Antizionist Organizations – Defining Antizionism : From Blog Posts to Book 

The purpose of “Antizionist Organizations – Defining Antizionism” and these blog posts is to combine them into a published book entitled Safe Schools for Jewish Students: An Educator’s Guide to Preventing Antisemitism and Strengthening Belonging.

Go here for the full Table of Contents.

Chapter 6 – Antizionist Organizations: Defining Antizionism

“Zionism is the Declaration of Jewish Independence from all kinds of slavery, whether material or spiritual.”

—Solomon Schechter, Founder of the Jewish Conservative Movement, 1906

“It is manifestly right that the Jews should have a National Home where some of them may be reunited. And where else could that be but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated.”

—Winston Churchill, Secretary of the State for the Colonies, 1921

“[Zionists are] professing a strictly racial concept.”

—Nazi SS Chief Officer Reinhard Heydrich, 1935

“The main posits of modern Zionism are militant chauvinism, racism, anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism.”

—The third edition of the thirty-volume Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Большая Советская энциклопедия, БСЭ), published in 1969–1978

“Zionism is racism”

—UN Resolution 3379 in 1975, (later retracted)

This chapter covers:

• Defining Antizionism
• History of Antizionism
• Unreliable Sources – UN Organizations
• Unreliable Sources – Press
• Unreliable Sources – NGOs
• Funding Hate
• How to Respond in the Classroom

Defining Antizionism

I used the term for this chapter “antizionism” to put a light on the true definition of antizionism. Zionism is a movement in favor of Jews having the right to self-determine safely in their ancestral homeland. Those against Zionism are not against a movement. They are against Jews having such rights. As a result, many Jews portray this anti-Jewish sentiment by calling it out for what it is, without capitalization and without hyphenation. It is not a protest against a movement, it is not anti-Zionism. It is a hate movement, antizionism.

Antizionism: A hate movement against the right for Jews to self-determine and/or live safely in their ancestral homeland.

Anyone who supports the right for all people to live safely or live at all in the Jewish homeland except the Jews is supporting an antisemitic sentiment. Again, criticizing an Israeli policy with a balance of evaluating other countries’ policies is commendable. Criticizing Israel’s right to exist is antizionism, which is antisemitic behavior.

History of Antizionism

Antizionism is not new. The method of using Zionism in a negative fashion has been done three times before in history. In each approach, the method involved negatively generalizing Jewish thought (“All Jews want to expel or kill…”).

Nazi Connection – Adolf Hitler and the German press promoted the image of Jews being devious and evil for wanting a state of their own.

“Herzl not only foresaw the ‘League of Nations,’ the ‘Society of the Jews,’ Jewish financial firms and political organizations, but also worked to develop and establish them. All of today’s Jewish societies are more or less interested in in [sic] building up Palestine and driving out the Arabs.”

—Walter Freund, “Der Zionismus und seine Gefahren,” Völkischer Beobachter (Vienna edition), 4 July 1944, pp. 1-2

“[W]hile the Zionists try to make the rest of the world believe that the national consciousness of the Jew finds its satisfaction in the creation of a Palestinian state, the Jews again slyly dupe the dumb Goyim. It doesn’t even enter their heads to build up a Jewish state in Palestine for the purpose of living there; all they want is a central organization for their international world swindle, endowed with its own sovereign rights and removed from the intervention of other states: a haven for convicted scoundrels and a university for budding crooks.”

—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Pan-Arab Connection – The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, considered the Jews evil and shouldn’t live in the British Mandate of Palestine. He preferred to commit a genocide against the Jews and met with Hitler on November 28, 1941 to deal with the “Jew problem.” Al-Husayni also portrayed the Jews as a whole negatively as a reason to prevent Jews from living in Palestine.

“Jews are known in history only as a subjugated people. Their vulgar nature and insufferable stance toward the nations that offered them hospitality, and toward their neighboring nations, are the reason that those same nations had to resort to [certain] measures in order to suppress a Jew’s efforts to obtain his desire by force.”

—Hajj Amin al-Husayni, “Islam and Judaism,” 1937

Boris Havel reveals a pattern used by al-Husayni of denigrating Jews as a whole.

“Departing from this conventional view, the mufti did not interpret contemporary events as a new historical phenomenon to which Muslims should respond in a new, ad hoc manner. Instead, he traced Jewish accomplishments of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and the alleged Jewish power and ambitions, to supposed Jewish activities at the time of Muhammad. In doing so, he created a precedent, later followed by prominent Islamic actors in the Middle East and elsewhere, particularly after Israel’s stunning military victories over its Arab adversaries. Thus Hamas accuses the Jews of “wiping out the Islamic caliphate” by starting World War I and of starting the French and the communist revolutions, establishing “clandestine organizations” and financial power so as to colonize, exploit, and corrupt countries. Likewise, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Muhammad accused Jews of ruling the world by proxy. Attributing such gargantuan accomplishments to the Jews, many of them at the expense of Muslims, presents a theological innovation with an immediate political consequence. Linking early Islamic with medieval Christian depictions of Jews results in their portrayal as ‘a demonic entity,’ thus making their ‘extermination legitimate.’”

—Boris Havel, “Hajj Amin Husseini’s Anti-Semitic Legacy,” Middle East Quarterly, vol. 22:3, 2015.

The intent of preventing a state of Israel was less about the concern of Arabs losing land and more about Jews living there. In some cases, they spoke of their hatred of Jews. In other cases, they spoke of their hatred against Israel’s existence.

“I declare a holy war, my Muslim brothers! Murder the Jews! Murder them all!”

—Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and President of the All-Palestine Government, 1948

“Strike the enemy’s towns, turn them to dust, pave the Arab roads with the skulls of Jews.”

