Zionism is not a movement. It's the continuation of Jewish history.

If you're a so-called "anti-Zionist," you're not criticizing a policy or a political stance. You're trying to erase thousands of years of Jewish identity.

The Israeli flag (photo: Oleg Vakhromov/Unsplash)

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This is a guest essay written by Nachum Kaplan of the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”

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

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Antisemitism, often called the world’s oldest hatred, is also the most amorphous.

It thrives in Christian and Muslim nations, and in atheist authoritarian states. It appears on the Right and the Left, in capitalist and communist economic systems, and it manifests in open and closed political systems. It persists across time and place.

Today, antisemitism’s most common form is “anti-Zionism” — or the belief that Israel should not exist and has no right to exist, due to its alleged displacement of the so-called Palestinians it being Jewish. This is a neat way to dress antisemitism up as a political cause, even a just one if you have left your brain in a bucket.

Appreciating the relationship between “anti-Zionism” and antisemitism requires understanding that Judaism differs from other religions.

Judaism is an older belief system than modern religious and political frameworks and terminology. Judaism comprises the Jewish People (Am Yisrael in Hebrew), the Word (the Torah), and the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael in Hebrew), and all three are inseparable. It is not just a monotheism with a portable deity, as it is often represented; t is a unique fusion of faith, nationhood, and homeland.

(Personally, I think of it as a civilization, though I feel no obligation to explain this to bad-faith actors.)

The Torah is the Jewish nation’s constitution. It shapes how Jews live, think, eat, celebrate, and mourn. It embodies the Jewish mission to bring holiness into the world through action, justice, and remembrance. Wrestling with the Torah is the basis of Jews’ outsized academic achievement.

The Land of Israel is a central component of Jewish theology. As part of the covenant, God gives Jews the Torah and the land in which to live it.

If three things are required for Judaism to exist, and Jews are told the have no right to one of those three things, then, in effect, they have no right to be Jewish, and the Jewish identity has no right to exist. This means “anti-Zionism” is more than opposing the modern nation-state of Israel; it is an attack on the Jewish People themselves.

This is the antisemitism that is inherent to “anti-Zionism.” It is deep and malicious. It also features one of antisemitism’s defining features: extermination. They do not just dislike Jews; they want to exterminate them.

Some antisemites, such as the lunatic mullahs who run Iran (at the time of writing at least), are open about their genocidal intentions. Others pretend that Islamist enemies would not engage in genocide if Israel was defeated as a political entity tomorrow.

If I was to be charitable, that is a delusional belief. Given that I am not prone to charity towards antisemites, genocide is what they want but they are cunning enough not to say it. The October 7th pogrom showed the world Islamist intentions clearly enough. This is why the idea of a single democratic state comprising Jews and Palestinians (like many on the Left propose as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) is so fantastically stupid.

For starters, the Palestinians do not want it. Even the Palestinian Authority, for some unknown reason still the presumptive government of a Palestinian state, is adamant that any Palestinian state be Jew-free. The Nazis called it Judenrein.

Western education and values have fallen off a precipice. It is now at the point that supporting a cause with Nazi goals is not reputational suicide and, in some circles, even deemed virtuous. This does not mean that Jews have a right to the Land of Israel because God gave it to them 3,500 years ago. That is a strawman argument that “anti-Zionists” claim Jews make because they do not know anything about Judaism, or history, or much of anything I suspect.

This idea’s existence, that the Land of Israel is part of Jews’ covenant relationship with God, does help establish Jewish indigeneity, which is part of Jews’ claim to Israel. Longing to return to Israel is not just an essential part of Jewish belief; it is central to being Jewish. Jewish liturgy, scriptures, and traditions are saturated with the theme of return. It is why so many Diaspora Jews care so greatly about Israel.

This longing is not metaphorical. From the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE and the subsequent Babylonian exile, to the Roman expulsion after the Second Temple’s destruction in 70 CE, Jews have sustained a religious connection to the Land of Israel.

A more straightforward way to show that “anti-Zionism” is antisemitism is to argue that it is inherently racist that the Jews alone are the one people not entitled to their own state. This is a valid argument that requires no religious precepts, but rests on a modern understanding of a nation-state.

The modern nation-state is an odd and unnatural creation, whose genesis is generally traced back to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia (which concluded the Thirty Years’ War in Europe and the Eighty Years’ War between Spain and the Dutch Republic). It was not until the unravelling of Europe’s empires, though, that that nation-state emerged in full flourish.

After the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in the First World War, its empire was carved up into nation states. Some peoples, such as the Jews, were fortunate enough to have their right to a state acknowledged, while others such as the Kurds and Yazidis did not. Many Arab states were created. Israel’s right to exist is no different to the many other states that were created when the Ottoman Empire was carved up, such as Jordan or Lebanon.

It is most peculiar that Palestinian aspirations for nationhood are deemed legitimate, despite there never having been such a nation or people, while Israel’s are not despite it being the third Jewish commonwealth, stretching back into the antiquity of time. The ancient Jewish Commonwealth was a proto nation-state. The fact that Israel is the only state required to justify its right to exist is an ideological denial of Jewish collective rights, which makes it antisemitic.

Other arguments that “anti-Zionism” is not antisemitism are equally void. There are those who argue that because Arabs are a semitic people, too, they cannot be antisemitic. This argument is so stupid that it deserves its own museum display. Forget the word’s etymology, antisemitism means anti-Jewish. Doubters are invited to look it up in the dictionary. Do not worry about whether it is an Oxford or Merriam-Webster or some other dictionary because they all say the same thing.

Then there is the claim that, because some Jews are not Zionists, “anti-Zionism” cannot be antisemitism. There are some ultra-Orthodox Jews who are not Zionist because they believe only the Messiah should lead the Jews home. This is a theological position, not a political one. It does not mean that they want to destroy Israel.

There are also some Far-Left Jews who are actively hostile towards Israel. These people are insane and I do not talk to them or about them for the same reason I do not go to the mental asylum to interview people who think they are Napoleon. While anti-Israel types talk about these Jews extensively, because they think it helps their argument, it is a fringe position, at best. Well over 95 percent of Jews are Zionists.

The global surge in attacks on Jews across the Diaspora shows that many “anti-Zionist” protestors are antisemites. The victims of these attacks have nothing to do with Israel or its policies, so attacking does not serve an “anti-Zionist” agenda. Critics of China do not assault ethnic Chinese people because of China’s policies, and those who oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and not targeting people of Russian ancestry. Yet, Jews everywhere are told they are accountable for what Israel does.

It is just an excuse to attack Jews.

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