Belgian Academics & Artists For Palestine
 

 
 

BA4P: Zionism

# "The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism" (August 2023):
The Institute aims to support the delinking of the study of Zionism from Jewish Studies, and to reclaim academia and public discourse for the study of Zionism as a political, ideological, and racial and gendered knowledge project, intersecting with Palestine and decolonial studies, critical terrorism studies, settler colonial studies, and related scholarship and activism.
─ "Points of Unity: " click here. ── Institute Conference 2023: « Battling the ‘IHRA definition’: Theory & Activism » : click here.
─ Contact: info@criticalzionismstudies.org. ── For regular updates join the email list (via google form): click here.

 Rabab Ibrahim ABDULHADI and Heike SCHOTTEN, « Why we created the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism » (Mondoweiss, 24 August, 2023): click here.

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(1) Books (latest first):
(2) Resources: below (latest first)
(3) Articles: below (latest first)


  • Thomas SUÀREZ, « Palestine Hijacked. How Zionism Forged an Apartheid State from River to Sea ». Interlink Publishing, Imprint: Olive Branch, 2023. Pb, ISBN: 9781623718190, 470 p. Price: $25.00. click here!
    About this book: How terror was used by Zionist militias to transform Palestine into an apartheid settler state. The Israel-Palestine “conflict” is typically understood to be a clash between two ethnic groups—Arabs and Jews—inhabiting the same land. Thomas Suárez digs deep below these preconceptions and their supporting “narratives” to expose something starkly different: The violent take-over of Palestine by a European racial-nationalist settler movement, Zionism, using terror to assert by force a claim to the land that has no legal or moral basis...PS Presentation on the backside of the book (pdf): click here!
  • Antony LERMAN, « Whatever Happened to Antisemitism? Redefinition and the Myth of the 'Collective Jew ». Pluto Press, June 2022. Pb ISBN: 9780745338774, eBook ISBN: 9781786806307, 336 pages. Price: £17.99, ebook: £9.99.
    Reviewed by Deborah H. Maccoby, "Antony Lerman's 'Whatever Happened to Antisemitism? ' - a must read" (Jewish Voice for Labour, July 21, 2022), click here!
  • Tony GREENSTEIN, « Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponization of Memory in the Service of State and Nation ». Foreword by Moshé Machover. Book launch: 14 November 2022. You can order the book by contacting me at tonygreenstein104@gmail.com and sending me your name and address. The paperback will cost £12.50 and the hardback £18.00.
    This is a new book covering the relationship of the Zionist movement to the growth of anti-Semitism before, during and after the Holocaust and will look at how the Holocaust has been weaponised to fit the Zionist agenda. It will particularly focus on the period of the Holocaust itself and look at the Zionist record in that respect.
  • Nur MASALHA: « Expulsion of the Palestinians. » "The Concept of 'Transfer' in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948." Institute for Palestine Studies, 1995 (2017), 235p., ISBN 978-0-88728-242-3.

  • Tikva HONIG-PARNASS, « False Prophets of Peace. Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine. » Haymarket Books, 2011, 307p.
    The Israeli Left has long held the view that the historic Zionist Labor movement stands firmly in the humanistic, democratic, and even socialist traditions. These progressive credentials are routinely called forth as cause to dismiss any of Israel’s leftwing critics and their charges of injustice. Yet, a closer examination of these claims reveals a carefully constructed mythology used to obscure a more sordid reality. "False Prophets of Peace" unearths the central role played by the Israeli Left in laying the foundation for the colonial settler project and its campaign of dispossession.
  • Lucas CATHERINE, « De Israel Lobby ». EPO, 2011, 195p., ISBN 978 90 6445 795 1.
    Lucas Catherine onderzoekt in dit boek wie binnen het Belgische establishment Israël steunt en waarom.
  • Nur MASALHA: « The Bible and Zionism. » "Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Palestine-Israel. " Bloomsbury, 2007, pb, 384p., ISBN 9781842777619, Imprint Zed Books, $35.95: click here!
    Does the bible justify Zionism? Since the foundation of the Israeli state in 1948, Torah and tank have become increasingly inseparable, resulting in the forced expulsion and subjugation of millions of indigenous Palestinians. Nur Masalha's groundbreaking new book traces Zionism's evolution from a secular, settler movement in the late 19th century, to the messianic faith it has become today. He shows how the biblical language of 'chosen people' and 'promised land' has been used by many Christian and Jewish Zionists as the 'title deeds' for Israel, justifying ethnic division and violence. With Edward Said, Masalha argues that a new politics of peace can only be achieved through a single, democratic state, which replaces religious zealotry with secular equality.
  • Israel SHAHAK, « Jewish History, Jewish Religion . The Weight of Three Thousand Years. » Forewords by Gore Vidal and Edward Said, with a new introduction by Norton Mezvinsky. Pluto Press (1994, 1997,) 2002.

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    Resources (latest first):
    • B'TSELEM: « The pogroms are working - the transfer is already happening » ( B'Tselem, September 2023): click here! Full document (pdf, 7p.): click here!
      For decades, Israel has employed a slew of measures designed to make life in dozens of Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank miserable. This is part of an attempt to force residents of these communities to uproot themselves, seemingly of their own accord. Once that is achieved, the state can realize its goal of taking over the land. To advance this objective, Israel forbids members of these communities from building homes, agricultural structures or public buildings. It does not allow them to connect to the water and power grids or build roads, and when they do, as they have no other choice, Israel threatens demolition, often delivering on these threats. Settler violence is another.
    • Joseph MASSAD: « Israeli settler terrorism isn't new. It is foundational to the Zionist project » (Middle East Eye, Aug 15, 2023): click here.
