'Anti-Zionism' is a serious moral failure.

"Anti-Zionists" cheer for the side whose game plan for victory is sacrificing as many of their own civilians as possible.

Radicalized Palestinian children at a “summer camp” in the Gaza Strip, being trained in weapons-use, so they can kill Jews and become martyrs (photo: Hamas)

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This is a guest essay by Joshua Dabelstein, a contributor to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Australian.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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In its classic iteration, a trolley on train tracks is on a path towards five innocent people. You have the capacity to pull a lever, diverting the trolley from its path and onto an alternate route, heading instead for only one person.

The trolley problem compels us to consider whether it is right to kill one person in order to save others.

In the “anti-Zionist” trolley problem, the trolley is headed towards uncountable civilians, all of whom have been tied to the tracks in one huge and horrifying pile by people who consider the existence of the trolley itself to be more outrageous than the sacrificing of countless men, women, and children to stop it.

The “anti-Zionist” has the capacity to pull a lever, diverting the trolley from its path and onto an alternate route. The alternate route is clear, but the switch can only be activated by the words, “I believe Israel has the right to exist and I will no longer join in, nor tolerate, incessant calls for its elimination. Expecting religious, cultural, and ethnic homogeneity across the Middle East is as outdated, as it is unacceptable, and the Jews deserve to know that any question as to their right to have their own state is absurd.”

In this modified trolley problem, the “anti-Zionist” must choose between willingly sacrificing tens of thousands of other people, and accepting that ceasing this never-ending war against Israel’s right to exist is the best way to guarantee peace in the region.

By pulling the lever, the “anti-Zionist,” by definition, becomes a Zionist.

This (new) Zionist maintains the right to protest the Israeli government, disputed settlements, and in favor of the Palestinian cause. The Zionist can protest every facet of Israel, since they might protest every facet of any other country.

Meanwhile, this (new) Zionist ceases to entertain “turn the clock back to 1948” delusions, nor are they compelled to choose between Israeli or Palestinian safety. The Zionist’s belief in the existence of a Jewish state in no way mitigates their responsibility to the lives and livelihoods of all peoples.

It is not blind allegiance to Israel’s actions that makes one a Zionist, just as it is not blind allegiance to Australia that compels me to believe that this country has a mere right to exist. As far as nationalism is concerned, there has never been a lower bar.

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Until the State of Israel is accepted as having a right to exist — until Zionism is the default global position — it is, by definition and by action, under threat.

While we may debate causality all we like, one thing remains undebatable: “Anti-Zionism” is not an argument about what Israel does. It is a position pitted against the mere fact that Israel is.

Zionism, today, is a response to the existential threat of “anti-Zionism.” The word only remains in use because “anti-Zionism” continues to be a serious position — the tip of this position’s spear being Iran and its triumvirate of proxies: Hamas, the Houthis, and Hezbollah.

By refusing to engage her neighbours on their terms, Israel must suffer never-ending threats to her existence. To fail to engage would be to send the message that there is no reason not to carry out more of what transpired on October 7th.

By engaging her neighbours on their terms, Israel bombs through entire neighbourhoods to eliminate targets ranging from high-profile terrorists responsible for the deaths of thousands, to a few 17-year-old radicalised Hamasniks firing a rocket launcher from an apartment building. We see images of the carnage on our screens day in and day out, no longer sure where Hamas propaganda ends and reality begins.

How many children do I need to see dragged out from under rubble, how many arms and legs detached from bodies convulsing on hospital floors? Why should disparate attributions of blame change what constitutes abject horror?

Truth be told, I have no time for the opinions of “anti-Zionists” on these matters. You forewent your right to feign good faith commentary the day you took it upon yourself to announce that the entire state of Israel is less legitimate than any other state in the world.

Jews have had to contend with both Western and non-Western antisemitic propaganda, double standards, and “anti-Zionism” masked as academia for decades. This shared experience has significantly affected many Jews’ capacity to hear current criticisms of Israel’s conduct in Gaza. A boy-who-cried-wolf dimension to this entire crisis has made it incredibly difficult for Jews like myself to distinguish between blood libel and serious humanitarian concerns.

Jews have listened to bogus claims of genocide against them since the 1950s, when “anti-Zionist” Soviet propaganda began inverting the horrors of the Holocaust against its victims in a campaign for influence in the Middle East. For Jews, accusations of having built a “concentration camp for Palestinians,” accusations of “committing genocide,” and usage of the word “Holocaust” as a rhetorical device or propaganda exercise are all stale footnotes from the antisemites’ playbook.

It is no wonder that today’s language on the conflict has the opposite effect of causing reflection or solemn reappraisal among many Jews. These phrases began rearing their heads not in response to the Israel’s campaign in Gaza, but in the days immediately after October 7th. The blood hadn’t dried on those poor kids’ bodies when the Holocaust inversion began again. Parents were looking for their children’s bodies, mothers with babies were being dragged into tunnels under Gaza — where they would be beaten to death — and Jews all around the world were watching in horror as their middle-class friends took to Instagram to share infographics about a “Palestinian Resistance to the Holocaust in Gaza.”

Criticism of Israel by those who have nothing to say about her neighbours’ indiscretions are a manifestation not of humanitarian concern, but of racism. The racism of low expectations allows Israel’s counterparts to glue glass to their gloves unashamedly, while insisting Israel fight with one hand behind her back.

The old adage, “You can’t bring a knife to a gunfight” is a whimsical way of saying that you need to meet your opponent where they’re at. But what does one bring to a human shield fight? A fight fought by men one degree of separation, if any degrees of separation at all, from the raped and burned bodies of Jewish civilians they saw live-streamed to social media by their neighbours?

What does one bring to a human shield fight started by people whose hatred of Israel has encouraged incessant suicide bombings, public shootings and stabbings, intifadas, and events like October 7th? How does one win a human shield fight? How does one win a human shield fight without shooting through humans? Whose responsibility is it to surrender when too many human shields have been killed?

When, in human history, has someone refused to surrender on the grounds that the more civilians they push into the line of fire the more it hurts their enemy? Or, better put, when in history has someone won by engineering the worst possible scenario for their own people?

What if those hiding behind the human shields had no intention of surrender? What if those hiding behind human shields knew that maximising their own civilian casualties — the polar opposite of every historical precedent for how wars are fought — was their best chance at destroying Israel?

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We live in a world whose hand is led not by trolley problems, but by inconsistency, algorithmically tailored feeding-tubes of information, moral depravity, violence, manipulation, power, greed, and random chance; a world in which fundamentalists can orchestrate the devastation of their own land and people not by accident, but on purpose. We live in a world that would rather reward those using human shields than work with those trying to stop them.

We do not live in a world naturally geared towards fostering justice. Nor should we assume that the process of pursuing just ends will avail itself of just means.

And that said, we need to be prepared not to condemn, but to take very seriously those who ask us whether these means are worth it. For if we don’t take these people seriously, then we’re no better than the “anti-Zionist” whose hand refuses the lever as he commits others onwards to their bitter end.

I am a pacifist because I believe that war has the unique capacity to undermine the benefits of whatever it is that is being fought for. I am a realist because life is not a trolley problem, and because principles like pacifism won’t get you anywhere when someone punches your lights out for looking at them the wrong way.

And for today’s purposes, let me make it abundantly clear: I am a Zionist because I believe in the importance of statehood, connection to country, indigeneity, and pluralism. I am a Zionist because I look at that lever and pull it — regardless of which trolley problem we’re talking about — and feel disgusted by anyone who wouldn’t.

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