How Anti-Zionism Relates to Anti-Semitism

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(Originally posted in N&CE by mistake)

I guess you could say that the often repeated point that Anti-Zionism doesn't necessarily imply Anti-Semitism is a sort of truism. Nevertheless these two things are related.

Given the abundance of religious and ethnic oppression worldwide, whenever somebody who is neither Palestinian nor Arab nor Muslim embraces Anti-Zionism as their personal cause, you have to consider how they feel about Jews. Especially in Europe, people have typically been raised with negative attitudes regarding Jews. Consider that Palestine is the only non-sovereign entity to have been admitted to the UN. I have seen a lot of evidence to the effect that in Europe, Palestine is considered to be a sovereign nation in principle if not in fact. Once an American notices this, it really stands out because this is not the usual American view. This has also been the view for a long time, since not that long after WWII. I could name a lot of countries equally deserving of that honor but only Palestine seems to have earned it.

I can't help thinking that after WWII, a lot of Europeans didn't feel all that badly about the Holocaust. I mean they didn't actually approve, but had no desire to dwell on it. Some countries like Poland for example built monuments to commemorate Gentile citizens who suffered from German invasion, but those countries have typically had little to say about the Holocaust. I can imagine that they saw the Jews who went to Palestine primarily as bothersome troublemakers rather than as a people seeking self determination. Nowadays, I suspect most Europeans who are anti-Zionist are that way because they always have been, so they may not in fact be anti-Semites but their Anti-Zionism doubtlessly has roots in the Antisemitism of their grandparents.

BTW I have focused on Europe but I don't want to point a finger at Europeans specifically. I will say that outside the Western world, strong opinions regarding the Middle East are less common, except possibly for Muslim populations.

PS I wonder if the conflict has gone on for as long as it has because Palestinians, unlike Rohingya for example, have always been told they have the global community behind their cause, so eventually they should get their entire original homeland back. Therefore nothing to be gained from compromise.

Palestine has NOT been admitted to the UN as a member state. It has "observer" status only.

Lots of national governments around the world do officially recognize it as a state, however. See Wikipedia article on International recognition of the State of Palestine. Note that, in Europe, Palestine is recognized by most eastern European countries but NOT by most Western European countries. (The above-linked Wikipedia article contains a world map showing countries that recognize Palestine vs. countries that do not.)


In Western Europe too, or mainly in Eastern Europe?


The thirty years or so after World War II were an era of de-colonization, especially around 1960. Israel was seen as a settler-colonialist enterprise, which ceased to be acceptable among Europeans, now that they themselves were no longer allowed to be colonialists of any kind, much less settler-colonialists.


What other countries are you thinking of? Various ethnically distinct provinces of various European countries? Indian reservations here in the U.S.A.? Various parts of western China?


Poland has certainly maintained Auschwitz and other concentration camps as museums and as memorials to the many people, including Jews, who were killed by the Nazis there.


Perhaps, but I think the main factor is geopolitics. Once Israel managed to win the favor of the U.S.A., Israel was therefore favored by most NATO countries and by a few of the U.S.A.'s other allies in other parts of the world, whereas it was opposed by the Communist-bloc countries.

Meanwhile, outside of Europe: Many non-Communist former colonies around the world saw Palestine as a fellow Third World country being colonized by Westerners. And, of course, many Muslim-majority countries worried about the prospect of one of their holy places falling into non-Muslim hands. There was also a wave of pan-Arabism. Also, by the 1970's, Saudi Arabia was able (thanks to its oil) to put pressure on Western countries to start taking Palestine at least somewhat seriously, even if they still didn't officially recognized it.


No doubt this has been a big source of hope for the Palestinians. However....


The Palestinians, or at least the PLO/Fatah/PA, actually have compromised quite a bit. The Oslo accords, which outlined a roadmap toward a two-state solution, were a major compromise for the PLO/PA as well as for Israel.

But the peace process never advanced beyond the initial phases outlined in the Oslo accords.