      Despite liberal Zionist condemnations of recent Israeli settler violence against Palestinians, the crimes committed by prior generations are more horrific and larger in scale.
    • Mohammad Bakram BALAWI: « Fierce Judaisation: The burial of the remains of Palestine» (MEMo, Aug 9, 2023): click here.
      Israel is witnessing a judicial coup, economic instability, a state of security and military lawlessness that has reached the stage of exhausting thousands of soldiers, pilots and intelligence cadres from performing military service, the decline of credit halving, the flight of high-tech companies and other manifestations and economic repercussions، But in light of this chaos and unprecedented internal movement, the occupation government and settler groups in the West Bank and Jerusalem are exploiting the state of concern to practice a policy of fierce Judaisation that buries the rest of Palestine and makes any solution to the confrontation between the Israeli occupation and the Palestinians, no matter what form, a solution that includes the recognition of any Palestinian rights, including survival on ancestral soil and the establishment of a state, even if it is the size of the Vatican, impossible.
    • Amjad ALQASIS: « Zionism’s ethnic cleansing has been accomplished through the sword and the gavel » (Mondoweiss, Aug 8, 2023): click here.
      While Zionist forces have used military might over the decades to advance this goal, the Zionist movement has also sought to mask this process by placing its atrocities under a legal umbrella. In Zionist logic, not just the mighty sword but also the mighty gavel of the judge would hammer down on Palestinian rights and existence. We agree.
    • Yossi Klein HALEVI: « The wounded Jewish psyche and the divided Israeli soul » (The Times of Israel, July 28, 2023): click here!
      Understanding Israel’s moment of truth – from the war on Start-up Nation, to the moral crisis in Orthodox Jewry, to the author’s personal failure of empathy for political opponents.
    • Yuval Noah HARARI: « Can Judaism Survive a Messianic Dictatorship in Israel? » (Haaretz, July 13, 2023): click here!
      What will happen to Judaism if Israeli democracy is destroyed by supremacist zealots.
    • Salman ABU SITTA: « ‘Zionism is an Ashkenazi thing’: how Zionism engineered the expulsion of Iraq’s Arab Jews » (Mondoweiss, July 5, 2023): click here!
      In "Three Worlds: Memoir of an Arab Jew," Avi Shlaim declares his identity clearly as an Arab Jew — an Arab by culture, history, and geography and a Jew by faith. His identity was destroyed by Zionism and by the Ashkenazi European Jews.
    • Thomas SUÀREZ: « Palestinians are in Israel’s crosshairs because they are not Jews » (The Electronic Intifada, 30 June, 2023): click here!
      If Israel were stripped of its endlessly elaborate narrative, all that would be left would be the violent replacement of a native population with an imported Jewish “tribe.” That – all charade dispensed with – is the reckoning Israel’s supporters must face. To be sure, millions of Evangelical end-of-timers may say “Amen!” to that, but the pretense will be gone, exposing what Israel’s claimed “right to exist” actually means.
    • Miko PELED: « No Matter How You Frame It, the ADL is a Racist Organization » (Mint Press, June 20, 2023): click here!
      The Biden administration has released the country’s first national strategy for combating antisemitism, a landmark plan aimed at addressing a growing problem.” This is from a piece in NPR titled, “The first national strategy for fighting antisemitism is finally here. What’s in it?” Spoiler alert: it is not about fighting antisemitism or any other sort of racism; it is a strategy to silence Palestinian voices in the U.S. in the service of Israel.
    • Lawrence DAVIDSON: « How stable is Zionist Israel? » (Redress Information & Analysis, June 18, 2023): click here!
      It is time to ask the question: just how stable is Zionist Israel? Is it possible that the Jewish population of Israel constitutes an inherently unstable society by virtue of deeply rooted divisions? Are these divisions so deeply rooted that they are irreconcilable? As Lloyd Green put it in a recent article in the Daily Beast, “Decades-old grudges have now morphed into pitched political battles. Antipathies of the old world are now playing out in what was thought to be a high-tech Hebrew-speaking Mecca.”
    • Pete GREGSON: « Beating the Zionists and their political ideology » (Redress Information & Analysis, June 17, 2023): click here!
      Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust are the weapons of choice for the Friends of Israel in their determination to preserve their favourite racist colony. They will do and say anything to silence criticism of Israel and prevent the exploration of alternatives to the occupation state that they have created in Palestine. But they and their political ideology can be beaten.
    • M.Muhannad AYYASH: « Liberal Zionism: A Pillar of Israel’s Settler Colonial Project » (Al-Shabaka, June 14, 2023)): click here!
      Despite the Israeli regime’s increasingly right-wing policies, liberal Zionism still plays a dominant role in Zionist ideology. It fulfills the specific and critical function of providing the Zionist project with the veneer of enlightened, Western civilization and democratic, progressive politics. As a result, the Israeli regime is rarely described in mainstream Western circles for what it is: a settler-colonial state that practices apartheid.
    • Ann M. LESH: "Zionism And Its Impact” (PalestineRemembered.com): click here!
      A new book calls for Zionism to be re-envisioned as a binational project in order to shed Jewish historical trauma and salvage democratic values.
    • "An accurate and historically contextualized definition of Zionism” (Open Letter, Mondoweiss, Jan 13, 2023): click here!
      Editor’s Note: The following is an open letter and analysis by California Scholars for Academic Freedom (CS4AF), City University of New York for Palestine (CUNY4Palestine), the International Campaign to Defend Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Jewish Voice for Peace – New York City (JVP-NYC), the CSU Cops Off Campus Coalition, and the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI). The letter condemns the move of Zionist groups at San Francisco State University (SFSU) to ban criticism of Israel by deeming it antisemitic, cynically utilizing university anti-discrimination policies and identity-based protections.
