Anti-Semitism, Zionism, and Anti-Zionism

"Either this nation shall kill racism, or racism shall kill this nation." (S. Jonas, August, 2018)

Theodor Herzl on board a vessel as it reaches the shores of Palestine.
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As is well-known, "Anti-Semitism," "Zionism," and "Anti-Zionism" are terms that are much in the news these days, in the context of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza. The exact purposes(s) of either attack have not yet been made clear, although in my view, as previously published, one major goal for each side has already been accomplished: there will be no "Two-State Solution" for the foreseeable solution, if ever (see also). Further, as pointed out by the journalist Tom Friedman in The New York Times of Jan. 26, 2024, the Hamas attack (along with the subsequent Israeli invasion) suspended, if it did not end, the further progress towards finalizing the "Abraham Accords," which would establish formal ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia and several other Muslim nations, certainly a development totally opposed by the sponsors of Hamas, Iran.

As is also well-known, there have been massive demonstrations against Israeli policy in Gaza around the world. More importantly, numerous nations, as well as major international organizations, such as the European Union, have put forward demands for at least a cease-fire to attempt to relieve the massive civilian suffering that has resulted from the Israeli invasion in response to the Hamas attack. There is also the case charging Israel with genocide that South Africa has brought before the International Court of Justice in The Hague. In dealing with the ICJ case, the various anti-Israeli-policy resolutions, as well as the various anti-Israeli-policy demonstrations, as well as the pro-Israeli initiatives that have appeared, especially in the United States, there is often a massive confusion in terminology.

The most common one, found in the pronouncements and policy resolutions put forward by major (although not all) elements in the "pro-Israel," "pro-Palestinian," and "pro-Hamas" forces (and clearly, the latter two are not always aligned), is that "anti-Zionism" automatically means "anti-Semitism." While it sometimes does, it often does not. Indeed, there are many groups/organizations of Jews, both inside Israel and abroad, which are opposed to current Israeli policy, some of which groups label it "Zionist." They are hardly anti-Semitic. Neither are many of the anti-Israeli-policy groups and organizations around the world. Let us repeat that. In modern times, "anti-Zionism," in terns of being opposed to the policies of the current government of the State of Israel (which, as it happens, has only a four-seat majority in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset) does not equal "anti-Semitism."

However, there is one group of organizations, led in the United States by the Anti-Defamation League and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which have been working very hard over a number of decades to establish a perfect equivalency between "anti-Zionism" and "anti-Semitism." While such an equivalency is totally ahistorical, as I will deal with in some detail below, it is totally useful politically, especially of course in the United States, where both organizations are working 24/7 to keep U.S. government policy fully behind that of the current government of the State of Israel, regardless of what the policy of that nation is.

And so, in the U.S. if at any level, a political/media/academia/organizational/- personal one, opposes the policies of the current government of the State of Israel, ADL/AIPAC and their allies will automatically label that person/persons/- organization as an "anti-Semite/anti-Semitic." In the past several months I have written several columns on the history and meanings of anti-Semitism, Zionism, anti-Zionism, and the policy of the current government of Israel which has been discernable for a number of years since Israeli "Settlers" began moving into the "West Bank" in considerable numbers and taking over both Palestinian lands and Palestinian governmental functions, which I characterize as "expulsionism." Indeed, it is the other side of the coin of the policy just announced by Prime Minster Netanyahu that (at least as long as the Likud-led-right-wing coalition is in power), as noted, there will never be a "two-state solution."

As to the Terminology

Anti-Semitism. As I discussed in an earlier column on anti-Semitism and its history, it is what I call the "Default Hate." By that I mean, in the Western world at least, it is a hate-form that is always there, that can be picked up very easily by any government/political party-movement/religious grouping/individuals to use for a variety of purposes. Historically, it falls generally into three over-lapping periods. Its development actually began before the Common Era when it was used, presumably for political purposes by one Roman ruler or another. It is generally accepted that it was around the turn of the 5th Century C.E. that Saint Augustine codified the doctrine that "the Jews killed Christ," which became the common basis for anti-Semitism in Europe (and later in the Western Hemisphere) until the late 19th century. When, first in Austria then shortly thereafter in Germany, the use of anti-Semitism for political purposes was developed and then implemented.

