What does anti-Zionism mean, and what do anti-Zionists want?
A critical examination of a tricky label
Centuries of anti-Jewish persecution, pogroms, evictions, and one major genocide make the Zionist idea understandable. But was Zionism nevertheless a mistake? After all…
Did Jews really improve their security by concentrating so much of their population in a tiny area surrounded by millions of enemies? The Zionist strategy might compound the danger rather than lessen it. Of course…
Zionist Jews argue that a Jewish state empowers Jews to defend themselves, whereas life in other countries left them mostly defenseless.
Fair enough.
But Israel has had to defend itself daily for 75 years. At least many of the diaspora Jews have enjoyed long intervals of relative peace between episodes of terror.
Is it really obvious that the Zionist approach is better? (I will show why it is better below)
One other point seems important. The Zionist idea was that Jews could not depend on non-Jewish governments to protect them, therefore Jews needed a state of their own. And yet it seems that Israel has to depend quite heavily on the United States for support.
Could Israel make it without the U.S., and if not, doesn’t that refute the original Zionist assumption?
The fact that I express these doubts raises a question…
Am I an anti-Zionist?
I’ve often thought about the issues I raised above.
I was critical of the Israeli settlements in Judea, Samara, and Gaza, and I favored a two-state solution.
Those positions made me at least Zionist critical.
That was enough to make me a little sympathetic when anti-Zionists protested they were not anti-Jewish. But then I began to wonder…
What does it mean to be anti-Zionist when a Jewish state is already long-established and vastly more successful than the Arab states that surround it?
Anti-Zionism had a clear meaning before Israel was founded. It was a suggestion that the Jews shouldn’t create a Jewish state. But what can anti-Zionism possibly mean now?
What do current anti-Zionists want?
When I ask this question online I’m usually met with sputtering, confusion, vagueness, and/or silence.
Many anti-Zionists seem more certain about wanting to wear the label than they are about what it means.
When pressed some anti-Zionists will say they want to replace Israel with Palestine, “from the (Jordon) river to the Sea,” with one-person-one-vote for Jews and Arabs alike. Well…
We already have something similar in Israel itself
There are already two million Arab citizens of Israel. They vote, pay taxes, serve in the military and government, are legislators and judges, run companies and organizations, have full civil and political rights, and are economically successful.
Why don’t the anti-Zionists instead argue that the Arabs of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza ought to forsake terrorism and petition Israel to accept them as citizens?
Some self-proclaimed anti-Zionists surely must advocate that, but in my experience, not many. Nearly every anti-Zionist I interact with “wants-them-some-Palestine and they want it good and hard.”
So what would Palestine be like?
We can know very clearly by looking at what Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and other Palestinian organizations say and do.
We can also know by looking at Palestinian public opinion.
And we can know by looking at what other Arab Islamic countries are like.
A Palestinian state would mean…
- Sharia (Islamic law)
- Kleptocracy
- Anti-semitism
- Economic stagnation
- Human rights abuses
- Anti-gay
- Second-class status or more likely expulsion for Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims.
- Palestinian Arab sovereignty from the river to the Sea
- No more Israel
- No more Jewish refuge
- No more Israeli economic, artistic, and scientific vibrancy
This is made even more clear when you watch man-on-the-street interviews with the ultimate anti-Zionists, the Palestinians themselves.
When interviewers ask Palestinians what would happen to the Jews in their Palestinian state, they suddenly become shifty-eyed.
They are slow to answer.
They pretend not to understand the question.
Some of them walk away.
Some will say, “Who cares? That’s their problem.”
But the most common answer I’ve heard is that Palestinians want, as they put it, “All the Jews to go back to Europe where they came from.”
Judenrein
In other words, they want Palestine to be an ethno-state for Arabs (along with the 21 others that already exist).
That’s why Israel had to destroy Jewish settlements in Gaza when they gave control of Gaza to the Arabs, and in Judea/Samaria when they signed the Oslo Accords. The Arabs wanted all the Jews out!
