Antizionism is a modern strain of Jew-hatred

A primer on antizionism: what it is, what it is not, and where history shows us it leads.

What is Jew-hatred?

All forms of Jew-hatred are rooted in the same underlying lie, that Jews represent a moral stain that stands in the way of societal redemption. This can manifest as bigotry towards Jewish individuals as well as hostility towards the Jewish religion, ethnicity, or peoplehood. Because it casts Jews as the obstacle to moral purity, it always leads to the same conclusion: Jews must be purged or eliminated.

Like other bigotries, Jew-hatred doesn’t require conscious hatred. People with Jewish friends, or indeed Jewish people themselves, can still hold or spread ideas that stigmatize Jews without realizing it. Intent doesn’t erase these harmful impacts.

A consistent pattern of Jew-hatred has emerged across history: As one form of Jew-hatred falls out of favor due to social or political change, the language and justification for Jew-hatred adapts. The root hatred stays fixed, but the way it sounds and looks shifts so that your average person doesn’t recognize it as Jew-hatred at all.

Then, its permission structure emerges. This new language of Jew-hatred becomes righteous. It becomes virtuous and just. It becomes your ticket into the “right” circles. It becomes your refrain to prove your moral worth.

How does antizionism fit in?

Today, we use the term “antisemitism” to broadly refer to Jew-hatred. This obscures the fact that antisemitism itself was a re-branding of an older form of Jew-hatred, so called “anti-Judaism.” This ideology of Jew-hatred was marked by lies about the Jewish religion — Jews killed Jesus, Jews slaughter Christian children for matzah (“blood libel”), Talmud study is a satanic ritual.

Antisemitism repudiated the old, crass hatred for Jewish religion and saw itself as an enlightened, scientific system. Antisemites merely found the Jewish “race” distasteful for civilized society — not a hatred at all. This rebranding contributed to its rise and helped it spread without robust condemnation until it was far too late. We now firmly and unapologetically recognize antisemitism as an unacceptable bigotry.

Antizionism emerged in the 20th century as a hatred of Jewish peoplehood or national identity. Its architects explicitly distanced themselves from racial antisemitism, as do many of its proudest adherents.

It remains largely unrecognized as a distinct form of Jew-hatred, even as antizionist societies stigmatize their Jews, harass and purge them, and attack and murder them.

Poles have never come out against Jews “because they are Jews,” but because Jews are dirty, greedy, mendacious, because they wear earlocks, speak jargon, do not want to assimilate, and also because they do assimilate, cease using their jargon, are nattily dressed, and want to be regarded as Poles.
Because they lack culture and because they are overly cultured.
Because they are superstitious, backward and ignorant, and because they are damnably capable, progressive, and ambitious.
Because they have long, hooked noses, and because it is sometimes difficult to distinguish them from "pure Poles."
Because they crucified Christ and practice ritual murder and pore over the Talmud, and because they disdain their own religion and are atheists.
Because they look wretched and sickly, and because they are tough and have their own fighting units and are full of chutzpah.
Because they are bankers and capitalists and because they are Communists and agitators.
But in no case because they are Jews.
- Konstantyn Jelenski in the Parisian journal Kultura, May 1968 following the Polish antizionist purges

Antizionist politicians are rising in power across the west on all sides of the political aisle. The movement is gaining institutional power on top of its cultural power.

The time to expose it is now, before its societal takeover is complete.

Gleeful celebrations of October 7th as righteous resistance. Synagogues and Jewish schools attacked and vandalized.

Glorification of a global intifada and attacks on Jewish communities around the world.

Jews hounded out of social spaces and professional societies, branded “baby killers” and “genocide supporters” regardless of their politics or opinions.

Assailants proclaiming “Free Palestine!” before stabbing and murdering Jews in the streets.

Locations for Jewish events withheld from the public, with an ever-increasing number of security guards needed to gather safely.

Jews harassed and targeted for wearing a kippah or speaking Hebrew, or showing any public signs of being Jews.

A network of NGOs and media institutions that systematically suppresses any information which humanizes Israelis; that discriminates against their Jewish employees; and that amplifies Hamas sources and propaganda.

This is the face of antizionism.