Zionism. Early Zionism developed among Jewish communities in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries as a way, in the minds, at least, of Jews ("next year in Jerusalem") to deal with the ongoing anti-Semitism and repression they were experiencing, especially in the Russian Empire. Nothing much came of it until the development of political anti-Semitism in Central Europe in the late 19th century when Theodor Herzl and colleagues began to develop their own political movement which said, in essence, "you don't want us here? OK we'll all emigrate to the Biblical Land of Zion." It is important to understand that modern Zionism was developed from, on the one hand, some Biblical mythology, but on the other from a very real, very growing, antisemitic political movement in central Europe and Russia (which flourished also in France in the 1890s during the "Dreyfus Affair").

Of course, that land happened to be "Palestine," part of the Ottoman Empire until the end of World War I, when it became the British "Mandate." And then after World War II, according to a UN resolution, the land was to be divided between those Jews who had emigrated between-the-wars (a relatively small number) and the European holocaust survivors who could find few other countries that would welcome them (including the United States). So, bottom line, for the most part, the late 19th-20th century Zionism that led to the founding of the State of Israel was a response to European anti-Semitism, both political and murderous.

After World War II, with the founding of the State of Israel, for non-European Jews there was a different kind of Zionism, not of the have-to/nowhere-else-to-go type, but voluntary, leaving countries where they could stay without problems, because they wanted to make "Aliyah," that is emigration from the Diaspora (that is "Jews spread around the world") to the new "homeland," the State of Israel.

I have a personal story on this. As I have regularly reported in this space, my father, Prof. Harold J. Jonas, was a fighter against U.S. anti-Semitism in the 1930s, and among other things did the bulk of the research for the first book to prove that the famously anti-Semitic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" was a forgery (published under the name of a Gentile for political reasons). He had a close colleague, and indeed a very close friend, who allied with him in these battles. (He shall in this space remain nameless.) After the establishment of the State of Israel Dad's friend took the position that every Jew in the Diaspora, including my father and presumably his family, should emigrate to the new nation. Family issues aside (my mother would hardly be one to emigrate to Israel), Dad's position was "no, I'm a U.S." (I never use the term "American" to describe U.S. citizens. Every resident of both North and South America is an "American.") "My grandfather arrived from (the Prussian sector) of Poland in 1867. I grew up in small town about 60 miles northwest of New York City. I am an American --- and a Jew. My roots are here." Dad told me that after that conversation his then-to-be former friend never spoke with him again and in fact did shortly thereafter make Aliyah.

Getting back to the main subject, another, different version of "Zionism" has developed over the years in the State of Israel. This is the "Zionism" that both its supporters and its opponents, both with Israel and abroad, are dealing with. That is this version describes the Israeli right-wing's policy that from the beginning, when the right-wing members of the Jewish Agency rejected the proposed UN-Partition-solution (which was approved by the slimmest of margins among the Jewish Agency), and then when the new State of Israel engaged in forceful expulsion of Palestinians at the time of Six-Nations War against that State, that expulsion known to the Palestinians as the "Nakba" (catastrophe), when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forcefully driven from their homes.

With a few interruptions (see "Oslo"), this right-wing Israeli policy has been maintained over time. In both Israel and abroad, as noted it is often referred to by the name "Zionism," even though its meaning is quite different from the original version. That one was, to repeat, a response/reaction to European anti-Semitism on the one hand, and the world-in-general providing no other place for Jews to go to, either just before World War II and just after it, on the other. It is this right-wing variation of "Zionism" to which most anti-Zionists are referring today. That is, opposition of the policies of the current Right-Wing Israeli government, whether in Gaza, or the West Bank, or within the internationally recognized borders of the State of Israel, where Palestinians, Israeli citizens, have been the object of increasingly restrictive/discriminatory policies.

BUT, while some current anti-Zionists may also be anti-Semitic in the traditional sense, certainly hardly all of them are. Tarring such anti-Zionists, especially in the United States, with the ADL/AIPAC-developed "anti-Semitic" brush, does such folk an extreme dis-service. Such tarring is also useful for the supporters of the policies of the present Israeli government in characterizing their own opposition to current anti-Zionist policy (and protests). That is, for many supporters of the current Israeli government, if one is opposed to them, one is automatically an anti-Semite. More importantly, such tarring also prevents, or at least inhibits, the U.S. government from bring the kind of pressure to bear on the present Israeli government that could be effective in at least moderating some of their policies. To say nothing about bringing about at some sort of rational resolution to the Gaza Crisis. Of course, that inhibition is one of the paramount goals of the Netanyahu-supporters in both ADL and AIPAC.

Until that disentanglement of the meanings of the two terms is somehow accomplished, in this country at least little is going to accomplished in helping along the process which must be followed to achieve safety for the Palestinians and security for the State of Israel.