It’s impossible to be an ’anti-Zionist Jew.’

Judaism without Zionism is like Christianity without Jesus Christ.

Just like there’s no occupation, there’s no such thing as an “anti-Zionist Jew.” (photo: Nikolas Gannon/Unsplash)

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At the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards last Sunday, comedian and actress Hannah Einbinder ended her acceptance speech with words that drew immediate backlash from Jewish leaders and organizations.

After winning Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series, Einbinder concluded her remarks by saying, “Free Palestine!” Backstage, she defended her statement, adding:

“I feel like it is my obligation as a Jewish person to distinguish Jews from the State of Israel because our religion and our culture is such an important and longstanding, basically, like … institution that is really separate to this sort of ethno-national state.”

Yes, Hannah, let’s talk about the longstanding history of Judaism. Because Judaism and Israel are inseparable. You cannot tell the Jewish story without Israel and vice versa. Every Jew in the world faces Israel when we pray. Our holiest holidays revolve around Jerusalem. At every wedding we break a glass to remember the destruction of the Temple. At every Passover Seder we end with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem.” At every funeral, we sprinkle earth from the Land of Israel into the grave.

The Hebrew language, revived after 2,000 years, is the living tongue of the Jewish state. The calendar of the Jewish People is the calendar of Israel. Our covenant with God, first spoken to Abraham, begins with a promise of the land.

For 3,000 years, the Jewish imagination has never ceased to long for Zion. The Psalms are filled with it, the Prophets return to it, the rabbis of the Talmud debate it. The Talmud even teaches that dwelling in the land is equal to all the mitzvot (Jewish commandments) combined.

And the most famous line of all still echoes across centuries: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither” (Psalm 137). The idea that Israel is somehow “separate” from Judaism is not only ahistorical; it is absurd. It is the erasure of Jewish memory.

Nor is Zionism a modern invention. It is the continuation of a dream that never stopped beating in Jewish hearts, even in exile. Jews never left the land entirely. For 2,000 years, there were always Jewish communities in Tiberias, Safed, Hebron, and Jerusalem. Pilgrims returned generation after generation. When Jews said “Next year in Jerusalem,” they meant it literally. The modern state is not an invention; it is the restoration of sovereignty after centuries of survival.

Therefore, to be an “anti-Zionist Jew” is historically inaccurate. It is fictitious. It is why you never hear about “anti-Africa African-Americans” or “anti-China Chinese restaurants” or “anti-Portuguese Port wine.” Identity and homeland cannot be surgically severed without mutilating both. To claim otherwise is to misunderstand what identity even is.

No one would take seriously an Irishman who disavows Ireland, or an “anti-India Indian” who rejects Delhi, Calcutta, or the Ganges as part of their history. And yet, when Jews are told to separate themselves from Israel, this mutilation is applauded as “progressive.”

Judaism is not “whatever I want it to be so I can fit in with the Far-Left Hollywood crowd and secure my next acting role.” Judaism is the covenant of a people with their God, their land, and their destiny. It is a civilization stretching from Sinai to Safed, from Babylon to Brooklyn, from the Psalms to the IDF, from David’s harp to the Hebrew start-up nation. It is rooted, textured, and thick with continuity. You cannot simply whittle it down to a “religion” that is safe for applause on Sunset Boulevard.

This is why self-hating Jews are so dangerous. They are trotted out as political props, their Jewishness exploited by Israel’s enemies to say, “See, even Jews agree Israel has no right to exist.” Groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, or celebrities like Hannah Einbinder, become fig leaves that allow antisemites to deny their hatred. “We’re not against Jews, only Zionists,” they say — all while targeting Jewish students on campus, Jewish businesses, and Jewish neighborhoods. That fig leaf is then weaponized against ordinary Jews who will never walk an Emmy red carpet.

And make no mistake: Einbinder’s comments did more damage to Jewish safety than any decision taken by the IDF or Israeli government. Because every time a Jew with a platform parrots the language of Jewish enemies, it grants permission to the mobs chanting outside synagogues, it validates the agitators harassing Jews on Western streets, and it lends cover to those who would exclude Jews from “progressive” spaces unless they first renounce Israel. She has, perhaps unintentionally, handed antisemitism a stamp of Jewish legitimacy.

Israel did not create antisemitism; antisemitism created the need for the modern State of Israel. When Jews like Einbinder insist on drawing a line between Judaism and Zionism, they do not weaken Israel; they weaken the very community they claim to represent. Because, for our enemies, there is no distinction. The Molotov cocktails thrown at synagogues in Paris, the gunmen storming a Pittsburgh shul, the mobs surrounding Jewish neighborhoods in London — they do not pause to ask whether their victims support Likud, Meretz, or BDS.

Anti-Zionism also strips Judaism of its survival mechanism. Every era of Jewish survival has been tied to Zion. Zion gave Jews direction during exile, structure in ritual, meaning in suffering, and hope for the future. Without Zion, Judaism becomes deracinated — a free-floating set of customs, easily absorbed and dissolved into whatever culture surrounds it. That is exactly what assimilationists tried in 19th-century Germany when they insisted Jews were merely “Germans of the Mosaic faith.” We know how that ended. Stripping Judaism of Zion is not progress; it is the first step toward disappearance.

And above all, Israel today is not just a homeland; it is the guardian of global Jewry. From rescuing Ethiopian Jews to welcoming Ukrainian Jews during war, Israel embodies the promise that “never again” will Jews be dependent on the mercy of others. It is the one place every Jew can count on, the one refuge guaranteed. To undermine Zionism is to undermine that guarantee.

It is, of course, possible to be a self-hating Jew. Jewish history, sadly, is filled with examples of Jews who despised their own people, who sought the approval of the surrounding culture so badly that they disavowed their own heritage. It is also possible to simply walk away from Judaism altogether — to declare, “I am no longer part of this story,” and attempt to assimilate fully into another identity. People do it all the time.

But what is impossible is to be an “anti-Zionist Jew.” Because Zionism is not an add-on to Judaism that one can discard at will; it is embedded in the core. It is not a political movement alone, but the national expression of a people who never stopped seeing themselves as bound to a land, a covenant, and a destiny. You can reject your people, you can renounce your identity, you can even try to excuse yourself from Jewishness altogether — but what you cannot do is remain “in” while denying the very thing that defines what “in” means.

To call yourself an “anti-Zionist Jew” is as nonsensical as calling yourself a “Torah-rejecting rabbi” or a “matzah-denying Passover host.” The categories collapse under their own contradiction. A Jew may abandon Zion, but once they do, they are no longer standing inside the Jewish story; they are standing outside it, pointing fingers.

This is why the phrase “anti-Zionist Jew” is not a real category; it’s an obnoxious performance. It is either an act of self-hatred or of self-erasure masquerading as courage. One can defect from Jewish identity, but one cannot stay and claim that rejecting Zion is still Jewish.

It is impossible to be an “anti-Zionist Jew” because to be Jewish is to be tied to Zion. You may not live there. You may not vote there. You may even disagree with its leaders. But your identity, your prayers, your heritage, and your peoplehood all point there. To sever that bond is to cut yourself off from Judaism itself.

Hannah Einbinder may believe she is making Jews safer by “separating” us from Israel. In reality, she has done the opposite. She has weakened Jewish solidarity, emboldened antisemites, and made the Jewish People appear divided on the very question that unites us most: our right to exist as a nation in our indigenous homeland.

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