Published: 24 September 2024
Last updated: 26 September 2024
This Venn diagram helps us talk about Israel and antisemitism
Talking about Israel/Palestine requires more complex categories than the binary Zionist/anti-Zionist.
Arno Rosenfeld
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This story was originally published in the Forward. Click here to get the Forward's free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.
I was discussing the vitriolic strain of anti-Zionism with a veteran journalist here last week, when he suggested that it might be best described as "anti-Israelism," rather than "antisemitism." That got me thinking about how limited our vocabulary is when it comes to talking about Israel’s supporters and critics, and when that criticism crosses a line.
When pro-Palestinian activists, for example, want to stop their participants in their movement from targeting random Jews, they often insist that "Zionism is not Judaism." But this rather weak analysis can mark any Jew who isn’t avowedly "anti-Zionist" — dedicated to dismantling the Jewish state in Israel — as a legitimate political target.
And on the flip side, many pro-Israel leaders say that Zionism is integral to Judaism and they understand Zionism as going beyond a belief in the existence of Jewish state to include robust political support for Israel, suggesting this is the position of all American Jews who are not anti-Zionist.
We need better words, and I’ve taken a stab at a Venn diagram showing five ways that people relate to Israel.
Zionism
The belief that Jews have a right to a national homeland, and generally that the modern state of Israel should continue to serve this role. This position is held by the vast majority of American Jews.
Pro-Israelism
The belief held by some Zionists that Jews in the diaspora should support Israel with few conditions, erring on the side of promoting Israel’s security over other issues but leaving the specifics to Israeli Jews.
This is the position advocated by most major American Jewish organizations. Their leaders often refer to this stance as "Zionism," although data suggests that many Jews do not share it — they see robust criticism of Israeli government policies as acceptable within Zionism, perhaps even an important part of supporting the existence of Israel as a Jewish state.
For example, Hillel International, the prime Jewish organization on college campuses, has exclusively expressed support for Israel during the current war. But Jewish college students — you might call them Hillel’s constituents — have a more mixed view. About two-thirds say there should be a Jewish state in Israel. But when asked whether they side with Israelis over Palestinians in the current conflict that share drops to 42%, suggesting about one-quarter of Jewish college students are Zionists that don’t align with Hillel’s "Israelist" approach.
Anti-Israelism
This is opposition to uncritical support of Israel, but not necessarily the core idea of Zionism. The share of anti-Zionist Jews in the U.S. likely hovers between 10% and 20%. But a much larger share opposes many of the positions held by Israeli government — and by the leading pro-Israel Jewish organizations.
For example, a May poll by an Israeli think tank found that nearly 30% of American Jews think Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians, a claim that groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee consider to be deeply offensive (another 18% were unsure whether Israel’s actions should be considered genocide or not). The same poll, by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a right-leaning group focused on Israeli security, found that 52% of American Jews would support President Joe Biden conditioning military aid to Israel, and 22% would oppose it.
Anti-Zionism
The belief that Jews do not have a right to a national homeland, or at least that the state of Israel should not serve this role. Most political anti-Zionists are also anti-Israelists, but there are some religious anti-Zionists — like the Chabad movement — that actually express strong political support for Israel.
Anti-Israel
This final bucket refers to the subset of Israel’s critics who adhere to both anti-Israelism and anti-Zionism but also demonize Israel and Israeli Jews. They appear to have little interest in nuance or a humanistic approach to the conflict (think the folks who cheered on Oct. 7 or insist on referring to the country as "israhell").
Why these categories matter
I have no illusions that people will start changing their terminology because of my diagram. But it can help us better understand antisemitism in relation to Israel.
Antisemitism cuts across all of these categories — many Christian Zionists have an ambivalent attitude toward Jews — and none of them are automatically antisemitic. But most of the concern over "campus antisemitism," and similar protests off campus, is really about the "anti-Israel" agitators who view nuance as an affront and deny the humanity of Israeli Jews and those in the United States who don’t agree with them.
This is a distinct subset of Israel’s progressive critics. An Axios poll from May found that 52% of college students support a "free Palestine" and 45% backed the tent encampments (anti-Israelism). A smaller share would be properly labeled anti-Zionist (the 17% who said Israel does not have a right to exist). Another study around the same time found that 3% might be classified as avowedly "anti-Israel," supporting violence toward Israeli civilians (some in this group were conservatives who did not support the protests).
The efforts to protect Jewish students, and American Jews in general, against this tiny last segment, has generally targeted the entire pro-Palestinian protest movement. A richer vocabulary could help people on both sides of the antisemitism debate.
Are "no Zionists" litmus tests meant to exclude liberal Jews who want to end military aid to Israel while also supporting a two-state solution? Should a college committed to protecting "Zionists" from discrimination focus on defending the most ardent pro-Israelists, or the vast majority of Jewish students who support Israel’s existence?
Better word choice alone won’t solve these conflicts. But precision should be in everyone’s interest.
This story was originally published on the Forward.
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Comments4
Wesley Parish27 September at 01:01 am
I would be interested to know how and where the Sephardic Black Panthers of Israel in the 1960s would fit in that diagram. Or the Egyptian Jewish community following the Lavon Affair. Or the Israeli Palestinians – the Palestinians who weren’t ethnically cleansed in 1948 and who now hold Israeli third-class citizenship. I wonder where I would appear on that diagram – I who think Israel was a mistake, and like Australia and New Zealand, needs to address the evil it has committed in its history; who has spoken out against holding the local Jewish communities responsible for Israel’s abuses, but at the same time regards the current actions of Israel in Gaza and in Lebanon during the 80s and 90s, as state terrorism and consequently considers all Australian and New Zealand Jews who fought in the IDF in those excesses, to be terrorists.
M McL26 September at 07:56 pm
The belief that Jews have a right to a national homeland, this position is held by the vast majority of American Jews.”
Yes, but Jews are a fraction of the Zionist vote.
Vivienne Porzsolt26 September at 08:33 am
To define Zionism as simply the right of Jews to a national homeland completely misses the point. Zionism is a settler colonialist project that from its inception, has dispossessed and subordinated another people, the Palestinians. That is the reason it is so strongly opposed by increasing numbers of people, including Jews, around the world. How can there be any valid discussion if the defining characteristics of the movement are denied and ignored?
Andre Oboler26 September at 07:33 am
Arno’s Venn diagram is interesting, but not very useful for addressing antisemitism. This is shown by Arno himself when he says “Antisemitism cuts across all of these categories”.
Later in the article he suggests efforts tackling antisemitism should only legitimately focus on “this tiny last segment” (what he calls anti-Israel?) and that it is concerning these efforts have “generally targeted the entire pro-Palestinian protest movement”.
In addition to not being a model of antisemitism, the diagram is also not a model of the pro-Palestinian movement. Conflating antisemitism with positions in relation to Israel isn’t particularly helpful. There can be some overlap in very psecific cases, e.g. racism can occur based on nationality, racism against someone on the basis their nationality is Israel, may also be considered antisemitism if the person is Jewish or is thought to be Jewish. These are special cases, not a way of defining antismeitism.