[samatman]

anti-Zionism is the proposition that Israel must be destroyed. Zionism is the movement to ensure that the Jewish homeland in the form of the state of Israel be created and sustained, anti-Zionism is its antithesis.

This is not the same as being critical of that state, being anti-Israel isn't antisemitic (except when it is, obviously), but nor is it anti-Zionism. Saying Netanyahu should be dragged before the Hague, that the international community should demand an immediate ceasefire or force a two-state solution, that Israel must uphold the right of return: none of these are anti-Zionism, nor antisemitic.

If your position is not that Israel must be destroyed, good, don't call yourself anti-Zionist though. If it is, then yes, that's antisemitic, or the word is meaningless.

Similarly, find another slogan besides "From the river to the sea", because that is, in fact, a call to ethnically cleanse all Jews from Israel. It has meant that since the establishment of Israel, and you don't get to wander in and say it means something different at this point. If you don't mean that, don't say it. Find literally any other way to express yourself.

[the_gastropod]

From Wikipedia [1], the definition of anti-Zionism is:

> [The belief that] the modern State of Israel, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way

This is very different from "Israel must be destroyed".

Similarly, your interpretation of "From the river to the sea" is extreme. It's only really been a scrutinized slogan since Hamas started using it in 2017. Its previous ~60 years of use were consistently about creating a secular, multi-ethnic, democratic state for all the people inside its borders.

There has never been an official Palestinian position calling for the removal of Jews.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Zionism

[dlubarov]

What you quoted is extremely broad, and I don't think it was meant as the definition of anti-Zionism. Since it was prefaced with "all its proponents agree that", it seems like a sort of lower bound on the various definitions.

If we did take that to be the definition of anti-Zionism, then it seems one could be both a Zionist and an anti-Zionist, if they supported the existence of a Jewish state but didn't approve of the particular way Israel was established.

[skissane]

> If we did take that to be the definition of anti-Zionism, then it seems one could be both a Zionist and an anti-Zionist, if they supported the existence of a Jewish state but didn't approve of the particular way Israel was established.

Anti-Zionism was the mainstream Orthodox Jewish position prior to the Holocaust; and contemporary mainstream Haredi anti-Zionism essentially continues that historical position largely unchanged. According to that viewpoint, it is a sin to establish a Jewish-ruled state in Eretz Yisrael prior to the coming of the Messiah. So, classical Jewish anti-Zionism supports the existence of a Jewish state (in the future messianic age) but doesn’t approve of the particular way Israel was established (by mostly secular Zionists in 1948 instead of by a divinely appointed Messiah at some point in the future). Still, it clearly is an anti-Zionist position not a Zionist one.

The majority of contemporary Haredim are neither anti-Zionist (the mainstream being Satmar, Edah HaCharedeis, Central Rabbinical Congress, and then there are extremists such as Neturei Karta) nor explicitly Zionist (as in the Hardal), rather non-Zionist. Haredi non-Zionists agree with the anti-Zionists that the 1948 creation of the State of Israel was a sin, but now it exists, they say (contrary to the anti-Zionists) that it is okay to cooperate with it by voting in its elections, running candidates in the Knesset, accepting its handouts, etc. Sometimes the boundary between non-Zionism and soft Zionism is rather murky - my impression is that is particularly true of contemporary Chabad, whose non-Zionism has grown closer to Zionism over time

I think there is an important (but often ignored) distinction here between theory and practice - whatever one thinks of the rights or wrongs of Zionism as an ideology in the abstract, doesn’t necessarily decide one’s practical attitude towards the State of Israel - e.g. a person (whether Jewish or non-Jewish, whether in Israel/Palestine or on the opposite side of the planet) can theoretically oppose Zionism as an erroneous ideology, yet simultaneously decide to support the State of Israel on pragmatic grounds-and there is no necessary logical inconsistency in that

[dlubarov]

I'm not quite clear on what conclusion you're drawing. It seems like you're rightfully observing that my very brief description of Zionism was lacking important qualifiers. But after amending it, surely it's still possible for a Zionist to hold the view that Israel (or the process of its establishment) was "flawed or unjust in some way"?

Say one supported the establishment of Israel in Palestine in 1948, but took issue with the expulsion of Palestinians from some areas. How would you characterize their view? In my mind it's still a Zionist view, not anti-Zionist (or both?) as the definition above would suggest.

[skissane]

> But after amending it, surely it's still possible for a Zionist to hold the view that Israel (or the process of its establishment) was "flawed or unjust in some way"?

What I’m saying is that position could be either Zionist, anti-Zionist, or non-Zionist, depending on the particular reasons why one thinks it was “flawed or unjust in some way”

[the_gastropod]

Well, yes. That’s kinda the point. “Anti-Zionism = antisemitism” is simplistic nonsense meant to make critics of Israel seem like bigots.