From the Palestinian point of view, this is mainly because Israel has repeatedly violated the treaty by putting lots of new illegal Israeli settlements in "Area C" of the West Bank. (See this map of areas A, B, and C, and see explanation here.) Additionally, the Swiss-cheese geography of Israeli-occupied "Area C" has made it hard for Palestinians (largely confined to "Area A" and "Area B") to get from one part of the West Bank to another, whereas Israeli Jews are much freer to move around in "Area C." This is a big source of daily annoyance, humiliation, and worse, to the Palestinians.

Also there have been the ongoing evictions of Palestinians, by the Israeli government, from parts of Jerusalem.

Given that history, it is understandable why many Palestinians who once favored a two-state solution have given up on it.

That map is interesting. The designated European countries seem to all be FSU or former Warsaw Pact members. They probably recognized Palestine back when they were still part of the Soviet Bloc. For some reason I got the impression that Bulgarians and Serbs tended to be sympathetic to Israel. NATO countries probably demur from recognizing Israel out of a desire not to defy the US. I guarantee you that if you stop people on the street in Paris and quiz them, you will find very little sympathy for Zionism, as compared to an average US city.

Please note that my post had to do with attitudes of people with no personal link to the Middle East. I made a point of excluding Muslim areas from consideration and was not considering official policy of any government.

I do not think anti-Zionism relates to antisemitism in Europe in the vast majority of cases. What evidence do you base this stance on? It seems more like speculation since you don’t know how people think and feel.

Even if that’s true, that doesn’t mean that those people are antisemitic. There are a few reasons that people can be against Zionism that don’t involve hating Jews. (See my signature.)

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 25 Oct 2023, 7:33 am, edited 1 time in total.

Trust me. A lot of people in France are antisemitic.

Why would I “trust” someone’s opinion about this without evidence?

I’m sure there are antisemitics everywhere, but people can be and are anti-Zionist without being antisemitic. People can scrutinize ideas, religious and otherwise, without hating the people.

I engage in a lot of French content (books, movies, YouTube videos, and podcasts) since I’m a French language learner, and I’ve observed a great deal of sympathy towards Jews during the Holocaust, etc. Obviously, that doesn’t mean much in terms of your average person, but to make a generalized claim in a thread, you need evidence to support it.

I had that impression about the Serbs also. But being at least somewhat sympathetic to Israel does not exclude the possibility of also recognizing Palestine, especially if that recognition was inherited from a previous government.


These days, it seems to me that more and more people in Western Europe are likely to have at least indirect "personal links to the Middle East," e.g. by having friends, neighbors, co-workers, or in some cases spouses/in-laws, who happen to be immigrants from the Middle East.

In what specific ways? Anything else besides your interpretation of their anti-Zionism as being motivated by anti-Jewish bigotry?

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that anti-Zionism, in France, is most likely to be motivated by the feeling that if Western European countries are not allowed to have overseas colonies anymore, then European-born and American-born Jews should not be allowed to practice settler-colonialism in Israel/Palestine either.

EDIT: Doing some online research just now, I now realize there is indeed significant anti-Jewish bigotry in France these days. I posted more about this later in this thread.

Last edited by Mona Pereth on 25 Oct 2023, 1:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Folks have told me that "anti zionism IS antisemitism".

But it seems to me that the actual relationship between antisemitism and antizionism is complex.

In the Early Twentieth Century when modern Zionism emerged it got allies from Gentile antisemites (including the early Nazis) because...hey we dont want Jews here in Europe so why not send the off packing to someplace else?

And Christian Zionism predated Jewish Zionism. Even in the 1600s Christian preachers in England wanted Jews of the diaspora to gather together back in the Holy Land ... so Jesus could return and do the whole endtimes thing. Trouble is that these preachers were also assuming that once gathered together in the Holy Land these reunited Jews would...convert to Christianity! And the modern successors of these preachers ...the Evangelical Protestant American allies Israel have the same belief...more Zionist than the Zionist Jews...but...also anti Jewish (though anti belief..not hate by blood..at least that).

