Islamophobes.””
Exactly. It took me a while to come to the conclusion that anti-zionism is anti-semitism until I realised it boils down to one question : why are Jews the only people in the world – and the most persecuted – forbidden to live in their ancestral homeland?
Here’s a good essay justifying Zionism :
https://honestreporting.com/jewish-indigeneity-is-an-anthropological-reality/
The definition of terms is the critical issue. Of course words change meaning over time. But the number of people redefining Anti-zionism to mean whatever they say it means is a familiar ploy in these recent decades. It is dishonest.
The term antisemitism was coined by Wilhelm Marr, who founded the League of Antisemites in 1879, to legitimize bigotry toward Jews by distinguishing race-based bigotry against Jews from bigotry based on religion, which was no longer considered acceptable at the time. Once antisemitism itself became unacceptable and shameful, a new term was invented: antizionism, now legitimizing bigotry toward Jews based on nationhood. Same bigotry, new terms. See: https://nayalekht.substack.com/
I think you keep conflating the continued existence of Israel and the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state, and it’s really important not to.
I’m one of the 7% (if that number is accurate) of Jews who describe myself as antizionist.
I believe that every state should be a state for all its people – the only legitimate basis for statehood is geography, not ethnicity. Israel has a moral obligation to be the nation state of the Israeli people, including non-Jewish Israelis and not including Jewish non-Israelis like me.
I believe that every Jew has the same right to self-determination as everyone else – that is, full equal citizenship and democratic rights in the state they are born in. But I do not believe that The Jews as a group have a right to an ethnostate.
I believe that the foundation of Israel was a crime against humanity (I think that https://www.palestineremembered.com/download/Palestinian-Transfer-Chaim-Simons.pdf is invaluable reading here), and should have been prevented, but that it is now too late to undo it without causing too much suffering to be justifiable.
I don’t want to see Israel destroyed by force, but I do want to see it tear up every discriminatory aspect of its laws and culture, and to recognise Zionism as a wicked and shameful chapter of its history that needs to be atoned for, not as a tradition to be continued or honoured. I want it to be a state where those Jews who are currently citizens (but no other Jews) can live securely as equal citizens, but not a Jewish state. I also want it to either abandon all long-term claim to any land outside the Green Line ( dismantling all the settlements immediately and treating that land as held in trust for a Palestinian state, even if it doesn’t allow the formation of one immediately), or (if it chooses to, although I don’t expect it would) to annex everything from the river to the sea and grant full equal citizenship to all the people native to that land, accepting the possibility of a Palestinian majority in the future.
If you use the “motte” definition of zionism – the belief that Israel should continue to exist – then my views technically qualify me as a zionist. And if you use the “bailey” – the belief that Israel should continue to not merely exist but discriminate against non-Jews – then antizionism, at least as I practice it, is not calling for any kind of bloodshed, any more than the anti-apartheid movement was.
(Similarly, I think that Islamic republics should become secular democracies. But I don’t encounter people opposing that, so I don’t waste much thought or ink on it)
Sorry, but I have never said that Israel should privilege Jews over non-Jews, but I do believe that a state was needed where Jews could go post WWII without ear o persecution.
There are some inequalities in Israel, but some are sensible, like not requiring Arab Muslims to serve in the military, though they can if they want to. Others, like exemptng Haredim from the draft, make no sense.
I gather that because ethnicity is the basis for many, many states, you think that hal the countries in the world should be dismantled. Good luck with that. And I am wondering why you do not think a Palestinian state (based on ETHNICITY and RELIGION, is okay, and why that should be delayed.
Exactly. One cannot claim antizionism is simply general opposition to ethnic or religious states when one also claims to support creation of an Arab-Islamic State of Palestine – which would happen if either a two-state or one-state “solution” were adopted.
Are “Palestinians” really an ethnicity unto themselves? I’ve always envisioned them as “Arabs inhabiting the area formerly known as Palestine,” the “Arab” part being the ethnicity and “Palestine” designating a parcel of land. Shows what I know.
True, but doesn’t change the fact that an Arab Palestinian state would still be an Arab ethnostate as well as a Muslim religious one, as are other Arab countries.
