Published: 17 August 2026
Last updated: 18 August 2026
The gap between what “Zionism” means to most Diaspora Jews and how it is used and abused in Israeli politics has never been wider.
For most Australian Jews, Zionism is a simple baseline: supporting the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. Anti-Zionism, by extension, is the rejection of that principle. In this traditional Diaspora understanding, Zionism has little to do with specific policies, such as the two-state solution, Haredi conscription, or West Bank settlements. By this definition, anyone who supports Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, fits under the umbrella.
In Israel's political arena, however, “Zionist” is no longer a shared consensus; it is a partisan weapon used to delegitimise rivals.
Consider the political discourse surrounding the upcoming elections. Few foreign observers would label the Prime Minister of Israel as an “anti-Zionist,” yet former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called him precisely that after Netanyahu pushed through bills facilitating draft exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox and blocking an independent commission of inquiry into October 7.
On the other hand, prominent opposition figures like Gadi Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, and Yair Lapid regularly insist that their factions will only form a government with “Zionist parties”, a clear political filter aimed at excluding Arab and Haredi parties. This stance directly sidelines Ra'am, despite the efforts of its leader, Mansour Abbas, to bridge the divide.
Abbas has established notable pragmatism within Israeli politics by openly acknowledging Israel’s status as a Jewish state in both Arabic and Hebrew, pledging support to restore a synagogue burned down in Lod during the 2021 intercommunal violence, and explicitly breaking with traditional Arab political precedent by unequivocally condemning attacks on Israeli civilians without appending qualifiers regarding the occupation. Even though he consistently advocates for shared Jewish-Arab civic partnership grounded in a commitment to common democratic and Abrahamic values, none of this makes him an acceptable coalition partner to even the leading liberal Zionist opposition leaders in Israel today.
Comments1
jtl20 August at 11:20 pm
To a goy interested enough to read a jewish media source, what made sense to me was this:
The benchmark for entering government should not be a loyalty test to a label, but adherence to democratic norms: respecting the law, upholding equality, rejecting political violence, recognising the legitimacy of political rivals, and believing that elected MK’s should serve all citizens. In Baskin’s view, “A Jewish party that rejects those principles is less fit to govern than an Arab party that accepts them.”