Anti-Zionism

Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—a region partly coinciding with the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way.

Before World War II, opposition to Zionism was common among Jewish communities. Secular critics viewed Zionism as a form of nationalism inconsistent with Enlightenment universalism, while some Orthodox groups opposed it on theological grounds, regarding the establishment of a Jewish state as contingent upon the arrival of the Messiah. Support for Zionism increased during the 1930s as conditions for Jews rapidly deteriorated in Europe due to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and Zionism began to prevail over opposition to it in the Jewish diaspora. With the Second World War, the sheer scale of the Holocaust was felt and support for Zionism increased dramatically.

After the establishment of the State of Israel in the 1948 Palestine war, anti-Zionism shifted from opposition to the creation of a Jewish state to opposition to Israel's existence, with many postwar movements advocating its replacement by an alternative political entity. Most Jewish anti-Zionist movements disintegrated or transformed into pro-Zionist organizations, though some, including the American Council for Judaism, continued to oppose the ideology. Outside the Jewish community, opposition to Zionism developed primarily among Arab populations, particularly Palestinians, after the mass displacement of Palestinian Arabs during the 1948 war (the Nakba), which many Palestinians and scholars consider a form of colonial dispossession.

Anti-Zionism comes in various forms. Some anti-Zionists seek to replace Israel and its occupied territories with a single state that would putatively give Jews and Palestinians equal rights. These anti-Zionists have argued that a binational state would still realize Jewish self-determination, as self-determination need not imply a separate state. Some challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel. Some are anti-Zionist for religious reasons, such as Haredi Jews, and others seek instead the oppression or ethnic cleansing of Israeli Jews, although this position was historically rare in Western countries. The relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is debated, with some academics and organizations rejecting the linkage as unfounded and a form of weaponization of antisemitism used to stifle criticism of Israel and its policies, including the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of the Gaza Strip, while others, particularly supporters of Zionism, argue that anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic or new antisemitism.