If “the foundation of Israel was a crime against humanity” how about the foundations of Turkey or India and Pakistan or even Mexico and America? (In fact, compared to most national foundings, the founding of Israel isn’t close to the top of the list in deaths and atrocities).
In the first half of the 20th-century, after multiple empire collapses and 2 world wars, many millions of people were displaced and had to become refugees, including the 800k or so Jews expelled from Arab countries where they’d lived for centuries. Every other group has gotten on with their lives, made the best of the situation and wouldn’t imagine they have any “right” to homes and lands that have long changed hands. But there is only one group on earth that is made of fourth-generation refugees, that maintains some spurious “right of return” that is a poorly veiled desire to swamp its neighbors and that turns cosmopolitan liberals who usually campaign against borders into believers in the sacredness of blood-and-soil: the “Palestinians”, who were just Ottoman Arabs until they became weaponized in the war against the Jewish state.
The Israel/Palestine fetish is rooted both in the Arab world’s refusal to accept a Jewish state in its ummah and its ability via various allies (esp the Soviets) to stir up the world’s never-too-latent Jew hate in their war to destroy the hated Zionist entity, no matter how many deaths or decades this takes. The Arabs not only have their own sovereign states of Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Lybia etc but this conflict could have been resolved many times, if the Palestinian leaders had ever once been interested in peace: starting with the 1937 Peel Commission to the 1947 UN Partition plan, from Rabin and Clinton in 1995 to Barak and Clinton in 2000 there were full statehood offers on the table, all rejected sans counteroffer (not to mention that Arabs controlled both the WB and Gaza from 1948 to 1967 and there was never any attempt to build a separate Palestinian state).
Also, there are multiple states that prioritize their own people over others and yet preserve the full civil rights of all its citizens, including Israel, the only place in the ME where Arabs have any civil rights. Israel does not discriminate against any of its citizens, but Gazans and WB Arabs are NOT Israeli citizens, they have their own governing orgs, however inept or evil. There is no apartheid, this is just another slander made by the Anti-Zionists in their long campaign to delegitimize Israel, hoping to make it a pariah before dissolving it.
Also, as far as the Green Line, Israel withdrew from Gaza and look how that turned out, and if Israel were to withdraw from the WB, it would be ceding all the high ground over their major population centers, making them sitting ducks for missiles and other attacks. We can’t keep expecting Israel to die for Western abstract beliefs about universalism and human rights (which none of their neighbors recognize) and I’m guessing you would be as eager to live next door to a free and liberated Gaza as you would be to head to some Islamic republics and explain why they “should become secular democracies.” These are all luxury beliefs of wealthy and safe Westerners, who have no experience of existential threats.
There is nothing wrong with a Jewish state, except how unhappy it makes Jew haters and some Jews who don’t like to be publicly affiliated with a Jewish state.
“(Similarly, I think that Islamic republics should become secular democracies. But I don’t encounter people opposing that, so I don’t waste much thought or ink on it)”
Vanishingly few anti-Zionists articulate that view. In fact, Islamic ethnostates are celebrated by the same people who call for the destruction of Israel.
“Is there a construal of “anti-Zionism” that doesn’t mean “antisemitism”?”
Maybe but I’ve never met anyone who could make it successfully. One group of Anti-Israel folks that I’ve listened to try to make intellectual arguments to support their visceral reaction to horrors of conflict and the costs incurred by those they believe to be the victims of that conflict. They’ve identified Israeli’s as folks with Western values, technologies, and economies while the people of Gaza and the West Bank lack much of that modern infrastructure. And many here in the West have been educated to place those in conflict into an oppressor/oppressed model with the side owning modern technologies as the oppressor. The second group of people I’ve listened to, mostly on the news, is just anti-Semitic.
It can be very difficult to use your intellect when you are blinded by emotion and this conflict is emotionally laden even for bystanders. I hope the blindness evident in Western countries doesn’t lead to an even worse tragedy for the Jewish people.
I would distinguish between anti-Zionism defined as rejecting the idea that the State of Israel should exist and anti-Zionism defined as the idea that the State of Israel has no right to exist.
