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by dlubarov
926 days ago
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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. |
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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