And the strictly Orthodox Jews considered modern Zionism to be a blasphemy and opposed it. Though most relented and accepted the state of Israel as de facto by the Fifties. But some factions still cling anti zionism.

I have heard that the French are quite antisemitic. A lady professor said that the French say things like "thats a very Jewish looking umbrella you have". Kinda like how Whites in the South think of eating watermelon or planting zinnias as a "Black thing". Inane nonsense like that.

How the f*ck does an umbrella look very Jewish? The mind boggles

Googling "French antisemitism" just now, I found the Wikipedia article Antisemitism in 21st-century France, which begins as follows:

That being the case, anti-Jewish bigotry in France could be partly an anti-immigrant thing.


Yes, right wing nationalism plus Holocaust denial could certainly result in lots of anti-Jewish bigotry.

As for why there are now so many Jews of north African origin in France, the Wikipedia article says:

In my experience zionism is a much bigger thing among American Jews that among European Jews. From what I have heard, even in Israel the most militant zionists and settlers are the people that were born and raised in the US before they emigrated to Israel, while the people born in Israel are generally more moderate. Of course there is anti-zionism that is based on anti-semitism, but there is also the other way around - right-wing people that want the Jews to move to Israel and are supporting the zionistic movement for anti-semitistic reasons. The US is a much bigger supporter than EU of Israel. I think that's because there is a large group of right-wing people in the US that supports israel for religious or anti-semitic reasons. I don't think there is more anti-semitism in Europe among people with no connection to the Middle East than among the same same group of people in the US. That's my 2 cents anyway.

Probably because there 's more support for Zionism, generally, here in the U.S.A. (thanks in part to the doctrine of premillenial dispensationalism among many American evangelical Christians).


That's very interesting! And rather paradoxical.

What you're telling me is that Israeli's most ardent Zionists are those Jews who had the least compelling reasons to move to Israel in the first place.

The whole point of Zionism, for the Jewish founders of the state of Israel, was for Israel to be a place where Jews could be safe from persecution. But, if what you are telling me is correct, then the most ardent Zionists today are Jews from the U.S.A., where, if I'm not mistaken, Jews are less persecuted than they are almost anywhere else in the world. Israel is not exactly a safer place for Jews than the U.S.A., especially during the wars that Israel periodically gets into.


Jews I've known who have been to Europe have told me that anti-Jewish bigotry was much worse in Europe, especially in some parts of Eastern Europe, than here in the U.S.A., or at least here in the NYC metro area. (Here in the U.S.A., there's probably a lot more anti-Jewish bigotry outside the NYC metro area than within it.)

Related to what you've just told us, it seems also that there are increasing numbers of Orthodox Jews, here in the U.S.A., who are "making Aliyah" to Israel for purely religious reasons, and not because of any persecution they've experienced.

I wrote this elsewhere but since we have a separate thread

That anti zionism is anti semitism has been accepted in a lot of mainstream definitions. The claim is based on perceived double standards. The argument goes like this France, England, Russia, China etc have done terrible things but nobody says they have no right to their own country with the exception of Israel therefore anti Zionism must be based in hatred of Jews.

My opinion is while there is a double standard thinking Israel should not does not necessarily equate to hating Jews. I do believe a lot if not most anti zionism is coded Jew hatred.

That's a big part of what I tried to say in my OP. However, over time, anti-Zionism has become such a mainstream attitude that it has been embraced by a lot of people with no strong opinions about Jews. But much less so in North America than other parts of the West.

From what I've seen, American Jews, who are overwhelming secular, seldom emigrate to Israel. The exception are observant Orthodox Jews. In fact, the most hard core West Bank settlers are American or Canadian. They actually have very few social connections to ordinary Israelis. In contrast, elsewhere in the world, Jews frequently emigrate to Israel, because they have never felt safe in their "host countries". But those people typically Integrate into mainstream Israeli society.