    • Joseph MASSAD: "Biblical myths justifying conquest of Palestine belong in dustbin of history” (Middle East Eye, Jan 9, 2023): click here!
      The recent vote by the United Nations General Assembly to merely “ask” the International Court of Justice for an “opinion” on the legal consequences of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories changes nothing in the ongoing Zionist settler-colonisation of Palestine. It also changes nothing in the World Zionist Organisation’s commitment to Jewish supremacy, which it bequeathed to the Israeli regime once the Zionist colonists conquered most of Palestine and declared their settler colony as a “Jewish state” in 1948. 
    • Joseph MASSAD: "Jewish ‘self-determination’ or Jewish supremacy?” (Middle East Eye, Nov 22, 2022): click here!
      Israel’s increased invocation of the so-called right of 'Jewish self-determination' as though it is foundational to the Zionist movement is belied by the historical record.
    • Andrew HORNUNG: “Book Review: 'Zionism During The Holocaust' by Tony Greenstein” (Jewish Voice for Labour, Nov 10, 2022): click here!
      Andrew Hornung has reviewed Tony Greenstein’s book “Zionism During The Holocaust”, a book covering important and usually ignored aspects of Zionist history. Andrew has some criticisms but is mostly positive about the work. Tony is often criticised – not to say vilified – but his expansive knowledge of Jewish, Nazi and Zionist history deserves respect and recognition.
    • Shaul MAGID: "Can religious Zionism overcome its addiction to state power?” (+972, Nov 10, 2021: click here!
      A new book tries to salvage a religious ideology used to justify a violent secular state. But the messianic belief in power is a hard drug to abandon.
    • Shaul MAGID: "Liberal Zionism is dying. Will foregoing the Jewish state save it?” (+972, August 10, 2021: click here!
      A new book calls for Zionism to be re-envisioned as a binational project in order to shed Jewish historical trauma and salvage democratic values.
    • Thomas SUÀREZ: "The Antisemitism Wars: 'Ex Uno, Plures:' out of one, many. The smoke and mirrors of Zionist propagandists' self-corroboration” (March 2020): click here!

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    Articles (latest first):
    • Rabab Ibrahim ABDULHADI and Heike SCHOTTEN, « Why we created the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism » (Mondoweiss, 24 August, 2023): click here.
      The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism seeks to create an intellectual and political community that is grounded in solidarity with those most harmed by Zionism and in uplifting their voices.
    • Gideon LEVY: « We even destroy their water wells » (Haaretz, 30 July, 2023, via: Jewish Voice for Labour): click here.
      JVL Introduction: "Gideon Levy cannot contain his contempt for those who have just cemented in three water wells near the Fawwar refugee camp in the South Hebron hills. He calls it “the work of the devil” and we would be hard-pressed to dissent. “Arab-hatred, apartheid, brutality and evil” he writes, “now cover the spring and groundwater and the false love for the Land of Israel. If not the most horrific crime of the occupation, he asserts, it is one of the ugliest." We agree.
    • Ofri ILANY: « Jews Have Been Historically Identified With Human Rights Struggles. That’s Only Part of the Story » (Haaretz, July 15, 2023): click here!
      Jews played significant roles in movements advocating for equality. Yet the status of human rights in Israel is deteriorating.
    • Miko PELED: « Complicity in Hate: Israeli Government Boycotts Conference on Attacks Against Christians » (Mint Press, July 5, 2023): click here!
      Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon denounced a conference organized by the Israeli Open University to discuss the increasing violence on Christians and Christian sites in Palestine. These attacks, carried out mostly by Anti-Christian Zionist hate groups, have increased at an alarming pace. Close to twenty incidents were registered between the end of 2022 and June of 2023.
    • Richard SILVERSTEIN: « The Zionist Fallacy. » Nationalist and religious claims made on behalf of Zionism are deeply flaweds (Tikun Olam, June 12, 2023): click here!
      Zionist apologetics is based on two sets of claims which are each problematic. One is nationalist and the other religious. The religious claim consists of a number of arguments. First, there is the Biblical text itself, which exhorts the Children of Israel to settle the land and conveys a divine “land grant” to them. S/He tells Abraham after he departs from his ancestral home, that S/He will bestow the land of Canaan to him: “Unto thy seed will I give this land… Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it: for unto thee will I give it...””
    • Anat PELED: « 'A Synagogue Toting Guns': How the Religious Right Is Distorting History in Israeli Schools » (Haaretz, June 11, 2023): click here!
      When Israeli schoolkids learn the history of Zionism, they're increasingly presented with a narrative focusing on religion and hyper-nationalism, with a black hole where the country’s secular and socialist founding fathers were once featured. Who can confront the right's hijacking of history?.
    • Josh BREINER: « The Notorious Kahanist Facing Racism and Terror Charges Advising Israel's Far-right Security Minister » (Haaretz, June 8, 2023): click here!
      Banned from running for the Knesset, far-right activist Bentzi Gopstein is now advising Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and police top brass. Senior security source: 'It’s insane that this man advises the national security minister'.
    • « BREAKING-New Report Reveals Human Rights Violations Resulting from IHRA Definition of Antisemitism » (ELSC - European Legal Support Center, June 6, 2023): click here!
