The resolution makes a dangerous conflation—and quite a few Democrats gave their wholehearted support.
“The resolution suggests that all anti-Zionism—it states—is antisemitism. That’s either intellectually disingenuous or just factually wrong,” said New York Representative Jerry Nadler, who voted present. “The authors if they were at all familiar with Jewish history & culture should know about Jewish anti-Zionism that was and is expressly not antisemitic. This resolution ignores the fact that even today, certain Orthodox Hasidic Jewish communities … have held views that are at odds with the modern Zionist conception.”
"The resolution suggests that all anti-Zionism -- it states -- is antisemitism. That’s either intellectually disingenuous or just factually wrong," said New York Representative Jerry Nadler, who voted present.
In a mounting offensive by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to unseat progressives who speak up for Palestinian rights, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who has been courted by AIPAC, announced earlier today he is launching a primary challenge against New York Congressmember Jamaal Bowman.
Progressives need to get meaner. This is the point where they need to stage a coup within the Party and push out these neolib, pro-capitalist, anti-progress, establishment hacks.
This is ridiculous, the first anti zionists were all Jewish. Some were even assassinated for their views. Zionism should not be conflated with Jewishness at all.
I am so tired of this bullshit and of Isreal's bullshit. I don't care if people think I am antisemitic because technically I am. I am in the same way I'm anti Christian, Muslim, Buddhism, Odinism and every other religion. Can we please stop using superstition as a reason to kill and hate eachother when there are plenty of good reasons to already do that or better yet just stop doing it all together.
I think the best term is "anti theocracy" and while Israel is in theory a democracy they are first and foremost a theocracy because the democracy is a right only reserved for those inside the theocratic construct.
The problem with this sort of language is that there are a few different things that people call "anti-Zionism". One is saying Israel does not have a holy right to the entirety of the land of Israel. Another is saying Israel has no right to exist at all. A third is any criticism of Israel or the Israeli leadership.
Only the second is antisemitism, as it implies that Jewish people and their nation should not exist.
Trouble is, it all gets lumped together. Any criticism of the Israeli leadership is fodder for the anti-semites who would wipe out the Jewish people given the opportunity. Any defense of the nation of Israel or the Jewish people is taken as tacit endorsement of the atrocities they are commiting.
This is an unsustainable level of intransigence that leaves no path forward resolving in peace.
No. No theocracy or ethno state has a right to exist. Brutal apartheid is baked into these concepts. For some reason most of the world can get on board when it comes to oppressive governments like Iran or even China spreading Han culture. If the myth of "a people without a land to a land without a people" were true there might be a case, but there is no such land, and certainly not in Palestine.
as it implies that Jewish people and their nation should not exist.
This is wildly incorrect. The only inherent implication of saying the state of Israel has no right to exist is that the state of Israel has no right to exist. That is, a state foundationally for and only for a certain ethno-religion, forcibly and violently founded in a land already full of people who aren't a part of that ethno-religion. Such a state is oppressive by its nature, given that the majority of people within its borders of control (and especially people within those borders and displaced from within those borders) are disenfranchised and do not have equal rights under the law or under the enforcement of law.
I'm not entirely on board with the idea of nations having rights at all. The people living in them do, but I don't see how an abstract entity should have rights that the people it represents don't have on their own.
To give a concrete example: the people of Iraq have a right to exist. But it's a country composed of ethnic groups that don't especially like each other, so having them all live in a single country isn't necessarily great. I don't think Iraq has a right to be a country, especially if it's interfering with the right to self-determination of the people living there. Maybe as a practical matter it's better for the country to exist, but rights aren't supposed to be contingent on practical concerns.
But other than that, I agree that Israel has as much right to exist as any other nation. Saying Israel should not exist is implicitly antisemitic because you can't get rid of the nation of Israel without wiping out the Jewish people living there.
They are putting on a show of being opposed while not doing everything in their power to oppose it. It's similar energy to when Justin Trudeau joined a BLM protest instead of using his position as prime minister of Canada to take a real stand against police brutality.
That was used as a stick to hit Labour before Corbyn as well. There's always been a handful of low level councillors that fail to draw a line between opposing apartheid in Gaza, and sharing comics of big nosed Jews eating babies on Twitter. And I acknowledge that this is mostly because Labour councillors are more likely to be Muslims with family ties to the Middle East in general. It was all overblown by the right wing media to make it seem like the entire Labour cabinet wanted to bring back the gas chambers.
But in fairness you also can't go and lay a wreath for a Munich massacre terrorist and then expect to go on to be PM of the UK. If that picture was doing the rounds during the Labour leadership contest, I doubt they'd have made him their leader.
Even without all that, I doubt he'd have beaten Boris in that election. His Brexit bluster had unified the former UKIP voters under him and that was enough to ensure victory against anyone.
The frustrating thing is that if you find an "anti-Zionist" online and scratch the surface just a little bit, it's almost 100% of the time an antisemitic white supremacist wearing anti-Zionism as a veneer, so it's kind of an understandable mistake.
But it's still a mistake, and they should know better.
Edit: Wow, I guess this struck a nerve. But it's true, most of the time - not all the time - people who call themselves "anti-Zionists" online also use (((parentheses))) around the word "globalist."
As BraveSirZaphod aptly points out, it's a pointless word these days. Better to use a phrase like, "opposed to the current Israeli government," which would - again, as BraveSirZaphod points out - put you in company with the majority of Israelis.
Hi, anti-Zionist here - feel free to scratch deeply bc that's a pretty terrible take. Israeli people from my experience have been generally nice, and I don't hate anyone based on their race or religion (though I generally do not like organized religion for a wide variety of reasons). Israel has a right to exist, it doesn't have a right to wantonly crush Palestinian people under it's boot and that's all it's doing at this point, along with attempting to hide and/or discredit any criticism of their part in this (had Netanyahu and his cronies not funded even more extremists in Hamas or taken the threat of an attack seriously, this all likely wouldn't have happened). Or do you really accept as accidental that they've killed more journalists per day than almost any major conflict?
Under most definitions of Zionism, you are a Zionist. When the term was coined, it referred to the idea that the Jews should move to Israel and establish some kind of formal community.
Of course, now Israel does exist, so that original frame of reference no longer exists and the term generally means "a perspective towards Israel that matches or opposes what I think".
At the beginning, opposing Zionism would mean that you don't think Jews should move back to the Levant. Of course, that did happen, so now what? Perhaps it means you think that Israel should remain at its current borders and not expand, but is that really anti-Zionism when it's literally the accomplishment of the Zionist mission? Or perhaps anti-Zionism is the belief that Jews should be forcibly removed from Israel or killed. That is unquestionably anti-Zionist, but it's also blatantly genocidal.
Basically, Zionism is a pointless term today and no one should use it. If you oppose Israel's current government - a perspective shared by most Israelis it should be noted - just say that, and consider avoiding a term that some people will plausibly interpret as advocating for their genocide.