In June 2024, protesters wrapped in keffiyehs and masks entered a subway car in New York City demanding Zionists get off the train. One man shouted, “Raise your hand if you’re a Zionist; this is your chance to get out.” Like robots, the mobs on the train repeated the words after him.[1] Any Jewish person on that train would have feared for their lives. When individuals and groups speak hateful words like these or engage in actions against the Jewish community based on their hostile views of Israel, then there is no longer any difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish organization that fights antisemitism, anti-Zionism crosses the line into antisemitism when the critique of Israel employs anti-Jewish tropes, when Jewish people are blamed more broadly for Israel’s political decisions, and when there is an attempt to nullify Israel’s right to exist.[2] For example, when synagogues are vandalized with swastikas, or Jewish people are verbally or physically harassed as a result of Israel’s actions, then antisemitism and anti-Zionism become indistinguishable. When people claim Israelis are the new Nazis, then antisemitism and anti-Zionism have converged.[3]

Some call this merger of antisemitism and anti-Zionism the “new antisemitism”—where the State of Israel becomes the pariah among the nations, resulting in repercussions for Jewish people everywhere.[4] “Anti-Zionism is the latest mutation of the world’s longest hate,” said Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the late chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, in a video on the connection between Judaism and Israel. He continued, “In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, Israel.”[5]

At times, random people perpetrate acts of hate against Jewish people due to anti-Zionist ideology, but world institutions like the United Nations can also fuel this kind of antisemitism. Consider a scenario at the United Nations World Conference and NGO Forum Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban, South Africa, in 2001:[6]

 Jewish participants in Durban were subjected to verbal abuse and threats of physical harm. Rally signs and printed materials at Durban featured anti-Semitic symbols and canards, the glorification of Nazism, and explicit incitement to terrorist violence against Israelis. Even U.N. officials were forced to decry the noxious anti-Semitism that overtook Durban.[7]

Ironically, these attacks on Jewish people took place while charging Israel of being a racist and apartheid state. “At the Durban conference, an ostensibly coherent and specifically antisemitic way of seeing and understanding Israel was pushed hard,” wrote David Hirsh, professor of sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and Hilary Miller, a policy analyst.[8] Although these events took place twenty-four years ago, they could be describing the confluence of antisemitism and anti-Zionism seen around the globe today, and especially since October 7, 2023 (Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel).

Israel’s ostracism at the United Nations, with repercussions for world Jewry, began even earlier when, in 1975, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution that equated Zionism—Israel’s movement for self-determination and statehood—with racism.[9] While this resolution was rescinded in 1991, the UN has an ongoing record of positioning Israel as the world’s foremost criminal. Three-quarters of all UN General Assembly resolutions have negatively focused on Israel and fall in line with the ADL’s definition of anti-Zionism as “a prejudice against the Jewish movement for self-determination and the right of the Jewish people to a homeland in the State of Israel.”[10] Even after the Hamas massacres of innocent Israelis on October 7, South African charges of genocide and apartheid against Israel took place at the UN’s International Court of Justice.[11]

Many Jewish people feel frustrated by what they view as an excessive focus on Israel’s flaws over other nations’ offenses at institutions like the UN, considering the comparison of the one tiny Jewish state to the world’s more than 50 Muslim-majority nations[12] and 157 Christian-majority countries.[13] Once anti-Zionism happens among world leaders, it becomes a model for individuals and groups globally, resulting in the persecution of those who support Zionism—that is, the majority of Jewish people.

Israel’s decisions made in the land have had a profound effect on Jewish people globally since its re-establishment as a modern nation in 1948. Israel’s Jewish population today (over 7 million) is almost equal to that of the Jewish Diaspora (over 8 million),[14] and circumstances in Israel often have a ripple effect on its Diaspora counterpart. When Jewish people around the globe are persecuted for the actions of the Israeli government and for wars it engages in, then anti-Zionism becomes indistinct from antisemitism.

Is All Criticism of Israel Antisemitic?

Numerous governments have run Israel with varying political policies, and Israelis and the Jewish Diaspora have often disagreed with their decisions. Before the October 7 Hamas attacks, Israelis were regularly protesting on the streets against the Netanyahu government’s attempts to overhaul Israel’s supreme court.[15] “Imperfect human beings and a flawed government run the State of Israel,” wrote the staff at Chosen People Ministries, a Messianic Jewish organization.[16] The people’s ability to challenge Israel’s government signals a healthy democracy.

