Anti-Zionism

Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Although anti-Zionism is a heterogeneous phenomenon, all its proponents agree that the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and the movement to create a sovereign Jewish state in the region of Palestine—a region partly coinciding with the biblical Land of Israel—was flawed or unjust in some way.

Before World War II, opposition to Zionism was common among Jewish communities. Secular critics viewed Zionism as a form of nationalism inconsistent with Enlightenment universalism, while some Orthodox groups opposed it on theological grounds, regarding the establishment of a Jewish state as contingent upon the arrival of the Messiah. Support for Zionism increased during the 1930s as conditions for Jews deteriorated radically in Europe, and began to prevail over opposition to it in the Jewish diaspora. With the Second World War, the sheer scale of the Holocaust was felt and support for Zionism increased dramatically. After 1948, anti-Zionism shifted from opposition to the creation of a Jewish state to rejection of the existence of Israel itself, with many postwar movements advocating its replacement by an alternative political entity. Most Jewish anti-Zionist movements subsequently disintegrated or transformed into pro-Zionist organizations, although a minority, including the American Council for Judaism, continued to oppose the ideology. Outside the Jewish community, opposition to Zionism developed primarily among Arab populations, particularly among Palestinians, who associated it with the Nakba.^{[page needed]}

Anti-Zionism comes in various forms. Some anti-Zionists seek to replace Israel and its occupied territories with a single state that would putatively give Jews and Palestinians equal rights. These anti-Zionists have argued that a binational state would still realize Jewish self-determination, as self-determination need not imply a separate state. Some challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel. Some are anti-Zionist for religious reasons, such as Haredi Jews, and others seek instead the oppression or ethnic cleansing of Israeli Jews, although this position was historically rare in Western countries. The relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is debated, with some academics and organizations rejecting the linkage as unfounded and a form of weaponization of antisemitism used to stifle criticism of Israel and its policies, including the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of the Gaza Strip, while others, particularly supporters of Zionism, argue that anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic or new antisemitism.

From the beginning, there was resistance to Zionism and Theodor Herzl's call for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Opposition came from diverse sources: many Orthodox rabbis held that a Jewish state before the messiah was against divine will; assimilationist Jewish liberals feared Zionism threatened efforts at integration and citizenship in European states; and various left-wing Jewish movements, such as the Bund and Autonomists, promoted alternative forms of Jewish identity. In Western Europe, established Jewish communities often preferred loyalty to their nation-states over Jewish particularism. Some Reform rabbis removed references to Zion from liturgy, while others criticized Zionism as unrealistic. By contrast, the Mizrachi movement represented religious Zionist support, though more traditionalist groups like Agudat Yisrael opposed cooperation with secular Zionists. In the Soviet Union, the Yevsektsiya curtailed Zionist activity as part of its campaign against "Jewish bourgeois nationalism".

In regions outside Europe and North America, Zionism was often met with disinterest and regarded as a foreign ideology.

In Morocco, for example, it was introduced by Europeans in port cities and met with skepticism by the local Sephardic populations, who regarded it as irreligious and not concerned with their interests. It was later actively promoted by envoys from the Zionist fundraising organizations Jewish National Fund and Keren Hayesod. Urban, elite Moroccan Jews were divided on the question of Zionism: some supported modern secular Zionism, but some who were invested in the project of Westernization saw Zionism as an obstacle to achieving assimilation and integration with the Europeans; others saw Zionism as an obstacle to a favored Jewish-Muslim alliance and coexistence in Morocco. L'Union Marocaine, a francophone Jewish newspaper, spoke for the alliancistes associated with the Alliance Israélite Universelle, who saw Zionism as an obstacle to assimilation with the Europeans, and challenged L'Avenir Illustré, which published Zionist propaganda. Rural Moroccan Jews lived in relative isolation in their villages and were not very involved with Zionism until the Jewish Agency and Mossad LeAliya actively recruited them for migration by in the 1950s and 60s. There was no significant migration of Moroccan Jews to Palestine before the 1948 war and the establishment of the State of Israel.

In Egypt, Zionist activity began at the start of the 20th century, but there was limited engagement with it among Egyptian Jews until 1942–43, with the arrival of Zionist emissaries from Palestine and Zionist activists among the Allied forces in Egypt. According to Joel Beinin, "because most Egyptian Jews were relatively secure and comfortable during the 1930s, few saw the point of risking their position by ostentatious support for Zionism", and those who did express support for Zionism rarely migrated to Palestine themselves. In 1946, Jewish members of Iskra, an underground communist movement, founded the Jewish Anti-Zionist League.

Zionism in Iraq started to spread in the early 20th century. Although Iraqi Jews started to learn about the Zionist Organization (known after 1960 as the World Zionist Organization) through newspapers and periodicals published in Hebrew in Europe and Palestine in the 19th century, Iraqi Jews only made contact with the ZO in 1913.