It is clear from their words and deeds that the Palestinian Arabs want their hoped-for Palestine to be Judenrein, to borrow that disgusting word used by the Nazis.
But surely this is not what American and European anti-Zionists want, is it?
I don’t know. It’s hard to pin them down. They get shifty-eyed and evasive like the Palestinians. But…
Let’s consider the question linguistically.
To be anti-Zionist must mean that you want to undo what the Zionists have done.
It’s no longer possible to stop them from building a successful Jewish state. They’ve already done it.
Thus, anti-Zionism can only mean the destruction of the Jewish state that currently exists.
Yes, that is what anti-Zionism means and that is what anti-Zionists want. But it gets worse.
Other aspects of anti-Zionist language
The anti-Zionist habitually displays certain verbal ticks that make it even more clear who and what they are.
If Hamas uses the Gaza population as human shields but the Israelis never-the-less manage to achieve the lowest civilian casualty rate in the history of urban warfare, and…
If the Israelis do what no other warring nation has ever done — feed their enemies — then the anti-Zionists call all of that genocide.
If the Israelis treat their Arab citizens better than any other Arabs are treated in the entire Middle East, but they have to put up walls and checkpoints to prevent the Arabs in Judea and Samaria from murdering civilians with suicide bombers, the anti-Zionists call that apartheid.
Wait a second. We’ve seen this film before!
We all know of another group that also abused language to tell lies about Jews. The Nazis did that. The Nazis also wanted to destroy Jews just like anti-Zionists want to destroy Israel with the attendant death of Jews that such a goal would require.
Here’s the harsh truth. Someone who was simply critical of certain Israeli policies would rarely, if ever, call themselves anti-Zionist.
They probably wouldn’t even label their position any more than someone critical of certain U.S. policies would label that. It’s just normal garden-variety political disagreement.
The person who needs the anti-Zionist label is the person who is trying to avoid another label that he/she is ashamed of. Yes, yes, yes. Let’s be honest about this.
What is an anti-Zionist and what do anti-Zionists want?
An anti-Zionist is an anti-semitic bigot who wants to harm Jews.
They may not want to do it directly but they want it to happen.
He/she opposes Israel because that’s the biggest concentration of Jews he/she can find.
He/she is also the kind of person who will claim they can’t be anti-semitic because Arabs are Semites too, and they don’t hate Arabs. Which, of course, admits that they do hate Jews.
Only cranks resort to such pedantry given that origin and common usage establish what the word anti-semite means. Anti-semites are nothing if not cranks. So this too gives them away.
Anyone who is merely critical of certain Israeli policies should never call themselves anti-Zionist, because the company they keep by doing so is the worst kind of company in human history.
This brings me to my final point…
Israel turns out to be a damned good idea
We should have been done with anti-semitism after World War 2, but we’re not.
So it’s a good thing we have both a Jewish state and a Jewish diaspora. They provide multiple ways to preserve the Jewish people, religion, and culture, which have given the world so much.
It’s good that at least two million Arabs have a place where their rights are protected and their lives are successful.
It’s good that the United States has wanted to protect Israel because Israel richly deserves it.
But I don’t think U.S. support negates the Zionist idea.
American aid has come with American strings.
The U.S. has funded Israel, but it has funded the Palestinians too.
The U.S. helps Israel defend itself, but sometimes they prevent Israel from defending itself.
President Reagan stopped Israel from destroying the PLO in 1982 — something that might have brought peace.
I am thankful that President Trump will not stop Israel from destroying Hamas now.
And I’m thankful I no longer have to pretend that anti-Zionists aren’t anti-semitic bigots.
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Copyright © Perry Willis 2025
Perry Willis is the co-founder of Downsize DC and the Zero Aggression Project. He co-created, with Jim Babka, the Read the Bills Act, the One Subject at a Time Act, and the Write the Laws Act, all of which have been introduced in Congress. He is a past Executive Director of the national Libertarian Party and was the campaign manager for Harry Browne for President in 2000.