To completely conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism can be problematic since even some Jewish people question the viability of the State of Israel: Certain ultra-Orthodox groups or Reform Jews consider Zionism and Judaism contradictory. They do not support a nationalist state, which they see either as not having a right to exist before the arrival of the Messiah or as overshadowing Judaism’s ethical tradition. Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, who participated in anti-Israel rallies on college campuses and support Palestinian rights, do not perceive themselves as antisemitic as their beliefs accept a Judaism that can exist without the land.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) would agree that advocating for Palestinians’ rights is not antisemitic in itself. However, AJC asserts that anti-Zionism becomes antisemitic when advocacy calls for the elimination of the Jewish state by using expressions like “From the river to the sea.” Anti-Zionism becomes antisemitism not only when calling for Israel’s complete annihilation but also when Jewish people outside the land of Israel are targeted for their pro-Zionist views, real or perceived. A case in point would be how, a day after Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, a Jewish person on their way to synagogue in London was called a “dirty Jew” by a stranger who then followed up with, “No wonder you’re all getting raped” (referring to Hamas’ mass sexual assault on October 7).[17]

Staff at Chosen People Ministries recommend considering the framework of demonization, delegitimization, and double standards to determine when anti-Zionism becomes antisemitic.[18] Demonization of Israel uses antisemitic stereotypes in discussions about Israel; delegitimization undermines Israel’s right to exist; and double standards occur when Israel is targeted more than any other nation. Using frameworks can help Jewish people, Christians, and anyone wanting to identify and combat antisemitism that threatens Jewish people worldwide. The Coalition Against Antisemitism maintains that followers of Jesus, particularly, should learn to recognize the merging of anti-Zionism with antisemitism and unite with the Jewish people against hate at all times and in all places.

The Jewish Longing for Zion

While most people think of Zionism as a modern phenomenon, the Hebrew term Zion goes back to ancient times. It can be found more than 150 times in the Hebrew Scriptures where it refers to Jerusalem, the people of Israel, and the presence of God. Zion is mentioned a few times in the New Testament, sometimes referring to the New Jerusalem. Zion represents the place where God first called Abraham (Genesis 12), even though Zion’s first mention comes later when King David marched to Jerusalem to attack the Jebusites, a Canaanite tribe, and take the city: “Nevertheless, David captured the stronghold of Zion, that is the city of David” (2 Samuel 5:7). He was successful because the Bible depicts “the Lord God of Hosts [as] with him” (2 Samuel 5:10). Over time, the Jewish people were exiled and repatriated to Zion, or the land of Israel, many times by successive empires. With each dispersion, the Jewish people’s longing and plea for a return to Zion persisted and has been expressed in Judaism’s daily prayers and rituals for centuries.

In the nineteenth century, through a movement called Zionism, the Jewish people, stirred by persecution, made a more concerted effort to fulfill that longing to return to their homeland in the Middle East, particularly by those from Europe.[19] Still, it took time for the Jewish people of Europe to buy into the modern political Zionism motivated by its founder Theodor Herzl as many were embedded in their societies’ life and various political persuasions. During several Aliyot(returns) from the 1880s until 1948, almost 700,000[20] Jewish people, mostly from eastern Europe, made their way to the land, although many did not stay. By 1948, about 650,000 Jewish people lived in what was called Palestine.[21] Only tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors went up to Zion post-World War II.

The Balfour Declaration, a public statement from the British government, supported a Jewish homeland in 1917. Still, it was not until May 14, 1948, that the British Mandate in Palestine[22] ended and Israel became an independent state. United Nations Resolution 181 proposed partitioning Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish, which was accepted by Jewish leaders but rejected by Palestinians and surrounding Arab countries. This resolution led to Arab nations launching continual wars against the Jewish state and many failed attempts at peace.

While these wars against the new state launched a more concerted anti-Zionist agenda, this new anti-Zionism goes back to biblical times when the enemies of Israel tried to prevent the Israelites from possessing the land. The God who promised the land to His chosen people (Genesis 15:15–19) pronounced judgment on those nations (Amon, Moab, Edom, Philistia—ancient Gaza) who attempted to remove the Jewish people from the Holy Land (Ezekiel 25). Although modern Zionism is a somewhat secular movement, it has historically biblical roots. To oppose the Jewish people’s right to take possession of the land promised by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is to oppose God’s promises and thus God Himself.