      Today, the European Legal Support Center (ELSC) launches its new report “Suppressing Palestinian Rights Advocacy through the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism – Violating the Rights to Freedom of Expression and Assembly in the European Union and the UK”. The report is the first case-based account of human rights violations resulting from the institutionalisation and application of the controversial IHRA definition by the European Union and the UK. The growing concerns about the negative human rights impact of the IHRA definition, have so far been ignored by the EU.
    • Michal FRUCHTMAN: « Who Will Protect the Thousands of Palestinian Children Israel Detains? » (Haaretz, May 28, 2023): click here.
      From nighttime detentions without a court order, to blindfolding and beatings: the silence of Israeli mental health therapists in the face of severe harm to Palestinian children is particularly alarming.
    • Juan COLE: "Smotrich Plans to Send 500k further Israeli Squatters in to Steal More Palestinian Land in West Bank" (Informed Comment, May 20, 2023): click here!
      Yaniv Kubovich and Ben Samuels at Haaretz report that far-right extremist Bezalel Smotrich is preparing to send in another half-million Israeli squatters to steal Palestinian land in the West Bank. Smotrich is the leader of the Religious Zionism bloc in parliament and the finance minister in the Netanyahu cabinet, who also was given responsibility for the Palestinian West Bank.
    • Yudith OPPENHEIMER: « No to the Flag March in the Muslim Quarter - opinion » (Jerusalem Post, May 17, 2023): click here!
      The centrality of the Flag Parade and what it symbolizes has been established in the Palestinian consciousness and was an emphasis in the ceasefire negotiations this past week.
    • Richard SILVERSTEIN: « Israeli Video Calls for Jewish Racial-Blood Purity, Expelling Palestinians “by Force” » (Tikun Olam, May 10, 2023): click here!
      It espouses Judeo-Nazi ideology which could provoke acts of Palestinian armed resistance.
    • Carolina LANDSMANN: "Israel’s Nation-state Law Reflects the Failure of Zionism" (Haaretz, April 28, 2023): click here!
      It’s not only Israel’s enemies who are melting with pleasure over the country’s system collapse. Critics and opponents of Zionism – living and dead, Jewish and non-Jewish – can also say, either with great concern or with schadenfreude, “We told you so.”
    • Shaul MAGID: "Why are American Jews so shocked by Israel’s far-right turn?" (+972, April 25, 2023): click here!
      Israel's electorate is forcing U.S. Jews to grapple with the dissonance not only between liberal values and Zionism, but their understandings of Judaism itself.”
    • Jonathan LIS & Jack KHOURY: "Far-right Minister Working to Set Zionism as ‘Guiding Value’ in Government Decisions" (Haaretz, April 25, 2023): click here!
      Israeli Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf’s proposal calls to adopt values in the controversial Nation State Law as basis for public administrative policy, internal and foreign policy and legislation.
    • Odeh BISHARAT: "Secular Zionist David Ben-Gurion, the Messianic Jew" (Haaretz, April 24, 2023): click here!
    • Hil AKED: "Cruising for a bruising? Critiquing the British Zionist movement (while trans)" (Verso blogs, April 19, 2023): click here!
      Some subjects can be relied upon to remain safely ensconced within the pages of a book. Other subjects, however, bite back. Writing about Israel/Palestine is always potentially inflammatory. Critiquing the contemporary British Zionist movement, from a pro-Palestinian standpoint, is perhaps especially likely to attract hostility. So why write a book virtually guaranteed to prove unpopular in some quarters?
    • Shaul ARIELI: "The Palestinian Question: Ze’ev Jabotinsky and the Ethics of Zionism" (Haaretz, April 17, 2023): click here!
      Much can be learned from the moral standards of the leader of Revisionist Zionism.
    • B.MICHAEL: "After 2,000 Years, Judaism Has Become Idiotic Again" (Haaretz, April 13, 2023): click here! Republished by Jewish Voice for Labour: click here!
      B. Michael, the doyen of Israeli satirists, unleashes his vitriol on Israel’s messianic fundamentalists.
    • Menachem KLEIN: "Israel's Rule Over the Palestinians Has Created a New Judaism" (Haaretz, April 8, 2023): click here!
      Supremacy, oppression, force – never before has the Jewish people engaged in such an explosive fusion of sovereignty and rule. Messianic fervor, once under the radar, is now rearing its head.
    • Haim BRESHEETH-ŽABNER: "Israel’s rightwing government represents the Judaization of Zionism" (Mondoweiss, March 31, 2023): click here!
      Early Zionism sought to reform the "Ghetto Jew" into the secular Zionist militant. But now the new Israeli government not only wants to push society to the right, but to dismantle its secularism as well.
    • Ramzy BAROUD: "Selective Outrage in Palestine: The Problem is Not Just Smotrich but Zionism" (The Palestine Chronicle, March 29, 2023): click here!
      By his own admission, Israel’s new Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is a “fascist homophobe”. This declaration, which he made on January 16, should be enough to accentuate the violent nature of the new political concoction created by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last December.
    • Ali ABUNIMAH: "Smotrich unmasks Israel’s truly genocidal face" (The Electronic Intifada, March 20, 2023): click here!
      Bezalel Smotrich, the ultra-far-right Israeli finance minister, declared in Paris on Sunday that Palestinians do not exist. There is “no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no such thing as the Palestinian people,” Smotrich said. His remarks were “met with applause and cheers from attendees,” The Times of Israel noted and as videos of the event show.
    • Yuval Noach HARARI: "They’ve forgotten what it means to be Jewish " (The Times of Israel, March 6, 2023): click here!
      For millennia, Jews schooled the world on the rights of minorities. Israel's government has failed to learn the lesson.
    • Kathryn SHIHADAH: "Netanyahu purveyed a fictional history of Israel to Jordan Peterson" (Israel-Palestine News, February 24, 2023): click here!
      Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is peddling a fanciful narrative of Israel’s history that bears no resemblance to the truth. We provide the real facts here, comprehensively annotated and easily verifiable.
    • Yaniv KUBOVITCH: "West Bank IDF Commander Distributed Book to Subordinates on ‘Redeeming the Land’" (Haaretz, February 6, 2023): click here!
      Brig. Gen. Avi Bluth gave his brigade commanders 'Ours in Tabu: The Secrets of Land Redeemers From Our Father Abraham to the Young Settlements' saying it would help them better understand the status of the land.
    • Haaretz Editorial: "Conditional Citizenship for Palestinians in Israel" (Haaretz, February 1, 2023): click here!
      A bill to strip Israelis of their citizenship if they committed an act of terrorism and then received money from the Palestinian Authority passed its first of three Knesset votes on Monday by an enormous margin of 89-8. This is another step in the process of dismantling the already shaky civic status of Palestinians citizens of Israel.
    • Ali ABUNIMAH: "Reclaiming Holocaust memory from Zionism" (EI, 2 February 2023 ): click here!
      A survivor of the German-led European genocide during World War II resigned from the British Labour Party following a threat of expulsion because he was to speak at an online Holocaust memorial event organized by a left-wing group. I also spoke at that event along with Stephen Kapos – “Reclaiming the memory of all those who died in the Nazi Holocaust” – which was hosted by the Socialist Labour Network on 27 January.
    • Philip WEISS: "Israel’s conduct fosters antisemitism in the U.S., says Ken Roth" (Mondoweiss, January 21, 2023 ): click here!
      I personally have been lambasted when I noted that incidents of antisemitism sometimes parallel Israeli government conduct. So you find with the latest bombardment of Gaza, there is predictably a surge of antisemitic incidents around the world. And to point that out is a taboo…. You’re never allowed to suggest that the Israeli government, which is supposed to be the custodian of the Jewish people, the savior of the Jewish people, can ever be harming the Jewish people…
    • David MILLER: "Socialist Zionism: Anti-racist or enthusiastic participant in ethnic cleansing and murder?” (Al Mayadeen, Jan 13, 2023): click here!
      Some Zionists claim that there is such a thing as “progressive” or “socialist” Zionism, which is quite separate from the mainstream of the Zionist movement. This is a form of Zionism that is not racist or in favor of ethnic cleansing or settler colonialism, they claim. Furthermore, this is a form of Zionism that is separate from, not reducible to, and disavows the official Zionist movement. A close comparison of these arguments with the historical record shows that every part of this argument is incorrect.
    • Peter BEINART: "Antisemitic Zionists Aren’t a Contradiction in Terms ” (Jewish Currents, Jan 10, 2023): click here!
      Pundits express surprise when antisemitism and Zionism overlap, but the ideologies share much in common—and many adherents.
    • Yair WALLACH: "The racial logic behind Palestine’s partition” (+972, Jan 10, 2013): click here!
      Partition was rarely endorsed as a solution to settler colonialism. But Europe's racialization of Jews distinguished Zionism from other settler enterprises.
    • Joseph MASSAD: "Biblical myths justifying conquest of Palestine belong in dustbin of history” (Middle East Eye, Jan 9, 2013): click here!
      Zionist claims regards the colonisation of Palestine have been comprehensively debunked, but they are still deployed to convince Christians and liberals.
    • Zvi BAR'EL: "Zionism Is Racism” (Haaretz, Dec 27, 2022): click here!
      “We, in Israel, have endeavored to create a society which strives to implement the highest ideals of society – political, social and cultural – for all the inhabitants of Israel, irrespective of religious belief, race or sex. Show me another pluralistic society in this world in which, despite all the difficult problems among which we live, Jew and Arab live together with such a degree of harmony … in which freedom of speech, of movement, of thought, of expression are guaranteed.”
    • Maureen Clare MURPHY: "Why Zionist settler colonialism must be confronted” (The Electronic Intifada, 23 Dec, 2022): click here!
      Israeli apartheid is a tool of Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine facilitating the state’s aim of displacing and replacing indigenous Palestinians on their land. Such is made clear in a new report by the Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq, endorsed by a coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations. The more than 200-page study builds on decades of Palestinian scholarship and advocacy and corrects fundamental flaws in recent publications on apartheid by Israeli and international human rights groups. “Zionist settler colonialism and its eliminatory and population transfer logic remain missing” from these analyses, Al-Haq states.
    • Amira HASS: "Internal Documents Reveal Israeli Settlers' Dedication to Ousting ‘Arabs’ From West Bank" (Haaretz, Dec 12, 2022): click here!
      An internal Civil Administration document, in the form of a map and Excel spreadsheet, shows the close cooperation of state and settlers in dispossessing Palestinians.
    • Sylvain CYPEL: “Itamar Ben Gvir, l’ascension d’un fasciste israélien vers le pouvoir” (orientXXI, 5 déc 2022): click here!
      L’ascension aux plus hautes fonctions gouvernementales en Israël d’Itamar Ben Gvir, un « suprémaciste juif » assumé et partisan de l’utilisation des méthodes les plus brutales à l’égard des Palestiniens est donc acté. Il devrait être le ministre de la sécurité nationale du prochain gouvernement de Benyamin Nétanyahou. Hier considéré comme un paria, son parcours incarne l’évolution de la société israélienne en trois décennies.
    • Ben REIFF, "The last first Israeli anti-Zionist" ( +972, Nov 124, 2022) : click here!
      Sixty years after co-founding the radical leftist group Matzpen, Moshé Machover reflects on the organization’s enduring legacy, the internal splits that led to its demise, and its lessons for today's anti-Zionist left.
