StopAntizionism.org - What is Antizionism?

What is Antizionism?

Antizionism is not a political position. It is the ideological belief that the Jewish people alone, among the nations of the world, are not entitled to sovereignty in their ancestral homeland. Unlike criticism of Israeli policy — which, like any government, should be subject to scrutiny — antizionism rejects the existence of Israel as a legitimate expression of Jewish self-determination. It demands the undoing of a political and moral fact: the Jewish return to statehood after two millennia of exile, expulsion, and genocide.

In theory, antizionism may present itself as universalist or anti-nationalist. In practice, it manifests as a selective obsession with the only Jewish state, often drawing on the imagery, accusations, and conspiracies of classical antisemitism. Antizionism reframes the oldest hatred in modern terminology — replacing “the Jew” with “the Zionist” while preserving the same logic of exclusion and delegitimization.

Drop the Hyphen

The hyphen in “anti-Zionism” is not just typographic — it is ideological. Grammatically, it suggests that “Zionism” is an external object of critique, like “anti-globalism” or “anti-capitalism.” But antizionism is not a reaction to an abstract idea. It is a sustained campaign against a living people’s historical right to self-determination. The hyphen obscures that reality, lending linguistic cover to a movement that targets Jews in the name of opposing “Zionism.”

Dropping the hyphen clarifies the claim: antizionism is not about Zionism as a philosophy. It is a structured, systemic hostility to Jewish collective existence. Removing the hyphen affirms that this is not a dispassionate policy disagreement — it is a prejudice, one that demands to be named in full.

Who Are Antizionists?

Antizionism is an ideology where extremes converge. It has the power to unite otherwise opposing extremist movements under a common belief: that the Jewish nation has no legitimate right to exist and should be dismantled. This belief has traveled across continents, languages, and ideologies, mutating to fit each one's needs. Some adopt antizionism to reject Western hegemony, others to purify national identity, still others to perform moral virtue in progressive spaces. The result is not a unified worldview, but a coalition of contradiction — secular and religious, leftist and authoritarian, elite and populist — bound together by a shared target: the Jewish state.

Over the past century, this coalition has included:

Communists and Socialists, especially in the Soviet bloc, who framed Zionism as bourgeois nationalism and “counter-revolutionary tribalism.”
The USSR, which weaponized antizionism as state propaganda, exporting it globally via the UN, Third World liberation movements, and international NGOs.
Islamists, who reject Jewish sovereignty on theological grounds, viewing any Jewish presence in Muslim lands as illegitimate and intolerable.
Arab Nationalists, who constructed antizionism as a core element of postcolonial identity, casting Israel as a foreign intrusion into Arab space.
Western Leftists, who recast Israel as a settler-colonial project and transformed antizionism into a moral obligation within activist and academic spaces.
Far-Right Antisemites, who repackage traditional conspiracies by substituting “Zionist” for “Jew,” maintaining the structure of hate under a modern pretense.
NGOs, cultural institutions, and academic elites, where antizionism increasingly functions as a litmus test for social belonging and political virtue.

This is not a movement with a manifesto — it is a network of instincts and narratives, reinforced across systems. What unites its participants is not what they believe, but whom they blame.

Antizionism vs Classical Antisemitism

The distinction often drawn between antisemitism and antizionism — as if they are ethically or analytically separate — is both recent and artificial. Classical antisemitism targeted Jews as a dangerous presence within society. Antizionism targets the political expression of Jewish peoplehood as a dangerous presence among nations. In both cases, Jews are cast as uniquely malevolent, inherently disloyal, or structurally oppressive — and thus unworthy of protection, legitimacy, or sovereignty.

While classical antisemitism sought to restrict or remove Jews from public life, antizionism seeks to dismantle the Jewish collective body itself. It is not merely “against a state” but against the right of Jews to form one. Its tools — the denial of Jewish peoplehood, the invocation of global conspiracy, the inversion of victim and oppressor — are deeply familiar. The form has changed; the substance has not.

Learn about the history of antizionism.