Who is saying this? All I've heard are people on one side insisting that people are saying this, sounds like a straw man
1. https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/hres894/BILLS-118hres894i...
This is not the same as being critical of that state, being anti-Israel isn't antisemitic (except when it is, obviously), but nor is it anti-Zionism. Saying Netanyahu should be dragged before the Hague, that the international community should demand an immediate ceasefire or force a two-state solution, that Israel must uphold the right of return: none of these are anti-Zionism, nor antisemitic.
If your position is not that Israel must be destroyed, good, don't call yourself anti-Zionist though. If it is, then yes, that's antisemitic, or the word is meaningless.
Similarly, find another slogan besides "From the river to the sea", because that is, in fact, a call to ethnically cleanse all Jews from Israel. It has meant that since the establishment of Israel, and you don't get to wander in and say it means something different at this point. If you don't mean that, don't say it. Find literally any other way to express yourself.
I think being anti-Zionist means being against both prongs, meaning that there should no longer be a Jewish state. Given the practical implications of that, it seems hard to justify without antisemitism.
Wikipedia has a whole section [1] on "View that [anti-Zionism and antisemitism] are not interlinked", but those supporting that view seem to be using an overly-broad definition of anti-Zionism.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Zionism#View_that_the_two...
Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin is professor of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University. He criticises Zionism, and promotes binationalism as an alternative–the idea of a single state shared equally by two nations (Arab and Jewish)–also known variously as the "one state solution" or "Israeltine" or "Isratin". [0] Obviously if he had his way, there would no longer be a Jewish state–if by that one means an exclusively Jewish state. But, I find it hard to take seriously the idea that a Jewish Israeli academic is antisemitic – his views may well be impractical and overly idealistic, but where is the evidence he's an antisemite? And I think this is just one example of the several different forms of contemporary non-antisemitic opposition to Zionism.
[0] https://www.forum-transregionale-studien.de/kommunikation/de...
> [The belief that] the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way
This is very different from "Israel must be destroyed".
Similarly, your interpretation of "From the river to the sea" is extreme. It's only really been a scrutinized slogan since Hamas started using it in 2017. Its previous ~60 years of use were consistently about creating a secular, multi-ethnic, democratic state for all the people inside its borders.
There has never been an official Palestinian position calling for the removal of Jews.
If we did take that to be the definition of anti-Zionism, then it seems one could be both a Zionist and an anti-Zionist, if they supported the existence of a Jewish state but didn't approve of the particular way Israel was established.
Anti-Zionism was the mainstream Orthodox Jewish position prior to the Holocaust; and contemporary mainstream Haredi anti-Zionism essentially continues that historical position largely unchanged. According to that viewpoint, it is a sin to establish a Jewish-ruled state in Eretz Yisrael prior to the coming of the Messiah. So, classical Jewish anti-Zionism supports the existence of a Jewish state (in the future messianic age) but doesn’t approve of the particular way Israel was established (by mostly secular Zionists in 1948 instead of by a divinely appointed Messiah at some point in the future). Still, it clearly is an anti-Zionist position not a Zionist one.
The majority of contemporary Haredim are neither anti-Zionist (the mainstream being Satmar, Edah HaCharedeis, Central Rabbinical Congress, and then there are extremists such as Neturei Karta) nor explicitly Zionist (as in the Hardal), rather non-Zionist. Haredi non-Zionists agree with the anti-Zionists that the 1948 creation of the State of Israel was a sin, but now it exists, they say (contrary to the anti-Zionists) that it is okay to cooperate with it by voting in its elections, running candidates in the Knesset, accepting its handouts, etc. Sometimes the boundary between non-Zionism and soft Zionism is rather murky - my impression is that is particularly true of contemporary Chabad, whose non-Zionism has grown closer to Zionism over time
I think there is an important (but often ignored) distinction here between theory and practice - whatever one thinks of the rights or wrongs of Zionism as an ideology in the abstract, doesn’t necessarily decide one’s practical attitude towards the State of Israel - e.g. a person (whether Jewish or non-Jewish, whether in Israel/Palestine or on the opposite side of the planet) can theoretically oppose Zionism as an erroneous ideology, yet simultaneously decide to support the State of Israel on pragmatic grounds-and there is no necessary logical inconsistency in that
Say one supported the establishment of Israel in Palestine in 1948, but took issue with the expulsion of Palestinians from some areas. How would you characterize their view? In my mind it's still a Zionist view, not anti-Zionist (or both?) as the definition above would suggest.
What I’m saying is that position could be either Zionist, anti-Zionist, or non-Zionist, depending on the particular reasons why one thinks it was “flawed or unjust in some way”
The phrase was also used by the Israeli ruling Likud party as part of their 1977 election manifesto which stated "Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty."
So it hasn't always meant that, really.