Antizionism is not…

Criticism or disagreement with a government’s policies is a normal, healthy way to engage with democracies. But, the key with criticism is that it is offered with an intent to improve a current status quo, and the key to disagreement with policies is that those policies have to be real.
Antizionism does none of these things. Advocacy to eliminate a country or obsessive hyperfixation rooted in double standard are not criticism. Condemning non-existent or distorted versions of policies is not criticism. Historical revisionism is not criticism.
Systemic antizionism acts directly against Palestinian safety and self-determination. Antizionism is a zero-sum ideology that opposes peaceful coexistence and has led to repeated rejections of offers of statehood from 1937 to 2008. Antizionism produces endless wars, death, and displacement for Palestinians. It has forced Palestinians into permanent refugee status and relegated them to second-class citizenship (if they are even granted national status) across Arab countries.
A peaceful coexistence for both Israelis and Palestinians, and indeed all Middle East peoples, is possible in a future free of antizionism.
In the sense that antisemitism is Jew-hatred, it is true that antizionism is indeed antisemitism. But, we prefer to refer to antizionism as a distinct phenomenon for a few reasons:
First, antisemitism is indelibly linked with Nazis and right-wing fascism. When we call antizionism by the term antisemitism, our audience cannot hear us. Indeed, antizionists understand themselves as proudly anti-racist and anti-fascist.
Second, using the same label masks the process that allows antizionism (and new forms of Jew-hatred in general) to thrive. Antizionism intentionally distances itself from antisemitism and derives its moral fiber from opposition to right-wing fascist Nazism.
Third, with precise terminology, we can help others see that antizionism itself is problematic, on its own terms. Properly treating antizionism as Jew-hatred without relying on calling it antisemitism is empowering. Antizionism is dangerous not because it is antisemitism, but because it is antizionism. Calling them antisemitic does not help them re-assess their antizionist behaviors.
Antizionism touts its wins not by how many Palestinian rights are secured, but by how many Zionists or Israelis — including Israeli Arabs — lose rights.
Antizionism justifies and celebrates rape, lynching, slaughter, and attacks on Jews and their allies around the globe, all in the name of “freeing Palestine.”
Antizionism ignores or derides Palestinians for advocating against their theocratic authoritarian leaders. Antizionism either denies or approves of torture and murder of Palestinian civilians by their leadership for the alleged crimes of “collaborating with Israel.”
Antizionism violently rejects dialogue and dissent, and purges anyone who does not repeat its libels.
Modern political Zionism emerged as a secular ideology, complementary to the age-old longing that flows through all diasporic Jewish communities to return home to Zion. At a time when Jews were stateless and trying to figure out the safest path forward, many opinions on Zionism emerged within Jewish communities.
Some orthodox Jewish communities have remained staunchly opposed to Zionism on the very basis of its secular nature. They are not opposed to Jewish return and sovereignty in our homeland, just that a messiah is not leading the way.
Before 1948, some more secular Jewish communities opposed Zionism on the basis that they should instead ensure their safety where they lived by becoming the best citizens they could be. The Holocaust and Soviet persecution devastatingly showed that in spite of best efforts, safety was no guarantee. By the time Israel was founded, most of these Jews were either dead, had fled to America, or ultimately sought refuge in Israel. Nearly all had abandoned their anti-Zionism.

Antizionism is what antizionism does

When we evaluate a social movement, we ask: what are its outcomes? In every society where antizionism has been institutionalized, it has decimated safe and open Jewish life.

History has arrived on our doorstep. The danger is escalating rapidly, and we know where it leads. It’s time to heed history’s warnings and expose antizionism now.

The Bolshevik revolution promised liberation but delivered a new form of Jewish destruction dressed in revolutionary language. In a cynical use of token Jewish identity to launder institutionalized hatred, the Yevsektsiya (Jewish Sections of the Communist Party) was created in 1918. Staffed by antizionist Jewish members of the Bund, they were tasked with dismantling Jewish institutions.

Throughout the 1920s, they held a leading role in the Soviet campaign to purge Jewish life. They raided Zionist associations, arrested their leaders, closed Hebrew schools, shut down synagogues, and staged mock trials of Judaism on the High Holy Days. In the end, most Yevsektsiya leaders ended up shot, imprisoned, or dead in labor camps once Stalin no longer needed them.

1920s Soviet Russia

In 1968, antisemitism was expressly illegal in Poland, as part of its defining post-war identity. Even so, Poland's communist government used "anti-Zionism" as the legal permission structure to expel its own Jewish citizens. When student protests threatened the regime, officials deflected by launching a nationwide purge of "Zionists" — which meant Jews, regardless of their actual views on Israel. Indeed, the few Jews who still lived in Poland in 1968 by and large felt no particular attachment to Israel or Zionism, but self-defined as Poles to the core.

Jewish professors, journalists, diplomats, and party members were fired, publicly shamed, and forced to sign humiliating renunciations of Zionism no matter their political views. Between 13,000 and 20,000 Jews were expelled from Poland within two years, their belongings repossessed by the state as they fled impoverished.

1968 Poland Antizionist Purges

Expulsion of SWANA Jewish communities

Thriving SWANA Jewish communities were wiped out in the decades following Israel's founding. These communities were embedded across the SWANA region for millennia, long before Islam, long before the Arab conquests, and in many cases long before Christianity.

Following Israel’s founding in 1948, antizionist ideology in countries ranging from Morocco to Yemen to Iraq drove state-sponsored violence, legal dispossession, and mob terror that made Jewish life impossible. Jews with no relationship to Israel were stripped of citizenship, barred from professions, had their property confiscated, and were subjected to pogroms framed explicitly as resistance to "Zionism." Approximately 850,000 Jews fled antizionist persecution or were expelled by antizionist governments throughout this ethnic cleansing campaign.

After Israel's stunning defeat of Soviet-armed Arab states in 1967, the USSR transformed antizionism from propaganda into full state doctrine. The KGB launched Operation SIG to flood the Islamic world with materials equating Zionism with Nazism. So-called “Zionologists” produced academic-sounding texts repackaging centuries-old antisemitic conspiracy theories in Marxist vocabulary. Soviet Jews were subjected to university quotas, occupational ceilings, criminalized Hebrew instruction, and the imprisonment of "refuseniks" who dared apply to emigrate.

For example, the Night of the Murdered Poets in 1952 saw the Soviet Union's leading Yiddish writers secretly executed after years of imprisonment. UN Resolution 3379, declaring Zionism a form of racism, was the crowning achievement of this campaign — Soviet engineering that stamped antizionism with international legitimacy. Natan Sharansky, who lived through it, put it plainly: “in Russia, there was no difference between antisemitism and antizionism in terms of what it did to Jews.”

1960s-1980s Soviet Russia

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