—Hafez al Assad, Defense Minister of Syria, 1967, just prior to the Six-Day War

“The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the disgrace which is Israel which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear: to wipe Israel off the map.”

—Abdul Rahman Arif, President of Iraq, 1967, days before the Six-Day War

“Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel.”

—Gamal Abdul Nasser, President of Egypt, 1967, just before the Six-Day War

“Every one of the hundred million Arabs has been living for the past nineteen years on one hope — to live to see the day Israel is liquidated.”

—Cairo Radio, 1967, days before the start of the Six-Day War

“The goal of our struggle is the end of Israel, and there can be no compromises or mediations… We don’t want peace, we want victory. Peace for us means Israel’s destruction and nothing else.”

—Yassir Arafat, Chairman of the PLO, 1970

Communist Connection – During World War II, the Soviet Union avoided using the word “Jew” and focused on propaganda against Jews by claiming the problem was “Jewish Nationalism” aka Zionism.

Lenin and Stalin held antizionist sentiment.

Lenin was on the side of everyone unite against the oppressors, the focus being that in the world there are only oppressors and the oppressed, and if one was not oppressed, they must be in the evil category of oppressor, a lesson currently taught in today’s Ethnic Studies classes.

Since the Jews were oppressed and poor, for the Jews wanting to separate themselves from the Bolsheviks and Lenin’s school of thought of united internationality was an insult.

Throughout those years of Lenin and Stalin, Jews—called Zionists—were portrayed as creatures.

In 1903, the Soviet secret police (the Okhrana) were likely behind the infamous publication called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to portray Jews as devious and planning to control the world. In 1921, the French adopted the antisemitic trope in the magazine below which included information on The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion: The Jewish Danger.

Compare the French cover with the 1972 May Day parade in Moscow.

Zionism was the term used to dehumanize the Jew.

Stalin turned Zionism into a conspiracy after 1967. At first, Stalin supported a Jewish state, thinking it would be a socialist country in a geopolitically strategic location for Soviet influence. But when it became clear by the words of the founders of Israel that Israel would be a democracy with Western values, Stalin didn’t like the idea of an American ally in the Middle East.

When Israel won against Soviet-Arab allies in the 1967 war, Soviet leaders routinely portrayed Zionism as a form of imperialism, racism, colonialism, or bourgeois nationalism. KGB Chairman Yury Andropov developed Operation SIG to spread propaganda against the Jews, according to Ion Pacepa, former head of Romania’s foreign intelligence service, by instilling a disinformation campaign against Israel and America by calling America a Zionist state intent on subjugating Islams to Jewish rule.

“If we severed diplomatic relations [with the U.S.], it was only as a token of our indignation at Israel’s aggression.”

—Brezhnev to President Nixon at the 1972 Moscow Summit after the Six-Day War.

In 1965, the UN held an International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) that proposed a document against Nazism, neo-Nazism, and antisemitism. The Soviet leadership viewed this proposal regarding antisemitism as a personal attack against them for their treatment of Soviet Jews. The Soviets proposed an amendment against Zionism as if to distinguish a difference between the two. The language read, “State parties condemn anti-Semitism, Zionism, Nazism, neo-Nazism and all other forms of the policy and ideology of colonialism, national and race hatred and exclusiveness.”

Rather than debate the proposed amendment, the UN’s final language removed both “antisemitism” and “Zionism.”

Andrei Gromyko promoted the rhetoric of “Zionism has become a form of racism and racial discrimination” from the mid-1960s onward.

He used variations of this formulation in speeches supporting the UN campaign that culminated in General Assembly Resolution 3379 (“Zionism is racism”) in 1975.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the USSR continued the hate movement claiming, “We’re not antisemitic, we’re anti-Zionist.”

The UN Resolution 46/86 of 1991, with strong language against the legitimacy of Israel’s existence, repealed the “Zionism is racism” resolution.

This chapter will include the UN’s antizionist slant.

Spotting Antizionist Organizations

Antizionist organizations accuse Israel of crimes when Israel is attacked. They’ll support the nation that is at war with Israel while demonizing Israel rather than supporting peace between the two nations.

In displays, there is often either the display of the warring nation’s flag against Israel or the defacing of the Israeli flag instead of the display of two flags side by side demonstrating support of coexistence.

Solutions often involve harming Israel rather than finding win-win solutions.

Strikingly lacking from their chants or slogans are words like “coexistence.” The chants or slogans are often, instead, dogwhistles that are vague calls to action which are interpreted by antisemites as a war-cry to harm or kill Jews.

Examples of Antizionist Actions

Three typical examples of antizionist actions are:

• Endorsement of Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions: Many listed groups actively call for a boycott, divestment, and sanction of Israel and Israeli products without any interest in extending such attention on countries with legitimate crimes against humanity.
• Accusations of Apartheid or Genocide: Major human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have published reports falsely characterizing Israeli policies as apartheid and calling for international accountability.
• UN Bodies’ Israel-Focused Resolutions: Institutions like the UNHRC have passed unusually high numbers of resolutions condemning Israel relative to other countries, leading critics to argue these bodies treat Israel uniquely.

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Author Biography of Safe Schools for Jewish Students

Ezra Barany, son of a Bronx father and a Dutch mother from Nazi-occupied Netherlands, loves riveting readers with Jewish thrillers. His first two books in The Torah Codes series were award-winning international bestsellers. In his free time, he has eye-opening discussions on the art of writing novels with his wife and book coach Beth Barany. A high school physics teacher, Ezra lives in Oakland with his beloved wife and two cats working on the next book. Ezra, not the cats.