    • Jonathan OFIR: “Meet the new kingmakers of Israeli politics” (Mondoweiss, Nov 11, 2022): click here!
      The racist, homophobic, ultra-nationalist Religious Zionism list was the big winner in Israel's most recent election. It is also a perfect reflection of where Israel is heading.
    • Andrew HORNUNG: “Book Review: 'Zionism During The Holocaust' by Tony Greenstein” (Jewish Voice for Labour, Nov 10, 2022): click here!
      Andrew Hornung has reviewed Tony Greenstein’s book “Zionism During The Holocaust”, a book covering important and usually ignored aspects of Zionist history. Andrew has some criticisms but is mostly positive about the work. Tony is often criticised – not to say vilified – but his expansive knowledge of Jewish, Nazi and Zionist history deserves respect and recognition.
    • Shaul MAGID, "Are liberal American Jews becoming afraid to talk about Israel?" ( +972, Nov 10, 2022) : click here!
      Many Jews in the U.S. have grown uncomfortable voicing implausible defenses of Israel, yet cannot let go of their Zionism. Denial won't solve the dilemma.
    • Thomas VESCOVi: “Israël : la victoire finale du néo-sionisme ?” (Middle East Eye, Nov 9, 2022): click here!
      Le retour au pouvoir de Netanyahou et la montée en puissance de partis suprématistes juifs et racistes questionnent l’avenir d’Israël. Et si cette force politique n’était que la suite logique du sionisme, en tant qu’idéologie nationaliste et coloniale ?
    • Peter BEINART: “Israel’s Ascendant Far Right Can’t Be Understood by Analogy” (Jewish Currents, Nov 7, 2022): click here!
      In other countries, the right clashes with the center over the basic nature of the state—but Israel’s Itamar Ben-Gvir and his rivals are on the same page about ethnocracy..
    • Jeff HALPER: “Jeff Halper Reports on the Israeli Elections” (ICADH, Nov 5, 2022): click here!
      The most surprising thing about the Israeli elections is the surprise and “disappointment” expressed by liberal Zionists, in Israel and abroad. “How could this happen?” Shock at “the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.” As if anything has really changed except that Israelis no longer feel the need to dress up their settler regime in liberal, “democratic” terms. The fact that people are surprised means either that they have never grasped the meaning of Zionism – a case of mass self-delusion – or that they are embarrassed by the public exposure of their violent Judaization of Palestine.
    • Shir HEVER: “ Meet the new Knesset members of the far-right Religious Zionism party” (Middle East Eye, Nov 3, 2022): click here!
      Several of the party's notorious MPs will likely get cabinet positions in the new Netanyahu-led government.
    • Nora BARROWS-FRIEDMAN: "Podcast Ep 68: How Zionists collaborated with the Nazis" (EI, 2 November, 2022 ): click here!
      On episode 68, we speak with activist and blogger Tony Greenstein, a veteran of the Palestine solidarity movement in the UK, about his new book "Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponization of Memory in the Service of State and Nation."
    • Gideon LEVY, “How Ties Between Mizrahi Jews and Arabs Were Ruined – With Help From Ashkenazi Israelis” (Haaretz, Oct 31, 2022): click here!
      Scholar Hillel Cohen embarks on a journey to the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, offering in his new book a sharp indictment of the coun-try's racist elites.
    • Gabriel POLLEY, “British Empire: The forgotten Victorian crusade to colonise Palestine” (Middle East Eye, Oct 11, 2022): click here!
      As my new book outlines, the crimes of British rule in Palestine from 1917 to 1948 were built on a 19th-century religious desire to possess the Holy Land for the empire.
    • Bethan McKERNAN and Quique KIERSZENBAUM, "‘Every day is worse than the one before’: a Palestinian community fights for survival" (Guardian, Sept 28, 2022): click here!
      One of the biggest expulsion decisions since the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories began in 1967 has left an entire community at risk.
    • Amira HASS, "The Real Escalation Is the Destruction of Palestinian Space" Haaretz, Oct 3, 2022): click here!
      Through its conduct since Oslo, Israel has proven what the Palestinians have claimed for more than 100 years – that the goal of Zionism is to dispossess and expel them from their homeland.
    • Ben REIFF, "The siege is only a symptom" (+972, Aug 11, 2022): click here!
      To confront Israel’s violence against Palestinians, progressive Jews in Israel and around the world must reckon with the ideology that lies at its root.
    • Eli MACHOVER, "Racist Anti-racism" (Jewish Voice for Labour, 5 August, 2022): click here!
      For any anti-racist, Antony Lerman’s latest book does not make for easy reading. Across almost 300 pages of historical research and analysis, Lerman sketches the genesis of the discourse on the “new anti-semitism”: in short, the equation of anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, and the success with which this redefinition has been used by pro-Israel politicians and academics, hasbara organisations and Jewish communal leaders across the west to shut down legitimate criticism of the state of Israel and the ethno-nationalist ideology that underpins it. For any anti-racist, Antony Lerman’s latest book does not make for easy reading. Across almost 300 pages of historical research and analysis, Lerman sketches the genesis of the discourse on the “new anti-semitism”: in short, the equation of anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, and the success with which this redefinition has been used by pro-Israel politicians and academics, hasbara organisations and Jewish communal leaders across the west to shut down legitimate criticism of the state of Israel and the ethno-nationalist ideology that underpins it.
    • Abe SILBERSTEIN, "A Logic of Elimination" (Jewish Currents, January 11, 2022): click here!
      Historian Lorenzo Veracini discusses settler colonialism, Zionism, and decolonial futures.
