What I mean when I call myself anti-Zionist
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Anti-Zionism is routinely demonised by its critics as meaning one thing: the destruction of Israel.
It doesn’t mean that at all as MJ Rosenberg makes abundantly clear.
It is precisely about whether a state controlling the lives of millions of Jews and Palestinians should be organised around permanent ethnic hierarchy or around equal rights.
It’s really as simple as that.
RK
This article was originally published by MJ Rosenberg's Substack on Wed 20 May 2026. Read the original here.
What I mean when I call myself anti-Zionist
As a person who opposes all violent “solutions”
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As someone of Jewish ancestry I lost a considerable number of family members during the holocaust .Most surviving members remained in their countries of origin ,but some did not and settled in Israel.after the war.For them returning to the ruins of where they had lived and the scene of the violence their families had faced was too much.Whilst I understand why they should see Israel as a place of safety ,I cannot regard them as having different or superior rights to Palestinians who have lived in Israel or territory seized by Israel.
Zionism was invented by an English Protestant Christian in the 17th century. I was revived by British and American antisemites in mid 19th century. It was only towards the end of the 19th century that some Jews were co-opted into it. Why do we call ‘the state of Israel’ Jewish in the first placete then? We know that the Zionist entity was established in the 1917 as a British colonialist project. We know that the only member of the British War Cabinet who opposed the Balfour Declaration was also the ONLY Jew in it. It didn’t come into existence as the result of the Holocaust. Since its start it has always been a source of suffering and shame for us, Jews. It has been a nightmare for Palestinians, Lebanese, Iranians and others. Why do we keep discussing ‘solutions’?
With respect, one has to ask who is going to start with, and engage in this “negotiation” [?]:
“There would need to be international guarantees, constitutional safeguards, power-sharing arrangements, minority protections, demilitarization provisions, perhaps federal or cantonal structures — whatever the parties themselves negotiated.”
Is it suggesting that the oppressed Palestinians sit down with those who have murdered, imprisoned, raped, abducted, displaced, stolen their land, hold the key to the biggest military in West Asia and are trained in brutality, decapitation and a permanent arms economy? Forgive me if I am wrong, but it sounds like what is being proposed, is the hollowing out of the neo-fascist terrorist, zionist, supremacist state, and accomodation by a completely utopian fantasy. As a “state”, Israel is fake. A creation of colonial powers, principally Britain, and a cancer in West Asia. It cannot exist as a democratic “one state”, because it was built and founded on terrorism and apartheid. Without these elements it could not exist.
For “equality” and equal rights, the fake state must be dismantled and those who dont accept that Paslestinians are worthy of basic human rights in their own country, Palestine, wont need convincing. As Norman Finklestein said: the only rights that Israeli`s have is to pack their bags and leave Palestine. I could not agree more.
On a superficial reading this is fine – but fails to even mention one critical component – reparations due to the Palestinians for decades of injustice and the implications of a necessary right of return. Should returnees, for instance, be entitled to reclaim the homes from which they or their families were ejected or compensationfor destroyed livelihoods?
The comparison with South Africa is somewhat disingenuous: the state may be technically one of equality, but the majority of the black population remain considerably materially disadvanteged compared with the white minority. Far more than simple ‘constitutional’ change would be required.
Comparison with the peace process in N. Ireland fails – there were no millions of ethnically cleansed refugees seeking return on either side of the border.
Rosenberg’s heart is in the right place, by my standards.
But I think he’s wrong on some points.
He evokes Herzl’s “if you will it, it is no dream”. On that, I have two comments – one historical, the other political.
1. Herzl was a secular, liberal man of his time, for whom colonialism was not only acceptable, but ‘natural’. “The State of the Jews”, as he envisaged it, was not a religious-messianic state, as current Israel is increasingly becoming. But Herzl was very much aware of the demographic issue. He could accept a minority of the the the local Arab population – the bourgeoisie – being incorporated in the Jewish state, but the majority – the impoverished masses – would have to be “induced” to emigrate from historic Palestine, by denying them economic opportunities within, while offering them such opportunities elsewhere. It is not the aims of Zionism that have changed over time, only the means.
2. By evoking Herzl’s famous saying, Rosenberg implies that it is all a matter of abstract will, thus ignoring material geopolitical and class factors.
Jewish-Israeli society, unequal as it is (and it is!), still enjoys considerable privileges, relative to the impoverished masses of neighbouring societies, because of Israel’s position in the capitalist-imperialist world order. There is no incentive for the Jewish-Israeli working class to give up their privilege, unless one of two conditions are fulfilled: either geopolitical circumstances make it so that Israel’s existance, as an ethnosupremacist state, becomes militarily and/or economically untenable, or a genuine socialist-democratic order is established in the entire region.
the above criticisms are appropriate: as for the occupied north of Ireland: it is still an occupation by the British, so it is just a model for continued colonialism.
“It means opposing a political system based on ethnic preference and replacing it with one based on equal citizenship”
Some of what the author describes above might have to come about through armed struggle as I can’t see Zionists accepting a change to the status quo unless forced to. Look at what happened to Rabin for example, or how things like the Oslo Accords have gone for Palestinians.
I think some Italian dockers went on strike over shipments to Israel, and something similar recently happened in Holland, so we need more of that in the imperial core, and that includes a dramatic change of union leadership so rather than having feeble ones like Sharon Graham, who beg the ruling class for the crumbs of empire, we have anti imperialist ones who fight the good fight.
When you have IOF unit’s “homecoming” party featuring a display of their well-documented annihilation of southern Lebanon’s villages, and its met with cheers and laughter from the crowd of Israeli soldiers & civilians, that means Palestinians and Lebanese have no choice but to defend themselves. There is no electoral way out of it, and while Jews of course have a right to exist as part of a free and democratic Palestine, the Zionist entity known as Israel doesnt.
Mamdani is a just another social democrat who believes capitalism can be made nicer if there are some reforms, same as Sanders and Corbyn.
Personally I find this a very helpful, readable and hopeful summary which will be useful to share. Without entirely disagreeing with many of the critical Comments above I think they are too crushing, and perhaps forget that things do and can change. Hard to remember sometimes admittedly but we need to put forward an outline that most people will agree with overall.
The question is what it means to ‘have’ a country. To an Israeli Zionist ‘Israel’ is by definition a Jewish state based on principles of apartheid and racial supremacy. If it became a multi-ethnic democracy it would no longer be the same country.
This is not an exclusively Israeli issue. Many white racists in Britain and Europe feel that they have ‘lost’ their country if they have to share it on equal terms with people of different origins, skin colours and religions. Similarly those in the USA who see themselves as victims of a ‘great replacement’ are not, in general, afraid of being forced physically out of the country. What concerns them is losing their dominant status which, to them, would mean the end of the USA as they understand it.
British Zionists tend to a rather paradoxical approach. On the one hand they generally support the view that without a Jewish state of Israel Jews, alone among the nations, would not have a country of their own. On the other they are equally clear that it is wrong, and antisemitic, to say that a British Jew cannot be truly British.
Their conclusion seems to be that Jews, specifically, are entitled to have two countries; one for everyday use and one to keep for best.