Key Takeaways
- Several Green Party figures and other activists have used extreme language to describe Zionists, calling them “vermin,” accusing them of responsibility for 9/11, and claiming they “love genocide.”
- Attempts to label Zionism as racism (e.g., a failed Green Party conference motion) and to create “Zionist‑free zones” illustrate a growing tendency to treat Zionism as a political bogeyman rather than a nuanced ideology.
- Zionism originated in the late‑19th century as a response to European pogroms and antisemitism, evolving from a left‑wing, secular self‑determination movement into a multifaceted ideology that now encompasses diverse political strands within Israel.
- The term “Zionism” is heavily contested: pro‑Palestinian critics view it as a settler‑colonial project causing Palestinian dispossession, while most Jews see it as the expression of Jewish self‑determination and safety after centuries of persecution.
- Historical anti‑Zionist campaigns, especially Soviet‑driven propaganda in the mid‑20th century, helped embed conspiratorial and dehumanising tropes that persist today, blurring the line between legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and antisemitism.
- Contemporary debates show that while many anti‑Zionists oppose specific Israeli actions (e.g., settlement expansion, Gaza war), the rhetoric often slides into calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Zionists, which scholars warn constitutes a new form of Jew‑hatred.
The recent surge of inflammatory rhetoric against Zionists has been highlighted by several Green Party candidates. Tina Ion declared that “every single Zionist” should be killed and labelled them “vermin” and “rats.” Aziz Hakimi blamed Zionists for the 9/11 attacks, while Feda Shahin asserted that Zionists killed 20 million Christians in the Soviet Union and “love genocide.” These statements emerged alongside a failed Green Party conference motion to declare “Zionism is racism,” and parallel efforts by other parties—such as Labour’s Zarah Sultana criticising Jeremy Corbyn for insufficient anti‑Zionism—and local actions like a Bristol café renaming itself to avoid the term “Zion.” In New York, protesters chanted that Zionists are unwelcome, and campaigns are underway to designate “Zionist‑free zones” in places like Leith, Scotland, and university campuses.
Zack Polanski added fuel to the fire by telling ITV that no country possesses a right to exist, arguing that the semantic debate over statehood underlies the Israel‑Palestinian conflict. This viewpoint reflects a broader trend where the term “Zionist” is employed as a catch‑all epithet, divorced from its historical meaning.
To understand why the word provokes such intense reactions, the article traces Zionism’s origins. Emerging in the late 1800s amid pogroms and expulsions from Eastern Europe, Zionism offered a secular, left‑wing solution for Jews seeking self‑determination. Early supporters included figures like Theodor Herzl, inspired by antisemitic incidents such as the Dreyfus affair, and literary works like George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. While some Western European Jews opposed Zionism favouring assimilation, and ultra‑orthodox Jews rejected it on religious grounds, the movement gained traction as Western nations closed their doors to Jewish refugees.
The 1917 Balfour Declaration, which favoured a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, exemplified the competing imperial promises that shaped the region. Under British Mandate, Zionism encompassed a spectrum of factions—from socialist kibbutzim to right‑wing paramilitaries like the Irgun and Stern Gang—yet was initially framed as an anti‑colonialist struggle for self‑determination. After the Holocaust, the establishment of Israel in 1948 fulfilled the Zionist aim for many, rendering the term, in their eyes, obsolete.
Nevertheless, the definition of Zionism remains contested. The Oxford English Dictionary describes it as a movement for the re‑establishment and protection of a Jewish nation in Palestine. A recent Wikipedia edit, however, framed Zionists as seeking “as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible,” a formulation most Jews reject because it omits the religious and historical longing for Zion embedded in Jewish liturgy and memory.
Anti‑Zionism itself has deep roots. Early opposition came from Arab neighbours seeking Israel’s demise and from the Soviet Union, which, after recognizing Israel’s independent socialist trajectory, launched a propaganda campaign portraying Zionism as a racist, imperialist conspiracy. Soviet‑sponsored UN Resolution 3379 (1975) equated Zionism with racism, and the Anti‑Zionist Committee of the Soviet Public disseminated Nazi‑derived tropes worldwide. These efforts seeded enduring conspiracy theories—such as the “Zionist Occupied Government” (ZOG) myth—that continue to surface in both far‑right and far‑left discourse.
Today, while many self‑identified anti‑Zionists criticize specific Israeli policies—settlement expansion, the Gaza war, extremist settler violence—their language frequently slips into dehumanising calls for Israel’s destruction and the killing of Zionists. Scholars warn that this conflation risks reviving antisemitic tropes under a new label, making Jews feel increasingly reliant on Israel as a safeguard against hatred. The article concludes that distinguishing legitimate criticism of Israeli government actions from outright denial of Jewish self‑determination is essential to prevent anti‑Zionism from becoming a veiled form of Jew‑hatred.