That’s not true. Rebbe Teitelbaum was an anti-Zionist, he opposed the creation of the modern state of Israel as sinful, and he opposed Haredi Jews cooperating with the state (such as by being elected to the Knesset or accepting government benefits.) But he did not support the physical destruction of Jewish communities in Eretz Yisrael. And that remains to this day the mainstream anti-Zionist position of Satmar, Edah HaChareidis in Israel, and the Central Rabbinical Congress in North America - the belief that the existence of the state of Israel is a sin, and that it is a sin for Jews to cooperate with it, but at the same time strongly condemning extremist anti-Zionist groups such as Neturei Karta who ally with non-Jews who seek to physically harm Jews who live there, and rejecting any cooperation with the Palestinian cause-Rebbe Teitelbaum viewed his anti-Zionism as an internal Jewish issue, and in any violent conflict between Jews and non-Jews he would pray for the Jewish side, even though those Jews happened to be his Zionist opponents.
As well as mainstream Haredi anti-Zionism, there are other varieties of anti-Zionism which don’t entail support for the physical destruction of Israel. Zionism is Jewish nationalism. Some people have a principled ideological opposition to all forms of nationalism - they are anti-nationalists - and a consistent anti-nationalist must also be an anti-Zionist. That principled opposition to all nationalist ideologies does not entail any particular position on practical questions, and is completely compatible with pacifism, and hoping that the majority of the population of Israel/Palestine eventually comes to peacefully reject nationalism.
Nationalism comes in many varieties - civic, linguistic, ethnic, religious, ethnoreligious, etc - and Zionism is a nationalism of the ethnoreligious kind. As well as anti-nationalists who consistently oppose all nationalisms, there are also those who support some types but oppose others - for example, many civic nationalists have a principled opposition to non-civic nationalisms. A consistent civic nationalist who took such a position would have to be an anti-Zionist, but would have no in-principle objection to Israeli civic nationalism.
It is undeniable that many people who identify as “anti-Zionist” do end up espousing antisemitic views, and sometimes even use “anti-Zionist” as a more socially acceptable synonym for antisemite - at the same time, there are several ways someone can be anti-Zionist without necessarily being antisemitic, and many people who are. The kind of simplistic equation “all anti-Zionism is antisemitism” which the US Congress is promoting here is a horrendously ignorant oversimplification
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Israel#Suppressio...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/05/0...
[1] https://twitter.com/NikkiHaley/status/1720501916088590704
There are plenty of people in Israel who are opposed to Netanyahu and were protesting against him before the war started, but don't doubt that destroying Hamas is justified.
What does "making peace" with Israel look like? Why don't you consider the West Bank to be at peace with Israel?
Was modern Israel established by making peace with its occupants?
Israel was established by consent of the legal owner of Palestine that day, British Empire, and was attacked by what you would call Palestinians today (Arabs living in former British Palestine) on the first day of existence - and never had a day of peace since then.
I in all honesty don't know what peace could look like today. It should embrace recognition of State of Israel in its borders (that's the easy part, but was never delivered from the Arab side) and realistic guarantees that it will not be attacked again (that one is hard).
What state attacked what state?
Gaza is not a state, Hamas is not a state government, it's a terrorist organization.
But also, what of the West bank, which has been at peace with Israel for decades. Why don't the Arabs living there have rights? Why are they without state? Because of the actions of terrorists in gaza? Should you share a punishment because you share an ethnicity?
Wannabe Palestinian state in 1948. Alliance of Arabic states in 1967. That's irrelevant detail IMO.
> Hamas is not a state government, it's a terrorist organization.
Tell that WHO that sees Hamas Ministry of Health as reliable source of information. Or current leadership of the West Bank that sees Hamas as legitimate partners moving on.
> Why are they without state?
Because they themselves don't see themselves separate from Gaza population. Never in the history did the leadership of West Bank go to Israel and say "we recognize you as a state, and want to make peace with you. Oh, and don't worry about Gaza, they don't have anything in common with us apart from ethnicity". Without recognition it's not a peace, it's a forced ceasefire.
Anti-Zionism and antisemitism are orthogonal ideas. Conflation of them is pure propaganda.
[1] "Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Zionism
Why is it weird to mention non-Israeli jews when being Anti-zionist? The point is to NOT conflate Zionism with being Jewish.
The matter of what should happen in Israel/Palestine is separate from this discussion. Anyway, they wouldn't (in theory) necessarily have to go anywhere. Jews and Arabs could have lived together in a single democratic country where one religion/ethnicity isn't favored over another.
Israel can and should be a place for Jews to be safe but it doesn't have to be favor one religion or ethnicity. I think Anti-semitism can be controlled especially in a place with a large minority (or even majority) of Jewish peoples.
Before the founding of Israel, Jews, Christians and Muslims generally co-existed with tolerance in the Middle East.
As for peacefully coexisting, would you say that Christians and Muslims peacefully coexisted in Ottoman Balkans too?
Sorry, I don't know about Christians and Muslims in the Ottoman Balkans.. I was more talking about Jews and others in Egypt, Syria, Jordan, etc.
