Grok-AI
Steve Kramer – Are anti-Zionism and Jew-hatred (antisemitism) identical?
What message is constantly being broadcast by certain entertainers, podcasters, students, politicians, journalists, and pundits? “I just object to Netanyahu/Israel/Israeli ministers/etc. I’m not an antisemite.” The demonstrators carry signs and banners declaring, “Abolish Zionism”. What do they think these words mean? They also include signs such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” This slogan requires the elimination of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants.
What is Zionism anyway? The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) defines Zionism as the movement for the self-determination and statehood of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel. So anti-Zionism is the negation of the Jews’ connection to the Land of Israel and their right to have a Jewish state. The Jews in “Palestine” should “go back to where they came from.” Actually, that exactly describes the Zionist enterprise: to provide a home, a nation-state, for Jews in their ancestral land.
What about the vaunted 2-state solution, dividing the Land of Israel with the Palestinian Arabs? Western countries opposed to Israel may dream about an Arab state and a Jewish one in tiny Israel, but neither population favors it. The Israelis already have a 21% Arab minority, while the Palestinian Authority forbids any Jews from living in their hoped-for state. The October 7 sneak attack against Israel changed the thinking of almost all Israelis who, up to then, believed that a 2-state solution was workable.
There’s also the possibility of a one-state solution. If Jews and Arabs lived in one state, the influx of Arabs from the benighted Arab states bordering Israel would soon make the Jews a small minority in their homeland, if not eliminated altogether. “One state” is clearly not going to happen.
Especially in recent decades, Zionism has taken on a political character, leading enemies of the Jews to vilify Zionism. There’s a very fine line separating some anti-Zionists from Jew-haters, so close that they loudly dispute the allegation (see NOTE about Mayor Mamdani below). When a Jew-hater threatens an Israeli Jew, it doesn’t matter if they claim they don’t hate Jews. They say they are just against “Zionists”. Anti-Zionists demand that no Jews live in Israel; they want “Palestine for the Arabs.” Some proclaim, “Go back to where you came from,” not realizing the irony of their demand to banish Jews, the indigenous people of the Land of Israel. Rabid anti-Zionists even include some Jewish adherents, which I must admit mystifies me.
Theodor Herzl, the Viennese journalist who became a crusading Zionist only after reporting on the infamous Dreyfus Affair (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.
With the advent of Zionism, which was one of many “isms” founded in the latter half of the 19th century, religious Jews began returning in numbers to Palestine, shortly followed by Jews from Yemen (religious) and Eastern Europe (socialist). Israel is the product of Zionist thought, both religious and secular. Though its land and population are relatively small, its footprint in the Middle East is considerable. In its short history of independence since 1948, Israeli Jews have grown in population from 600,000 to 7,400,000, about 75% of the total (10 million). Still, anti-Zionists shout that Jews have no place in the Holy Land, period. Where do they expect Jews to go? In the decade before Israel became the Jewish State, 6 million died in Europe for want of a legitimate home.
Anti-Zionists despise Israel, one of the most advanced countries in its region, with its minority population of 21% Arabs, who have all the rights of Israeli citizenship. They adamantly scorn the Jews’ audacity to claim Jerusalem as its capital – which dates back 3,000+ years, to when King David from the Tribe of Judah unified the Jewish tribes. The Christian anti-Zionists believe Jerusalem is their property, second only to Rome. The Muslims, who are almost all anti-Zionists, view Jerusalem as their property, second only to Mecca. Zion, a synonym for Jerusalem and the Land of Israel, counts Jews as its indigenous people. Indeed, despite the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Arabs, the Mamluks, and finally the Turks ruling over the Jews, they became Jerusalem’s clear majority of 62% by 1896. None of this means anything to the anti-Zionists. Most countries still don’t recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; they prefer Tel Aviv or Herzliya (how ironic).
Those who want to displace Israelis from their indigenous birthplace want to replace them with Palestinians in their own state. According to the Israel-hating UN, such a state already exists. “As of September 2025, 157 of the 193 United Nations member states recognize the State of Palestine as a sovereign state.” (https://people.howstuffworks.
Not only that… the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan was founded in 1946 on more than 2/3 of the British Mandate for Palestine, where a national home for the Jews was projected. Jordan’s population is majority Palestinian, enough so that there already is a State of Palestinians. It’s run by a king from the Hashemite clan, which the British transported to Palestine after they were forced out of Mecca and Medina by the Saud clan. Between 1948 and the Israeli victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, the Jordanian king ruled over the Palestinians west of the Jordan River border and gave them Jordanian citizenship. Significantly, there was no movement for a Palestinian state before or after 1967. All the Muslim Arab energy was directed towards preventing a Jewish state. Proving the point, Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip after the 1948 War of Independence and Jordan claimed the “West Bank”, a name it coined in 1950. There were no “Palestinians” demanding a state of their own. That term only came into usage with the founding of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization).
Jew-hatred and anti-Zionism go together. It is being fomented by extreme politicians of the right and the left, entertainers, influencers, podcasters, and journalists. The idea of the State of Israel sticks in their craw. The mass media plays it up big-time. How much better it would be if Israel became “Palestine” with a majority Muslim population. It must be that the Jews’ control of Hollywood, the newspapers, the internet, the universities, and the banks has stymied that wish. Oh, if only the Zionists were just timid Jews who stayed in the background. Fuhgeddaboudit!
NOTE:
Anti-Zionism has spread like wildfire in the 21st century. Embodying this is the current administration of New York City, whose metropolitan population includes more than two million Jews. Zoran Mamdani, a Muslim born in Uganda, is the current mayor of New York. For him, classic antisemitism and hatred from the right is deemed “unacceptable”. However, leftist rhetoric demonizing Israel or Zionism is acceptable and supposedly not discriminatory. Mamdani claims to distinguish between criticism of the Israeli government and antisemitism. Nonsense! While Mamdani was a NY state assembly member, he said, “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and in the anti-Zionist movement that I believe in and belong to, there is no room for antisemitism.”
The mayor’s plan to fight antisemitism released on 9/29/26: While the Mayor’s plan has a number of positive elements, including some increased security funding for Jewish institutions and expanding proven programs, it fails to address a central issue that the Mayor himself has perpetuated: rhetoric that demonizes and delegitimizes Israel inevitably leads to the targeting of Jewish New Yorkers,” a number of organizations wrote in a statement. “https://www.jta.org/2026/09/