The former makes little practical sense but is technically not antisemitism, since the Jews living in Israel could, in principle, all decide to leave and return to the diaspora. (This is purely hypothetical, of course.)
The latter is a radical form of antisemitism, since in practice it would imply killing or forcibly expelling the Jews living in Israel.
Speaking of rights, I would also point out that a Jewish state existed in Palestine, albeit a very long time ago, whereas an independent Palestinian state never did.
Finally, there is the problem of Palestinians living in the West Bank without the rights that a people should have. Unfortunately, I do not see a solution to this problem. It is a pity that, after winning the war in 1967, Israel did not return the West Bank to Jordan. It is too late for that now.
Just so you know: Israel tried many times to return the WB to Jordan, but as part of a peace agreement that would have required full recognition of Israel’s right to exist. But this was a bridge too far for Jordan. The one Jordanian leader who wanted to make peace, King Abdullah I, was assassinated in 1951 by a Palestinian terrorist, when news leaked out he was considering recognizing Israel. So peace with Jordan would have required the same bravery Sadat exhibited in Egypt, which also ended with him being murdered by Islamist fanatics.
Also, the Arabs has full control of the WB from 1948 to 1967 but there was never talk of establishing an independent Palestinian state, only preparations for another war of extermination.
The Palestinians have never wanted their own state (they’ve rejected every offer), they only want to destroy Israel.
Israel has spent its entire existence at war with multiple enemies who proclaim their desire to drive the Jews into the sea. This is why we are where we are and why the Palestinians are stateless wards of the UN. They are an instrumentalized people deisgned to be a knife stabbed into Israel’s back, with the goal of it eventually bleeding out.
It’s unfortunate yet understandable that Israelis know longer have any interest in the Palestinians and just want to push them as far away as possible. Everyone involved would be much better off if most of the Arabs there were dispersed to the rest of the Arab world (much of Jordan is already mostly Palestinian and half a million live in Lebanon), but the world would never allow this. The Palestinians have become a sacred global cause and crusade, with using them as a stick with which to beat Israel being much more important than the welfare of the actual Palestinian people.
This is an unsolvable conflict because so many people eat off it and its reliable permanence.
This is a really unfortunate labeling that I find myself as a target.
I am thoroughly in favor of a vibrant, democratic multicultural state of Israel; some of my closest friends are Jewish (one whom I had made a trustee in case we deceased before at least one of our children became adult); my mentor with whom I have have 37 years of close friendship is Jewish but does not consider himself as a Zionist. I was outraged and expressed my outrage publicly at Oct 7 atrocity by Hamas. But I am against illegal settling by immigrants in West Bank; I am against the wholesale murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza as a reprisal; I am against the apartheid conditions in the region imposed by the Israeli government; O am against the murderous Iranian regime; I am against Hezbollahs; I am against the ISIL; I am against the radical right in Israel. Why can’t I be a vector of all these elements? Why are you trying to define me in an abhorrent box that is so simplistic that I’ll befits a thinking individual in a complex world?
Sorry, but what happened in Gaza is defense, not reprisal, and the “apartheid conditions” you mention do not exist.
I do appreciate your patronizing remarks, though.
There is no apartheid in Israel. There are over 2 million Arab citizens with full rights and senior positions in government.
Now take a look at the statistics on Jews in the Arab League states. If that doesn’t bother you more, then you have other reasons for being anti-Israel.
The Kurds, whose (for lack of a better word) traditional territory stretches across the borders of a few nations and who have been persecuted by all of them, routinely call out to the international community for a recognized Kurdistan. This would mean taking the established international borders and cutting out a new country.
I would be curious to know how many of the people that proclaim themselves antizionist would also argue that these Kurds should not have their own homeland.
For the record, I am not saying that every ethnic group should have its own territory. For that to be the case, the world would balkanize into a medieval-like map of mush. However, the case of the Kurds seems particularly similar, at least on the surface, to the issue with Israel. A persecuted group with a historical area of land seeks its own nation to guard against further and continued persecution. So if one were to go to an antizionist and ask abut their thoughts on a Kurdistan, would those same people support it, or argue against it?