    • Yvonne RIDLEY, "Let's be honest, Zionist Israel is built on a tissue of lies " (MEMo, Dec 23, 2021): click here!
      To confront Israel’s violence against Palestinians, progressive Jews in Israel and around the world must reckon with the ideology that lies at its root. Not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews, but say anything negative about the political ideology of Zionism or speak in favour of Palestine and the chances are, regardless of your religious beliefs or lack of them, you will end up being accused of anti-Semitism.
    • Shaul MAGID, "Can religious Zionism overcome its addiction to state power?" (+972, Nov 10, 2021): click here!
      A new book tries to salvage a religious ideology used to justify a violent secular state. But the messianic belief in power is a hard drug to abandon.
    • Eva ILLOUZ, "Between Antisemitism and anti-Zionism: The Intellectual's Dilemma" (Haaretz, April 15, 2021): click here!
      The fight against antisemitism used to be above politics. Now, however, any criticism of Israel can lead to one being marked with the scarlet letter 'A'.
    • The Nexus Document: "Understanding Antisemitism At Its Nexus With Israel And Zionism" (March 2021): click here!
      This definition of antisemitism, and the examples that follow, derive from a White Paper drafted by the Nexus Task Force, which examines the issues at the nexus of antisemitism and Israel in American politics. The Task Force is a project of the Knight Program on Media and Religion at the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism at USC. The definition is designed as a guide for policymakers and community leaders as they grapple with the complexities at the intersection of Israel and antisemitism.
    • Philip WEISS, "‘Segregation’ — liberal Zionists wield ugly ideas to combat Beinart" (Mondoweiss, Aug 10, 2020): click here!
      One revealing element of the response is, When push comes to shove, liberal Zionists and conservative Zionists make similar arguments. They all talk about the need for “separation” of Palestinians and Jews.
    • Joseph MASSAD, "Pro-Zionism and antisemitism are inseparable, and always have been" (Middle East Eye, May 15, 2019): click here!
      Pro-Zionism is the only respectable form of antisemitism today - one that is welcomed by the Israeli government and pro-Zionist white nationalists everywhere.
    • Justine SACHS: “"Oh you foolish little Zionists"" (The Pantograph Punch, Jan 21, 2019): click here!
      Justine Sachs on the cruelty and inhumanity of Zionism, the movement supposed to solve the 'Jewish question'.
    • Moshé MACHOVER: “Anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism" (Labour Party Marxists, Sept 21, 2017): click here!
      The whole campaign of equating opposition to Zionism with anti-Semitism has, in fact, been carefully orchestrated with the help of the Israeli government and the far right in the US. It is easy to explain why.
    • Jonathan OFIR: "Gideon Levy calls out Israel’s fundamental, racist religion: Zionism" (Mondoweiss, Sept 2, 2017): click here.
      Gideon Levy published a column in Haaretz yesterday that goes to the furthest extent I have seen in Israeli mainstream media in challenging Zionism. He calls it a movement that “contradicts human rights, and is thus indeed an ultranationalist, colonialist and perhaps even racist movement, as proponents of justice worldwide maintain”.
    • Rima NAJJAR: "The Zionist Exception" (CounterCurrents.org, Aug 31, 2017): click here.
      Today, we hear a lot about White supremacy but very little about Jewish supremacy, as if the former stands for the latter. It is true there are more similarities than differences between Jewish supremacy and White supremacy. Both are based on ethnic/nationalist bias and racism.
    • Nada ELIA: "Birds of a feather: White supremacy and Zionism" (Middle East Eye, Aug 24, 2017): click here.
      A Confederate flag appeared in an apartment window in Manhattan’s East Village in New York City last week, and the neighbours were outraged.
    • Philip WEISS: "Yakov Rabkin’s devastating critique of Zionism: it is opposed to Jewish tradition and liberalism" (Mondoweiss, June 27, 2017): click here.
      Last year one of the most important books on Zionism, ever, was published in English by Pluto: What Is Modern Israel? by Yakov Rabkin, a professor of history at the University of Montreal. The central theme of the book is how Zionists have exploited Judaism and western traditions to offer Israel as a liberal democracy when it is actually a nationalist colonialists project hanging on by its paranoid fingernails.
    • Jonathan OFIR: "Why so many are twisting Ken Livingstone’s words about Hitler and Zionism" (Mondoweiss, April 6, 2017): click here.
      Two days ago, former London Mayor Ken Livingstone was sentenced to another year of suspension after a hearing by the Labour Party’s national constitutional committee (NCC) concerning his remarks on Hitler’s temporary support for Zionism.
    • Amy KAPLAN: "History shows that anti-Semitism and pro-Zionism have never been mutually exclusive" (Mondoweiss, Feb 24, 2017): click here.
      TIs it possible to be anti-Semitic and pro-Israel at the same time? Your answer depends on how you define the terms. As Toni Morrison wrote, “definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” If you define anti-Semitism solely as criticism of Israel, the answer is dangerously simple.
    • Amitai BEN-ABBA: "Antisemitism and its useful idiots" (Mondoweiss, Jan 17, 2017): click here.
      All over the world people who challenge Zionism are being accused of antisemitism. You might imagine the one group of dissidents who are safe from this kind of delegitimization is the Israeli Jews—we are not. This cruel irony, when exposed, may actually play a productive role in decoupling antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
    • Ayala AGRANAT, Michiel DeHAENE & Anya TOPOLSKI, : "'Waarom antisemitisme en antizionisme niet met elkaar verward mogen worden'" (Knack.be, 24 dec 2016): click here.
