Anti-Zionism

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.

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.

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

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  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"

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  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."

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  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...".

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  Wilson and his cabinet in 1916

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  East German chairman Walter Ulbricht, 1960

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

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  Quds Day demonstration in Qom, Iran

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

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  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