The American Jewish establishment is becoming obsessed with Jewish anti-Zionists. Ignore them. Don’t demonize them: anti-Zionists feed off the negative attention, and it hurts their heartbroken families.
But stop kowtowing to them. Acknowledge the anguish their disloyalty causes. Then sing the loudest, proudest, most nuanced, and welcoming Zionist song we can sing – in Israel and beyond.
Anti-Zionism is the latest “moral panic” – like hyper-masking or anti-vaxxing. In 1972, sociologist Stanley Cohen described how reporters, activists, politicians – self-appointed “moral entrepreneurs” – oversimplify, triggering mass overreactions targeting some “folk devil.” Anti-Zionist hysteria sensationally, obsessively, and unfairly demonizes Israelis and Zionists.
Antisemitism, that age-old flame-thrower, accelerates this mania. Tragically, anti-Zionism bewitches some Jews, especially young Progressives. Foolishly, Jewish leaders are panicking, exaggerating anti-Zionists’ pervasiveness, then crossing communal redlines.
Just because a problem feels ubiquitous, doesn’t make it so. Just because everyone knows some radical person, doesn’t negate the polls estimating that barely 7% of American Jews call themselves “anti-Zionist.” And beware: if phototropism bends trees toward the sun – obsessive outreach to anti-Zionists also deforms, bending over backwards with futile attempts to mollify unyielding zealots.
Anti-Zionism goes far beyond hating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Israel’s approach to Palestinians. It means denying Zionism, the Jewish movement of national liberation, committed to Jewish peoplehood and the democratic-Jewish State of Israel. Anti-Zionism seeks to destroy Israel, home to 10 million people. When terrorists kill, maim, rape, kidnap, or abuse Israelis, anti-Zionism calls that “victory.”
Don’t cover-up that vileness or apologize for anti-Zionism’s Jihadism. It’s not a human rights movement: it’s a wrong-headed mania targeting Jews – wherever they live.
'We as a humanity have a common enemy': Francesca Albanese
Anti-Zionism is the UN’s Francesca Albanese saying about Israel: “we as a humanity have a common enemy.” Anti-Zionism entails celebrating October 7’s horrors. It is feminists abhorring mass-gendered violence except when inflicted on Israelis. Anti-Zionism narrowly defines Judaism as a religion, negating Jewish peoplehood. It’s committing historicide by calling Israel “settler-colonialist,” trying to kill Jews’ 3,500 history intertwined with their homeland – while rejecting the New Testament, which repeatedly mentions Judea, Galilee, and Israel. It’s distorting words like “apartheid,” “racism,” “starvation” and “genocide,” to cast Israelis as folk devils. It’s equating the word “Zio” with evil.
For decades, the Palestinian national movement *has crossbred anti-Zionism with antisemitism. That’s why marauding Gazans yelled Itbach al-Yahud – slaughter the Jew – and boasted to their parents of killing Jews, even though some murdered non-Jews. That’s why pro-Palestinian activists target Hanukkah celebrants on Bondi Beach and synagogue-goers worldwide. And that’s why Princetonians protesting former prime minister Naftali Bennett called fellow students “inbred swine,” while sneering “go back to Europe.”
Maya Angelou taught: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
Sadly, a loud but marginal minority of anti-Zionist Jews exists. They’re anti-Zionist – not just critics – if they shared fliers featuring paragliders used to murder Nova festival concert-goers, as IfNotNow’s Detroit chapter did. They’re anti-Zionist if they mimic most pro-Palestinians who use controversial Israeli actions or statements to negate that Israel is, not just criticize what Israel does. And they’re anti-Zionist if they boycott Israel, our democratic Jewish state – or cancel loved ones who dare to be Israeli or pro-Israel.
Communities lacking boundaries lack backbone, too – or simply collapse. Even Abraham and Sarah’s most welcoming tent separated insiders from outsiders. Momma Troy warned: “if you’re too open-minded, your brains fall out.”
Critics, who have been tempted to accuse me of being judgmental, should consider how “inclusive” they are regarding racists, misogynists, or “Jews for Jesus.” How much authenticity will Jews sacrifice on the altar of “inclusivity” – that false, voracious god? Let’s celebrate Shabbat on Sunday, replace Hebrew with English, and razor out any Torah passages that the 2024 Democratic Party platform committee wouldn’t approve. Or is only Zionism conditional?
Jews choose. They choose to be Jews even if they lose Jews who’d rather pacify or mimic non-Jews.
While negating Jews’ historical, emotional, spiritual, and philosophical connection to the homeland, anti-Zionism repudiates the cardinal Jewish value of caring about one another. It forsakes 45% of the Jewish people – over seven million Israeli Jews. That betrays 3,500 years of Jews’ cherishing solidarity, saying that all of Israel is intertwined, calling the Jewish people one body we care for collectively. If you “just” drill a hole under your seat, the Talmud warns, the whole boat sinks.
Nevertheless, this Jewish particularism cultivates love for humanity. Tzedakah – righteousness, justice, repairing the world – transcends selfishness. It radiates outward, from commitments to family, community, your people, then the world. Former British prime minister Theresa May warns: “If you believe you are a citizen of the world – you are a citizen of nowhere.”
Jewish solidarity emphasizes unity, not uniformity. Our community remains committed to healthy debate – machloket. The Talmud adds that Hillel’s and Shammai’s perpetually battling students nevertheless “did not refrain from marrying women from each other’s communities.” Quarreling is natural; embracing those seeking to kill you is not.
Resisting this moral panic doesn’t ignore the pain, anger, frustration many Jews, old and young, are experiencing. Diaspora Jews and Israelis absorb contrasting stimuli daily. As “genocide” accusations downplay Palestinian guilt and many institutions Jews worship bash Israel – in the media, academia, publishing, and the arts – Israelis encounter different realities.
We send our kids to their latest revolving-door reserves. We receive Facebook forwards describing attending the wedding of your son’s widow. We see videos of young heroes snowboarding blind or on one leg. We read interviews of intelligence officers who interrogated the so-called “innocent” Gazans who rampaged on October 7, and would happily repeat their atrocities.
So, yes, we need nuance, empathy, and an ability to learn from one another. But beware. By catering to the small, the loud, and the few who lost their way – American Jewry, in particular, risks losing its way.
The writer is an American presidential historian and Zionist activist born in Queens, living in Jerusalem. Last year he published, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath. His latest E-book, The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism and Jew-hatred was just published and can be downloaded on the website of JPPI – the Jewish People Policy Institute.