Extra: Ending “Anti-Zionism”: Burying a Detrimental Ideology

They say that you can’t kill an idea. They have never met me before. Galileo ended millennia of geocentrism stemming from Aristotle’s work. The dogmatic Aristotelians of the middle ages—like the Catholic Church, for example—restricted heavily and persecuted free thinkers like Copernicus, Kepler, and most famously Galileo for daring to oppose the status quo. They turned all their considerable power against heliocentrism; yet, they eventually had to concede defeat.

So it will be with the antiquated idea of ‘anti-Zionism’ inexplicably making the rounds still to this day. The Jewish state is 3,000 years old and 76 years young. It is not going anywhere. To oppose its very existence and the existence of 9-10 million Israelis as free people in their own land is among the most hateful of pop culture ideologies. For the benefit of posterity, we must philosophically ‘bury the hatchet’ on its many flaws, inconsistencies, and faulty axioms it relies on to limp along.

Now, I’m not delusional. No matter how long I make this writing, a single newsletter will not be enough to accomplish the task I am setting out to do. I may have to write a book (or, G-d forbid, several) on the topic before this failed ideology is buried in history. But it will be done. It is as inevitable as the death of geocentrism was.

As has been made unerringly clear, “anti-Zionism” is the face of the new antisemitism. Anyone that has been paying attention the last hundred years has made this connection. Because although especially before the Holocaust there was still vigorous debate among the global Jewish community as to whether the nation of Israel should come into being once more in the 19th and 20th centuries, the Jewish people as a whole have been Zionist from the start. It is an integral part of Judaism. And because of this, antisemites for over a hundred years have spit on ‘Zionists’ beginning with probably the most successful piece of propaganda in world history: the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, which was a Russian antisemitic pamphlet and conspiracy theory published around 1903 purporting to record a “Zionist plot” for world domination. Ironically, it was precisely this hate for Jews, lies about them, and a series of ever-escalating pogroms against them that led to the creation of the modern nation-state of Israel.

Now, I must disclaim that I am myself an outsider to the Jewish people and culture and religion. I am goyim—’of the nations’. But I have learned a lot, about a lot. I know for example that much like Muslims pray towards Mecca, Jews pray towards and have their synagogues worldwide built facing Jerusalem. The exodus forced by the Romans was always considered a temporary state of affairs. Those “anti-Zionist” Jews you see marching to “free Palestine”? Yeah, they’re not actually anti-Zionist. Just ask them about what Moshiach will do when he finally gets here. Unfortunately, crazy people are often misunderstood. I wrote in Zionist Musings that the Neturei Karta are among the most radical of cults with juuust enough connection left to reality to not Jonestown themselves. If the shoe fits…

This is detrimental to human flourishing for a number of reasons. There is much hate among this tiny minority of the current global Jewish population for the rest. And it is used and abused by those who would see all Jews everywhere gone from this Earth. To the ultra-orthodox and ultra-privileged of New York that don’t have to watch their children blown up and slaughtered on a regular basis: it’s time to put this charade to an end. Your religious dogma does not take precedence over human lives. Accept that the Jewish nation lives again, now. Justify it in your theology however you need to. But you will need to come around to it, just as the Catholics came around to heliocentrism. If you don’t, you will be left by the wayside of history. You will be forgotten by your Jewish brethren. I have heard the insider scoop. It’s just not cool the hate you’re fostering for Israel and Israelis.

All that being said, they really are a tiny minority of a tiny minority. They actually almost aren’t worth mentioning at all. Because two of the largest world religions also have an “anti-Zionism” problem; and it is of such a nature that it is quite literally facilitating the rise of Nazism in the 21st century.

Christianity and Islam are proselytizing religions; and boy, do they ever. Both have long and storied histories of forced conversion of Jews; and both have long and storied histories of massacring them. To start, Christianity has been the driving force of antisemitism and even ‘anti-Zionism’ basically from the get-go. The Jewish people became a cornerstone of early Christian theology as a sort of cautionary tale—‘This is what happens when you reject Christ’. Christians needed Jews to be weak and powerless; or else how does their rejection of the Messiah make sense as literally ‘God’s chosen people’?

It was taken for granted across the Christian world that Jews would never have a nation again. They were the ‘old way’. They rejected Jesus and deserved to suffer. And for several hundred years, Christians were the only players on the block.

