If apartheid is structural rather than an accidental deviation from Israeli politics; if dispossession, settlement, demographic engineering, unequal rights and the prevention of Palestinian return are enduring features rather than temporary policies; and if Gaza represents an extreme manifestation of a political order in which Palestinian existence can be subordinated to the maintenance of Zionist Jewish political and demographic supremacy, then the ideology through which that order was established and justified must itself be confronted. That ideology is Zionism.
Zionism is a modern political ideology and movement. Judaism is an ancient religion, culture and tradition stretching back thousands of years. The two cannot simply be collapsed into one another. Jewish religious attachment to Palestine is not Zionism. Jewish historical connection to the land is not Zionism. Jewish residence in Palestine is not Zionism. There are Jewish Zionists, Christian Zionists and secular Zionists, just as there are Jewish people who are non-Zionist and anti-Zionist. Zionism must therefore be examined for what it is: a political project.
The modern Zionist movement contained different ideological currents: socialist, liberal, religious, revisionist and others, and supporters of Zionism understand it in different ways, most commonly as a movement for Jewish national self-determination. But political ideologies are not judged by their self-description. They must be judged by the institutions they build, the relations of power they create and the consequences they produce for those subjected to them. The political question is therefore not what Zionism promises in the abstract, but what Zionism has meant in practice.
Jundiya speaks of that life as something no longer available to her children. “The house was more than a shelter — it held the people among whom a child grew up.”
But there is another deprivation she returns to, something so small that its absence becomes almost impossible to comprehend. “My three-year-old daughter has never held a toy,” she said.
“Anti-Zionism” is a loose term referring to criticism of the current policies of the Israeli state, and/or moral, ethical, or religious criticism of the idea of a Jewish nation-state. There has been debate, criticism and opposition to Zionism within Jewish thought for as long as it has existed.
Jewish anti-Zionists span a political and religious spectrum, from religious and secular progressives who view opposition to Zionism as an anti-racist praxis, to ultra-Orthodox Jews who oppose Jewish dominion until the time of the Messiah, to anarchist Jews who oppose the very concept of nation-states, Jewish or otherwise.
There are also many non-Jewish anti-Zionists whose perspectives may be informed by moral criticism of the policies of the Israeli government, problems with the impact of Zionist thinking in Israel on non-Jewish residents, and/or a criticism of ethno-nationalism more broadly. Many Palestinians take anti-Zionist positions or identify as anti-Zionist because of the current and historical practices of the Israeli state.
Criticism of Zionism is not to be conflated with antisemitism. States such as Israel and the United States are openly criticized in public life, and their political beliefs and policies are subject to critical debate, in accord with our basic First Amendment rights.
For more on the history of Jewish alternatives to Zionism, please see this blog post by former JVP staffer Ben Lorber.
For more on the problems of conflating antisemitism with anti-Zionism, please see this op-ed by NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg.
For more on criticisms of Zionism, please see these excerpts from “Zionism from the Standpoint of its Victims” by Edward Said.
