Anti-Zionism

File:1920 demontration Palestine.jpg

The first large-scale anti-Zionist demonstrations in Palestine, March 1920, during the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. The crowd of Muslim and Christian Palestinians are shown outside Damascus Gate, Old City of Jerusalem.

File:AntiWarRallyFeb162003.jpg

Antisemitic poster spotted at an allegedly anti-war rally in San Francisco on February 16, 2003, which incorporated both the motifs of "happy merchant Jews" and "Zio-Nazis". The slur ZIONIST PIGS was also used.

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Antisemitic graffiti in Madrid, 2003, equating the Star of David with the dollar sign and Nazi swastika.

Anti-Zionism is the opposition to Zionism, an ideology for the creation and development of a Jewish homeland in the Jewish ancestral Land of Israel. Those opposed to Zionism are known as anti-Zionists. Anti-Zionism emerged at the same time as Zionism, when diaspora Jews began migrating to Palestine and changing the local demographics. Many anti-Zionists have accused Zionism of being "settler colonialism".

Public endorsement

Many anti-Zionists oppose the existence of Israel under various pretexts, including concerns about Jewish nationalism and Palestinian displacement. Anti-Zionism has been the strongest in the predominantly Muslim Arab world since early 20th century. Some anti-Zionists refer to Israel as "the bastard child of an evil ideology born in sin" as a "racist, settler-colonial state." They accuse the Zionists of "pursuing ethnic cleansing, expulsions, theft and apartheid."

Some Middle Eastern media denigrate Israel as a "Zionist entity." Anti-Zionists also justify themselves by phrasing their arguments as mere criticism of Israel's policies, including the occupation of the West Bank, Golan Heights and the blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Academic criticism

Academic critics of anti-Zionism said that many antisemites passed off their prejudice as anti-Zionism, often in the form of biased criticism or rejection of the right of Israel to exist as a haven for Jews facing mistreatment elsewhere.

Walter Laqueur, a German-American historian, also pointed out a similar issue with the anti-Zionists:

In the light of history, the argument that anti-Zionism is different from antisemitism is not very convincing. No one disputes that in the late Stalinist period anti-Zionism was merely a synonym for antisemitism. [...] in the Muslim [...] Arab world, the fine distinctions between Jews and Zionists hardly ever existed.

Anti-Zionism Media

• The Anti-Semitism of the Present Government, Edwin Montagu, 23 August 1917.jpg

  The August 1917 memorandum by Edwin Montagu, the only Jew then in a senior British government position, stating his opposition to the pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration, which he described as "antisemitic in result"

• Yusuf Ziya el-Halidi.jpg

  Arab mayor of Jerusalem Yousef al-Khalidi who in 1899 wrote a letter to Theodor Herzl arguing against Zionism. "... in the name of God," he wrote, "let Palestine be left alone."

• A 1936 caricature published in the Falastin newspaper on Zionism and Palestine.png

  The vignette in the Falastin newspaper suggests Zionist insincerity is protected by British complicity, with Zionism as a crocodile under the protection of a British officer telling Palestinian Arabs: "don't be afraid!!! I will swallow you peacefully...".

• WILSON, WOODROW. WITH CABINET LCCN2016858384 (restored).jpg

  Wilson and his cabinet in 1916

• Opvolger van Pieck, Walter Ulbricht, Bestanddeelnr 911-5926 (cropped).jpg

  East German chairman Walter Ulbricht, 1960

• Protestors Holding Pro Palestine Posters.jpg

  Arab women protestors holding pro-Palestinian signs in front of the Israeli embassy in Amman, 2021

• روز جهانی قدس در شهر قم- Quds Day In Iran-Qom City 14.jpg

  Quds Day demonstration in Qom, Iran

• 2017.03.26 Anti-Israel Protest, Washington, DC USA 01929 (33670862035).jpg

  Pro-Palestinian protest with placards demanding the US to stop funding of "Israeli apartheid" in Washington, DC, 2017

• Judaism condemns Israel's atrocities -6 (52032176719).jpg

  Members of Neturei Karta holding Palestinian flags and placards saying that "Judaism condemns the state of Israel and its atrocities" in London, 2022

Related pages

• Antisemitism
• The Holocaust
• Holocaust denial
• Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany
• Holocaust trivialization
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion