Published: 10 June 2026
Last updated: 10 June 2026
Some years ago, I bought myself a label-maker. I spent hours printing off little sticky labels and covering everything in them. Pantry items, drawers in the wardrobe, tubs in the bathroom cupboards. I even used them to differentiate the husband’s phone chargers from my own so we could avert the perpetual marital crisis of the stolen charger.
But labels have limits and there are three things for which labels are ill-advised: people, politics and identity.
One-word labels in any of these areas rarely manage to embody what they seek to achieve. Can I really call myself a progressive if I think some women are “asking for it”? Can I call myself left-wing if I think climate change is all a bit of an exaggeration? Am I a conservative if I’m in favour of marriage equality? Because these labels might be helpful in some loosely indicative ways, but ultimately, they are all broad churches with a variety of interpretations.
We’ve seen “hunt by label” before, probably the most famous of which was the second “Red Scare” in the US after World War II. It saw the establishment of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1938, followed by McCarthyist witch hunts of the 1940s and 1950s.
The red scare is defined as a moral panic around the rise of left-wing ideologies in society, specifically socialism and communism, all too often intertwined with anti-Chinese and anti-Russian racism.
The first step was to define “communism” as the embodiment of all evil and totally morally corrupt, whipping up hatred, fear and conspiracy. The second step was to haul those deemed to be communist (in the pejorative sense of the word) and interrogate them and encourage them to “give up” other “communists”. And the third step was to excise them from public life.
Comments7
Simon Krite9 July at 10:12 am
Isabelle, the real issue is the greatest inversion of our time is that some of the loudest campaigns against Jews now march under the banner of “human rights.”
Using “human rights” as moral camouflage to selectively target, isolate and delegitimise the world’s only Jewish state is every bit as cynical as weaponising Holocaust language. It grants prejudice a veneer of virtue.
That’s why the obsession with words like “Kapo” misses the larger issue. While those terms should never be used lightly, the far greater damage is done by those who cloak anti-Jewish outcomes in the language of justice, equity and human rights. Respectable language does not make a discriminatory campaign respectable.
The anti-Zionist litmus test described in this article is real. Increasingly, Jews are expected to publicly renounce Zionism to earn social acceptance. This is ideological coercion.
History will not remember this era kindly. It will remember the institutions, activists and NGOs that claimed to defend universal human rights while applying standards to the Jewish state that they demanded of no other nation.
Simon Krite9 July at 10:03 am
BART, Your comment is a perfect example of starting with the conclusion and working backwards.
You redefine Zionism entirely by “alleged” outcomes while conveniently ignoring why it exists in the first place. The Jewish people’s right to self-determination after centuries of persecution in their ancestral homeland. No other national movement is judged solely by its imperfections while its legitimacy is denied.
Suggesting Palestinians have a more “relevant understanding” of Zionism than Jews themselves is comical. That’s like claiming Britain’s enemies are the ultimate authority on British history.
You’ve also erased 3,000 years of Jewish history and reduced Zionism to 1948 onwards, as though Jewish attachment to Israel began with the Nakba. That’s not history, Bart… it’s basic ideological propaganda.
The reality is that Zionism “does” exactly what every successful national movement does, it established and defends a nation-state. If your definition starts by excluding Jewish history and ends by accepting the narrative of those who reject Jewish self-determination, you’ve described Antizionism, not Zionism and your terms are straight from the Palestinianism playbook.
Bart29 June at 03:27 pm
Its undoubtedly true, as the author makes out, that Zionism means different things to different people, (and increasingly different things to the same people at different points of their life). But the article never reckons with the fundamental reason why Jewish and non-Jewish people increasingly define themselves as anti-Zionist – not in reaction to a theory, let alone a feeling – but a reaction to what Zionism ‘does’, has done and continues to do. This is real-existing Zionism, a historic political movement that has been unfolding in concrete facts from the Nakba to today. That is why Palestinians have long had a closer and more relevant understanding of what Zionism actually is than us diaspora Jews that speak of it in abstract, ahistorical and parasocial terms.
Ruth Wilson13 June at 03:15 am
In general, this article reflects my view of the current situation and the dilemmas it poses for those who identify as Zionists. I do not understand however why the commentator would renounce her identity as a Zionist : ‘ I’ve said repeatedly that I don’t identify as a “Zionist”’, is a surrender to the derangement of the left leaning opponents of Israel. I personally reject the labels of ‘genocide’, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘apartheid’ and believe I can defend me position, and I shall never renounce my belief that the Jews have the right to remain in their sovereign state in the ancestral home – that is how I express my identity as a Zionist, and it has nothing to do with my very strong opposition to the current Israeli government.
joe lenzo12 June at 04:58 pm
Yes it works both ways. And, unfortunately, I do not see it changing, only getting worse,
KIm O'Brien12 June at 04:29 am
Thank you for this very thoughtful piece. There is so much confusion about the term “Zionism” and so few journalists bother to give it definition for contemporary society.
Michele Grossman11 June at 08:16 am
An insightful piece that offers a useful historical reminder of how labels that flatten nuance and diversity of belief or allegiance help only those who avoid, dismiss or show contempt for the grey zone of complexity for a variety of reasons. Oppression and persecution thrive on such black and white thinking. Sad but instructive to see how the legacy of McCarthyism lives on.