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Anti-Zionism

Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism.[a] Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—a region partly coinciding with the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way.[7]

"Anti-Israel" redirects here. For criticism of Israel, see Criticism of Israel.

Until World War II, anti-Zionism was widespread among Jews for varying reasons. Orthodox Jews opposed Zionism on religious grounds, as preempting the Messiah,[b] while many secular Jewish anti-Zionists identified more with ideals of the Enlightenment and saw Zionism as a reactionary ideology. Opposition to Zionism in the Jewish diaspora was surmounted only from the 1930s onward, as conditions for Jews deteriorated radically in Europe and, with the Second World War, the sheer scale of the Holocaust was felt.[8] Thereafter, Jewish anti-Zionist groups generally either disintegrated or transformed into pro-Zionist organizations, though many small groups, and bodies like the American Council for Judaism, conserved an earlier Reform tradition of rejection of Zionism.[9] Non-Jewish anti-Zionism likewise spanned communal and religious groups, with the Arab population of Palestine largely opposed to what it considered the colonial dispossession of its homeland. Opposition to Zionism was, and continues to be, widespread in the Arab world, especially among Palestinians.


Zionism's proponents note its success in establishing the Jewish state of Israel in the region of Palestine, and seek to portray anti-Zionism as broad opposition to Israel and a Jewish presence in the region. Some supporters of Zionism highlight that some antisemites hold anti-Zionist views. The relationship between Zionism, anti-Zionism and antisemitism is debated, with some academics and organizations that study antisemitism taking the view that anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic or new antisemitism, while others reject any such linkage as unfounded and a method to stifle criticism of Israel and its policies, including its occupation of the West Bank and blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Political scientist Peter Beattie, in an analytical overview of the specialist literature which actually used polling data in several countries to test the purported link between criticism of Israel and antisemitism found no necessary empirical correlation, cautioning that assertions of such an innate connection were calumnious. He concludes, "Most of those critical of Israeli policies are not anti-Semites. Only a fraction of the US population harbours anti-Semitic views, and while logically this fraction would be overrepresented among critics of Israel, the present and prior research indicate that they comprise only a small part. Inaccurate charges of anti-Semitism are not merely calumny, but threaten to debase the term itself and weaken its connection to a very real, and very dangerous, form of prejudice."

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The German sociologist 's analysis of empirical polling data for Germany concluded that whereas right-wing respondents critical of Israel tended to have views overlapping with classical antisemitism, left-wing interviewees' criticisms of Israel did not transfer into criticism of Jews.[aw]

Werner Bergmann

Works related to Zionism at Wikisource

Media related to Anti-Zionism at Wikimedia Commons

– essays by members of Matzpen

The Other Israel: The Radical Case Against Zionism

Lawrence Davidson , The Present State of Anti-Semitism, Logos, Issue 9.1, (Winter 2010)

Lawrence Davidson

True Torah Jews Against Zionism

by Daniel Lange/Levitsky, Monthly Review, June 2009

Jews Confront Zionism