When Zionist Politics Disguises Antisemitism

“It has been recently revealed that George Soros donated more than $15 million in recent years to leftist groups that organized the anti-Israel demonstrations where protesters celebrated the Hamas terrorist attacks,” wrote right-wing media provocateur Andy Ngo on X, responding to the recent flurry of Palestine solidarity rallies.¹ Ngo’s rhetoric is a masterclass in the confused way antisemitic narratives are employed. In this case, a Jewish cabal run by George Soros is funding a movement to attack Israel, the Jewish State. The antisemitic nature of Soros conspiracy theories is incredibly well-documented, but Ngo provides a curveball: it is done in the name of defending Jews, or, at least, Zionism.²

This construct creates a problem for the vast world of “anti-antisemitism” groups like StopAntisemitism.org or the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), who have decided that one of the most persistent and potentially lethal forms of antisemitism is anti-Zionism. This perspective is not simply an advocacy position, but the standard for today’s dominant institutions from political leaders, to transnational NGOs, universities, human resources departments, and law enforcement. All of this makes a certain amount of intuitive sense since the United States is Israel’s primary ally, treating the Jewish state as a proxy for Western imperial interests and therefore has a vested interest in maintaining all ideological structures that protect Israel from accountability. As Palestine solidarity activists hit the streets in the hours after Israel commenced its bombing campaigns, the defensive civic infrastructure went into action to both publicly assert that many of these activists displayed anti-Jewish animus and ensure that they would not get away with it. While manifesting in different ways, anti-Zionism is—in the terms of our ruling powers—in direct intersection with antisemitism, usually in regard to its level of perceived intensity.

What gives this campaign its coherence is the claim that anti-Zionism (and any criticism of the movement for a Jewish state) is a covert form of antisemitic hate, once religious or ethnic and now political. This notion is taken as an article of faith across the world of “Antisemitism Studies” institutes (such as the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at the University of Indiana – Bloomington) and various “Countering Violent Extremism” organizations (such as the Anti-Defamation League), where the degree of criticism of Israel and the associated fervor is measured to determine whether or not it has finally dipped into unfortunate antisemitism—usually understood as when the founding principles of the Israeli state are called into question. On October 25, Kevin D. Williamson wrote in the Dispatch that “Anti-Zionism is Antisemitism at Scale,” while an October 31 Jerusalem Post op-ed said that “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism. The Jewish community knows it. The public knows it. And it’s time to say so.”³

If you look at the antisemitism data as tracked by most mainstream “anti-antisemitism” organizations, they will show that anti-Zionist-related antisemitism outpaces all other forms. There are reasons for this that say little about where antisemitism is coming from and more about how the data is collected and qualified. When reanalyzing the ADL’s Antisemitism Audit for 2023, we found that, while they mischaracterized and overrepresented alleged anti-Zionist-related antisemitism, they often undercounted white-nationalist-related anti-Semitism.  We also found that the ADL’s focus on groups like Students for Justice in Palestine was not justified by the raw data.⁴

The antisemitic nature and presumed lethality of anti-Zionism is treated as an axiom by these organizations. The ADL’s CEO made waves in 2022 when he declared bluntly that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” but this has been the throughline of this topic for decades.⁵ This “self-evident” assumption has moved further into the foreground since October 7, as people like Dara Horn wrote grand narratives in magazines like the Atlantic, or Bari Weiss turned her new outlet the Free Press into a daily alarm about the encroaching danger of Palestine solidarity protesters.⁶ Many pro-Israel organizations learned their lessons in the 2023–2024 school year and are now pushing policies that explicitly label activism targeting Israeli apartheid as bigoted hate speech. and claiming that anti-Zionism is a Title VI or Title IX violation that undermines student safety due to their religion or nationality.⁷ This came up when several students sued the Berkeley Law School for failing to stop what they saw as antisemitic threats in the form of anti-Zionism, suggesting that “discriminating on the basis of ‘Zionism’ violates Title VI both because Zionism is integral to many Jews’ identity and because it denies the Jewish ‘ancestral’ and ‘historical’ connection to Israel.”⁸ In policy, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism, which very explicitly suggests foundational criticisms of Israel are inherently antisemitic, have been used to silence professors and students, block contractors, and, ultimately, establish a standard that understands the pressing threat of antisemitism as most obviously expressed in the phrase “from the river to the sea.” In addition to the material effects on dissent, these policies also shift our collective understanding to the commonsense identification of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, and thus undermine critical opposition before it has a chance to form. For example, Israel is said to be the self-evident force that has changed the global antisemitic threat, as well as to act as a haven for fleeing Jews, as best evidenced by the dominant narrative on the Mizrahi dispersion from Arab countries. But this formulation is disconnected from the actual politics and ideologies that birthed and carried the dream of Zionism, which is more fractured and confused than figures like ADL CEO Jonathon Greenblatt are willing to admit.

The notion that anti-Zionism becomes antisemitism when it reaches a degree of intensity is based on a categorical error: it assumes that antisemitism is simply the result of various types of vaguely defined  “extremism.” This is part and parcel of the rhetoric of organizations like the ADL, which sees antisemitism as the result of extremism of both the left and the right.  Within this rhetorical framework, both the left and right are portrayed as equal offenders. Such an understanding misrepresents the reality of antisemitism. In reality, antisemitism on the left is much less severe, common, or lethal than on the right. Moreover, antisemitism is a systemic feature of many strands of rightwing politics. The “anti-extremism” framework put forward by organizations like the ADL suggests that only political centrism can protect Jews, and only technocratic leaders can administer that protection effectively or ethically. Just as the ADL historically did when offering itself as a moderate alternative to groups like the Jewish Labour Bund, it continues to present antisemitism as an inescapable fact of life that can only be mitigated. This is because it would take a radical, or should we say “extreme,” ideology to address antisemitism’s roots in capitalism, inequality, and modern politics, which would necessarily imply a radical solution.

Instead of analyzing anti-Zionism through the anti-extremism lens offered, we need to look to an idea’s roots to find where its beliefs lie. If criticism of Israel emerges from abhorrence of Israel’s very real colonial history and war crimes, then no matter how angry it becomes it doesn’t necessarily imply antisemitism. At the same time, if that anti-Zionism is motivated by the idea that Jews are particularly malevolent or understands Zionism in terms of a vast conspiracy theory, then even the most milquetoast version could suggest antisemitism. The same is true for Zionism, an idea held by both people who sincerely cared for Jewish wellbeing and for those who simply wanted them gone.

If we examine the lineage that created Zionism and fought for Israel’s formation in 1948, antisemitism is not merely its justification—it is sometimes the logic that Zionism produced itself. If modern antisemitism developed as an adjunct to the creation of romantic European nationalism, then modern Zionism replicates much of the ideological scaffolding of the same ideas that relied on antisemitism in the first place. In doing so, antisemitism becomes an entrenched part of not just how we think about political sovereignty, but Jews themselves and Jewishness itself. Consequently, Zionism becomes a method through which shifting political actors can transmit antisemitic ideas themselves or cover for entrenched antisemitic worldviews. When looking at antisemitism as a mask to conceal class antagonisms, and the way that antisemitism remains in the discourses often presented as in defense of Jews, a curious thing becomes obvious: Zionism—both historically and in its contemporary incarnation—has a profound amount of antisemitism within its politics. Because of this, it lacks the tools necessary to ultimately eradicate the threat to Jews. Zionism’s success despite this failure suggests that, ultimately, protecting Jews was not its political function.

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