But, of course, the incredible conquests of Islam beginning in the 600s created a different kind of world: one defined in opposition to Christianity, and in some ways also opposition to Jews and Judaism. Like Christians, their experience of the Jewish people for thousands of years was as a stateless, powerless people. They were dhimmis; that is, they were tolerated in Islamic lands, so long as they paid a special jizya tax. Their rejection of the Prophet Muhammad caused tensions just as their rejection of Christ did, and often led to injustice and atrocities.

I should note here that I do not have a horse in this religious race; I simply dislike dogma. I have known too many Muslims at this point to believe that they’re all radical extremists. I do think that Islam can fit into a liberal, secularized world. And there is absolutely room for Zionism and coexistence with the Jewish nation within Islam. That theological battle is already being fought by Arab Israelis and many others. They could use reinforcements, to be sure. But it is possible. Jews and Arabs coexisted in the Middle East long before Islam even existed (I know, I know, “your religion has always existed”. Yeah, mine too buddy. Aristotle was my teacher too.)

The problem of “anti-Zionism” within these frameworks is not just religious in nature. It may be fueled by this desire to proselytize and convert Jews to worship their specific Messiah or Prophet; but at its root is simply hate. Hate for the Jewish people. Culturally seeded within the deepest levels of the psyche.

Because why shouldn’t Jews have their own nation in their own land? Aren’t we doing ‘indigenous rights’ now? Are Jews somehow less deserving of the right to self-determination, and if so why?

And the answer is simple hate. People don’t like Jews. I do not possess this bias. I do not believe I harbor hate for anyone; though it is possible I have a blindspot. But for those who do consciously or unconsciously hate the Jewish people, “anti-Zionism” provides the perfect cover. Instead of invoking the old blood libels like that Jews use the blood of Christian children to make matzo soup or what have you, people today can falsely accuse Israelis of “genocide”—against the only Jewish state in the world and a democratic state at that, and one whose population is approximately three-quarters Jewish. To accuse Israelis of the worst crimes against humanity with zero factual evidence of such is to engage in the same sort of persecution the Jewish people have always faced, from Dreyfus all the way back to antiquity.

Once you see it, you will be unable to not notice the parallels among the “free Palestine” crowd to the same sort of propaganda as the Nazis. “Keep the world clean” signs with the Magen David in a trash can? ‘Judenrein’ in the 21st century. This is the new rise of Nazism, make no mistake. Goebbels would be weeping with joy if he heard the “from the river to the sea” chants across America today. To participate in such is to at the very least be a useful idiot for the types of people that would see Jews exterminated from the Earth before they would shake their hand. And it is so dangerous precisely because it has unified all these different types of Jew hatred under a single banner.

But of course, most people don’t see this. Maybe not enough have been educated in history to know. It certainly doesn’t help that the Soviets were pushing “anti-Zionist” propaganda for decades to muddle the waters, and all because Israel didn’t go “full communism” in the decades after their founding. The Soviets captured a good number of “academic” and “scholarly” minds and somehow convinced otherwise intelligent people that Jews were “colonizers” in their own land. From this sort of Orwellian doublethink it became possible to believe other absurdities about the Jewish state: like that one of the most diverse and equal countries in the world is somehow “apartheid”.

This is the pinnacle foundation of modern “anti-Zionism”: a secular version that yet draws from the religious antisemitism of the past two millennia. And it is just as detrimental to humanity as all the rest. The pan-Arab coalition spearheaded by Nasser and Arafat before and after the ‘Six Day War’ exemplified this sort of secular and extraordinarily violent anti-Zionism. But it’s just as philosophically weak as all the rest. And it is just as harmful to humanity: where is the ancient community of Baghdadi Jews that lived there since the Babylonian exodus two and a half millennia ago?

In Israel. They were expelled in pogroms from their ancient homes in the name of “anti-Zionism”. Why? Because it’s just Jew hate under a thin veil.

When will people realize that this is not righteous? This is not what your God, whichever God you worship, wants. This is not “justice”. This is not progressing humanity towards a better future. “Anti-Zionism” is poison to human decency.

I feel as though I’ve written a lot, but there’s still so much more to say. The project of philosophically burying anti-Zionism requires not just surface-level analysis as I’ve offered here. I am a believer in Truth. I believe that once the true nature of “anti-Zionism” is laid bare, it will unravel at first gradually and then all at once. It is not the sort of ideology on which a lasting global society can be built. Defining oneself in opposition to another’s existence can only lead to ruin. Are we wise enough to come out of this delusion?

עם ישראל חי