[roflyear]

I always was under the impression that Anti-Zionism was just being against Zionism.

[dlubarov]

There were basically two prongs to Zionism, (1) encouraging the return of Jews to their homeland, and (2) supporting the creation a Jewish state. Now that Israel exists, (2) has morphed into something like "supporting Israel's continued existence and connection to Judaism".

I think being anti-Zionist means being against both prongs, meaning that there should no longer be a Jewish state. Given the practical implications of that, it seems hard to justify without antisemitism.

Wikipedia has a whole section [1] on "View that [anti-Zionism and antisemitism] are not interlinked", but those supporting that view seem to be using an overly-broad definition of anti-Zionism.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Zionism#View_that_the_two...

[skissane]

> I think being anti-Zionist means being against both prongs, meaning that there should no longer be a Jewish state. Given the practical implications of that, it seems hard to justify without antisemitism.

Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin is professor of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University. He criticises Zionism, and promotes binationalism as an alternative–the idea of a single state shared equally by two nations (Arab and Jewish)–also known variously as the "one state solution" or "Israeltine" or "Isratin". [0] Obviously if he had his way, there would no longer be a Jewish state–if by that one means an exclusively Jewish state. But, I find it hard to take seriously the idea that a Jewish Israeli academic is antisemitic – his views may well be impractical and overly idealistic, but where is the evidence he's an antisemite? And I think this is just one example of the several different forms of contemporary non-antisemitic opposition to Zionism.

[0] https://www.forum-transregionale-studien.de/kommunikation/de...

[dlubarov]

Fair point - I agree there are exceptions.

[roflyear]

There has to be some middle here, where you're not pro-killing Jews, but you're against Zionism. If that middle isn't anti-zionism, what is the middle position?

[dlubarov]

Are you sure you're against Zionism? It seems like Zionism sometimes gets conflated with support for the particular policies of the current Israeli government, especially on social media recently, even though Zionism isn't about that.

[FireBeyond]

> Similarly, find another slogan besides "From the river to the sea", because that is, in fact, a call to ethnically cleanse all Jews from Israel. It has meant that since the establishment of Israel, and you don't get to wander in and say it means something different at this point. If you don't mean that, don't say it. Find literally any other way to express yourself.

The phrase was also used by the Israeli ruling Likud party as part of their 1977 election manifesto which stated "Judea and Samaria will not be handed to any foreign administration; between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty."

So it hasn't always meant that, really.

[skissane]

> anti-Zionism is the proposition that Israel must be destroyed

That’s not true. Rebbe Teitelbaum was an anti-Zionist, he opposed the creation of the modern state of Israel as sinful, and he opposed Haredi Jews cooperating with the state (such as by being elected to the Knesset or accepting government benefits.) But he did not support the physical destruction of Jewish communities in Eretz Yisrael. And that remains to this day the mainstream anti-Zionist position of Satmar, Edah HaChareidis in Israel, and the Central Rabbinical Congress in North America - the belief that the existence of the state of Israel is a sin, and that it is a sin for Jews to cooperate with it, but at the same time strongly condemning extremist anti-Zionist groups such as Neturei Karta who ally with non-Jews who seek to physically harm Jews who live there, and rejecting any cooperation with the Palestinian cause-Rebbe Teitelbaum viewed his anti-Zionism as an internal Jewish issue, and in any violent conflict between Jews and non-Jews he would pray for the Jewish side, even though those Jews happened to be his Zionist opponents.

As well as mainstream Haredi anti-Zionism, there are other varieties of anti-Zionism which don’t entail support for the physical destruction of Israel. Zionism is Jewish nationalism. Some people have a principled ideological opposition to all forms of nationalism - they are anti-nationalists - and a consistent anti-nationalist must also be an anti-Zionist. That principled opposition to all nationalist ideologies does not entail any particular position on practical questions, and is completely compatible with pacifism, and hoping that the majority of the population of Israel/Palestine eventually comes to peacefully reject nationalism.

Nationalism comes in many varieties - civic, linguistic, ethnic, religious, ethnoreligious, etc - and Zionism is a nationalism of the ethnoreligious kind. As well as anti-nationalists who consistently oppose all nationalisms, there are also those who support some types but oppose others - for example, many civic nationalists have a principled opposition to non-civic nationalisms. A consistent civic nationalist who took such a position would have to be an anti-Zionist, but would have no in-principle objection to Israeli civic nationalism.

It is undeniable that many people who identify as “anti-Zionist” do end up espousing antisemitic views, and sometimes even use “anti-Zionist” as a more socially acceptable synonym for antisemite - at the same time, there are several ways someone can be anti-Zionist without necessarily being antisemitic, and many people who are. The equation “all anti-Zionism is antisemitism” which the US Congress is promoting here is a very ignorant oversimplification