Ottoman rule in Balkans was quite horrific. E.g. Christian’s having to pay tax in young kids most of whom would never see home again. Yet it was rather peaceful with ottomans enforcing the peace :)
I’m not that familiar with Jews in Middle East up to 19th century. But IIRC there were plenty of pogroms. And taxes differentiated by religion was common in most Muslim regimes. As well as overall relation with government, ability to make a career etc.
And you’re conflating being pro-Palestine with being anti-Zionist :)
At least, if one discussed pro- or anti-Israel sentiments, it’s a little bit clear what “Israel” means. It’s a country, with something vaguely resembling identifiable borders, with a particular government, citizens, a military, etc.
What, exactly, is “Palestine” if one is pro-Palestine or anti-Palestine? Is it the people? (If so, which people? Those who lived in the area currently known as Israel + Gaza + the West Bank and their descendants, but not the descendants of the Jews who settled in the region since the Zionist movement got started? Is it Palestinian refugees as defined by UNRWA? Is it the current civilization in Gaza and the West Bank? What about the multigenerational refugees in camps in nearby countries? [0]. Is it the land itself? Is it the current governments (plural!)? Is it the idea that Israel ought not to exist? (If so, what does Israel not existing even mean?). Is it the idea that innocent Gazans ought not to feel safe in their homes and have access to food, clean water, electricity, and medicine?
The whole situation is an unbelievable mess, both because the present situation is a mess and the history is a mess. I don’t a critically considered opinion can be summarized by a single hyphenated term or even two of them.
[0] Yes, there are people born in refugee camps in a couple of neighboring countries who are somehow not citizens of those countries. From a US perspective, this is very strange. The descendants of people who fled to the US are most definitely citizens. I don’t think most of them consider themselves to be refugees, nor do many other people consider them to be refugees, nor do they live in refugee camps.
Even this definition is associated with what seems to me to be a biased agenda, for two different reasons.
First, while the history seems pretty muddled, I don’t think all the people (or their ancestors, anyway) were forced out of what is modern Israel, nor is it particularly clear that Israel or those fighting on Israel’s side did anywhere near 100% of the forcing.
Second, there’s something quite bizarre about the “elsewhere” part of this. As an analogy, there’s a rather notable war going on, and there is a group of opinions referred to as “pro-Russian.” I suspect that most people with Russian ancestors but who live far from Russia, including those whose ancestors were, in some sense, forced out, do not want to be lumped in with the “pro-Russian” opinion. A lot of them don’t identify as Russian except by heritage. None of them get to vote in Russian elections, I imagine that very few of them would want to vote in Russian elections, and precious few indeed would want anything to do with a unified Russian + Ukraine.
Now I don’t know how actual people of Palestinian heritage but who live far from Palestine feel, and I bet it’s generally pretty complicated. But I think a lot of nuance is lost here.
Here’s an interesting article:
https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2021/07/20/refugee-ever-after-wh...
I also don't think Russia/Ukraine is comparable to Israel/Gaza. I find it hard to believe Palestinians living far from Gaza/West Bank/Middle East would have anything but total sympathy for those in Gaza... but that's just a feeling.
Thanks for the link.
I’m mainly saying that calling that opinion “Pro-Palestine” or “Pro-Palestinian” seems problematic. There has been no particular shortage of screaming matches in the US in which people accuse other people of being horrible for not being correctly pro- or anti- the right things, and I think this encourages factionalism where none need exist.
My point re: Russia and Ukraine isn’t that that situations are analogous. It’s that one’s heritage may be quite different from where one is now, what views one has, where one wants to live, etc.
US citizenship law says that everyone born in the US is a citizen of the US (jus soli, "right of the soil"). (With some rare and obscure exceptions, such as children of foreign diplomats.) But, most countries worldwide don't define citizenship in terms of birthplace, they define define it in terms of descent. So it doesn't matter if you are born in the country, you are only a citizen if at least one of your parents is (jus sanguinis, "right of the blood"). So the real reason it is strange is because the US is unusual by global standards, not because what is happening in these countries is really that unusual by those standards.
If you look at the Middle East, most countries in that region define citizenship in terms of descent not birthplace – which can result in people who have lived in the same place for generations but lack citizenship. It occurs in cases which have nothing to do with Israel-Palestine at all - for example, the stateless "Bidoon" people of Kuwait. It also occurs in Israel - Israeli law says that (non-Jewish) people born in Israel's sovereign territory only become Israeli citizens if one of their parents is, with the result that the majority of Arabs/Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights are living in land which Israel legally claims to have annexed (not merely militarily occupied), yet without Israeli citizenship – Israeli law says they have to apply for naturalisation, most don't want to, and even of those who do apply, only around a third have their applications approved (commonly denied either due to insufficient fluency in Hebrew, or vaguely defined "security reasons").
The goal, in my opinion, is division. Without it, they have nothing.
Peace above all!
So Israel = Jews. Without it, even in the USA genocide of the Jews will start promptly. Those university presidents just proved so.
Of course, a lot of criticism of Israel is rooted in antisemitism. But saying all criticism of Israel is antisemitic deflects legitimate criticism, and makes it harder to identify legitimate antisemitism.