      Het ernstig nemen van de kritiek op het Zionisme belangt niet alleen Israël aan', schrijven Ayala Agranat, Michiel Dehaene en Anya Topolski van Een Andere Joodse Stem. Ze stellen scherp op het onderscheid tussen antisemitisme en antizionisme.
    • Jonathan COOK: "Zionism exposed in pages of New York Times!" (J.C. Blog, Dec 21, 2016): click here.
      There is nothing new in what Omri Boehm says. The philosophy professor at the New School in New York articulates a view that many of us on the left have subscribed to for many years. But it is simply astonishing to see it published in the most establishment paper in the country.
    • Susan LANDAU: "Unsettle Zionism, champion humanity" (Mondoweiss, Dec 12, 2016): click here.
      Marking this Brexit-Trump moment, racism and xenophobia threaten anti-Semitism writ large. Fear evokes reactions that exceed thoughtful strategic analysis. Unsurprisingly in the mix, Zionism is conflated with Judaism. That criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism follows.
    • Peter BEINART: "American Jewish Establishment Stifles Free Speech to Silence Zionism’s Critics" (Haaretz, Dec 7, 2016): click here.
      According to the Senate’s new Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, Henrietta Szold, Hannah Arendt and Martin Buber could also be defined as Jew-haters.
    • Yakov HIRSCH: "The power of hasbara culture" (Mondoweiss, Nov 5, 2016): click here.
      In my last article, I compared the opposition to the Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) of two influential Jewish journalists, Jeffrey Goldberg and Peter Beinart. I demonstrated that as Zionists they both opposed the BDS movement but with significant differences.
    • Sara HIRSCHHORN: "Liberal Zionists, We Lost the Kids" (Haaretz, Oct 31, 2016): click here.
      Diaspora Jewish teens' radical dissociation from Israel is not about the settlements or the occupation. They're ashamed to be associated with Zionism.
    • Ben WHITE: "Moves to silence critics of Israel have made the debate about Zionism unstoppable" (Middle East Eye, Oct 30, 2016): click here.
      By now, it is clear that the UK Labour Party’s so-called “crisis” of anti-Semitism is being used to delegitimise anti-Zionism by groups and individuals who see the two as one and the same thing. It is that conflation I want to address, and specifically, how it is only possible through the dehumanisation and disappearance of the Palestinians.
    • Nada ELIA: "It's Zionism, not the occupation, that's the real problem" (Mondoweiss, Oct 25, 2016): click here.
      Earlier this month, at the 15th annual conference held near Washington DC, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation announced that it was officially changing its name to US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
    • Stuart LITTLEWOOD: "UK anti-Semitism report tries to whitewash Zionism" (Redress Information & Analysis, Oct 18, 2016): click here.
      The Home Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons, the lower house of the British parliament, has just issued its report, “Anti-Semitism in the UK”, in response to concerns about “an increase in prejudice and violence against Jewish communities”.
    • Jonathan OFIR: "Even liberal Zionists wanted to send Palestinians to the moon" (Mondoweiss, Sept 4, 2016): click here.
      The problem with this occupation is not, primarily, the presence of soldiers and military governance (although that in itself is a problem) – the problem is the ideology that informs it. That is – Zionism. This ideology seeks maximum land with minimum Palestinians. The hunger and craving for territory most often gets precedence over humanitarian concern for non-Jews.
    • Jonathan ROSENHEAD: "Is Zionist a rude word?" (Open Democracy, Sept 3, 2016): click here.
      “How are we to understand the amazing increase in rhetoric about antisemitism, quite divorced from any actually discernible increase in antisemitism itself?”
    • Bradley BURSTON: "Racism-as-Zionism. Don't Call It 'pro-Israel.' Call It What It Is: Disgusting" (Haaretz, Aug 30, 2016): click here.
      It's time to stop pretending that racism can ever be good for the Jews. Not in practice, and not in propaganda.
    • Hasia DINER & Marjorie N. FELD: "We’re American Jewish Historians. This Is Why We’ve Left Zionism Behind" (Haaretz, Aug 1, 2016): click here.
      Our connections to Israel flourished, faltered and finally ended even though we grew up, live and work in the heart of the American Jewish community.
    • Lawrence DAVIDSON: "Zionism goes from bad to worse, taking Judaism with it" (Redress Information & Analysis, July 24, 2016): click here.
      Zionism’s range of influence is shrinking. One can see this progression worldwide. At a popular level the Israelis have lost control of the historical storyline of Israel-Palestine.
    • Richard FALK: "The Zionism debate as a shield for Israeli policy" (Middle East Eye, June 5, 2016): click here.
      To be clear, it is not Zionism that should be evaluated as racist, but Israel as a state subject to international law, including the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (1966) and the International Convention on the Crime of Apartheid (1973).
    • Ray FILAR: "Why I am anti-zionist Jew" (OpenDemocracy, 29 April, 2016): click here.
      The Israeli government deliberately invokes terrorist attacks, rockets, and scary brown men in headscarfs to stoke the population's fear, but I am scared of the racism Zionists use to justify the occupation. Originally published August 2014.
    • Shaul ARIELI: "The Palestinian Question: Ze’ev Jabotinsky and the Ethics of Zionism" (Haaretz, April 17, 2016): click here.
      Much can be learned from the moral standards of the leader of Revisionist Zionism.
    • Miko PELED: "Zionism is racism: Notes from Tel-Rumeida, Hebron, El-Khalil" (American Herald Tribune, Nov 13, 2015): click here .
    • Ahmed MOOR: "The Problem of Palestine is Zionism" (Fair Observer, Nov 11, 2015) click here.




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