How to defend against antizionism – Part 1
Part 1: Diagnosing the problem
Today we rely on the word ‘antisemitism’ to describe all anti-Jewish sentiment. The word sprang into popularity through Wilhelm Marr’s The Victory of Judaism Over Germandom (1879), which mounts the antisemite’s moral case while rejecting the religious persecution of prior centuries.
“I therefore unconditionally defend Jewry against all religious persecution and think that it is hardly possible to express this more clearly than I have done here. On the other hand, I emphasise the following indisputable truth: With the Jews, the Romans have forced a tribe upon the West, which, as its history shows, was thoroughly hated by all the peoples of the Orient.”
The moralisation of persecuting Jewish ethnic deviance was soon as institutionalised as antijudaism had been.
It is permission, not hatred, that produces violence against Jews. Permission is drafted through semantics: the words used to justify a perspective are used to ameliorate the damage it causes. Through language, the perpetrators of violence have the capacity to define their way out of immorality. “I’m not antisemitic, I’m antizionist.”
Marr’s antisemitic contemporaries outlined a logical, moral framework for a system that saw six million European Jews exterminated. Marr is not solely to blame. As we see again, many hands make light work.
The social permission for religious persecution had been revoked by the late 19th century and early 20th century, just as the permission for racism has been revoked for Randa Abdel-Fattah and John Menadue. In neither context has that made Jews safer.
Marr’s words can be uncontroversially appropriated for modern antizionists:
“I therefore unconditionally defend Jewry against all religious persecution antisemitism and think that it is hardly possible to express this more clearly than I have done here. On the other hand, I emphasize the following indisputable truth: With the Zionists, the Romans Germans have forced a tribe upon the West East, which as its history shows, was thoroughly hated by all the peoples of the Orient.”
The case against “antisemitism”
The most brutal chapter of Jew-hate in history, still in living memory, was one of institutionalised, fashionable race-based violence. “Antisemitism” now shoulders the responsibility for describing a phenomenon that stretches from before its existence, throughout its normalisation, and into its social impermissibility today.
The word covers more than what popular parlance can cope with. Its invocation against antizionists—often self-described ‘anti-racists’—obscures more than it clarifies.
To most, antisemitism is inseparable from the Nazism behind the Shoah. It is nowhere near as versatile as we need it to be.
A category error is responsible for the violence Jews now face. Persecution operates outside what many recognise as “antisemitic” because it travels through pathways that don’t conform to the overt, race-based system we’re programmed to recognise as ‘antisemitism’.
What does and doesn’t constitute antisemitism seems to rest on pre-existing protections erected post-catastrophe. Jewish religion and ethnicity are protected. Jewish statehood is not.
Addressing vilification requires understanding what licenses it.
Like water, Jew-hatred doesn’t evaporate when a channel is blocked. It pools, before eventually finding a path of least resistance around the impasse, flowing through whatever cracks are available for exploiting.
To the broader public, “antisemitism” remains racist and vulgar. 13,000 Jews were expelled from Poland in 1968—at a time when the government had outlawed antisemitism. Vilification, again sanitised as antizionism, continues to lead to the murder of Jews in Europe, North and South America, Australia, the Middle East, and North Africa, yet its threat level remains lowered to “political criticism”.
Antijudaism, antisemitism, and antizionism are best seen as distinct moral justifications for attacking some threatening element of Jewish life. As one pathway is blocked—its language, tropes, and resulting harms deemed impermissible—another is carved out. Combining these pathways into a single category prevents us from grappling with the logic behind antizionism.
The moralising of hatred for Jewish self-determination—not Jewish ethnicity—is now what haunts Jewry. Accusing antizionists of “antisemitism” is as effective as denouncing Wilhelm Marr for antijudaism.
Insisting that antizionists are antisemites will not change the moral calculus behind boycotting Jewish businesses and setting synagogues on fire. The idea that one must sing the other’s tune is an oversight that marks Jews for violence.
Diagnostic failure
What constitutes bigotry today is only what can’t be constructed as “political criticism”. Antizionism falls into this category for most Jewish and non-Jewish institutions. A category error means that anti-Jewish bigotry is allowed to flourish when it doesn’t conform to the overt, race-based hatred we’re programmed to recognise as ‘antisemitism’.
The antizionist must be also deemed “antisemitic” before their logic or morality can be challenged.
It is crucial that we distinguish between antizionism and “political criticism” with the same certainty that distinguishes classical antisemitism from “race science” or “social cohesion”.
An antizionist lens, ubiquitous today, positions Jews as proximal to a “Zionist” rot. “Zionism”, for the antizionist, is a word without real meaning, functions as a symbol for all past and present state-based moral failures, many of which are in contradiction with each other, in simultaneity: liberalism, communism, fascism, capitalism, power, weakness, pluralism, homogeneity, theocracy…
The antizionist’s invocation of the word “Zionist” is as accurate a description as the word “n*gger” is for an African American, or “semite” from the mouths of Nazis. These words are used not to describe, but to dehumanise.
The stigmatisation of “Zionism” dehumanises Jewry to the extent that the moral weight of shootings on a beach or the torching of healthcare services is limited or ignored. The lynching of a “n*gger” does not conjure the same moral response as the lynching of an “American”, because the n-word reduces humanity to a hate object.
Antizionists blame Israel for killing Israelis on October 7. Rapes are denied on national radio by antizionists like Grace Tame—whose bigotry is heralded as moral clarity.
Miscategorising what constitutes bigotry prevents real institutional protections. We have failed to build the language necessary to out antizionism as vile, unacceptable abuse, relying instead on tethering the antizionist to defunct, Nazi pathways for bigotry. Our leaders enshrine this failure—halfway through a Royal Commission—continuing to separate antizionism and antisemitism on moral grounds:
ECAJ 24 March 2026
ECAJ antisemitism article
Through decades of antizionist persecution from Tunisia (1956, 1961) to Poland (1968) and many examples both before, between, and since, we desperately construct one form of bigotry using the scaffolding of another. How can we arm a generation against antizionism who have never heard of the Mawza Exile?
We cannot revoke the permissibility for a hate movement that we can’t identify. It should not require centuries of violence or the purging of millions to teach Jews about antizionism.
Some argue that distinguishing between these pathways complicates policy and prosecution. The IHRA working definition should protect Jews against antizionism. Racial vilification law in Australia should do the same. Both fail when they relegate antizionism to a form of “political critique” that can “cross the line” into antisemitism.
Under this construction, these frameworks are impotent and leave Jews unprotected. Jews are forced to explain the extent to which the antizionism they experience conforms to what is taught exhaustively in schools and museums as an historical phenomenon. We must understand that antizionism operates through a different moral language to past anti-Jewish systems and therefore operationalises an entirely different rationale for vilifying Jews.
There is a tendency to dismiss this distinction as semantic or academic. But when a word is stretched to cover everything, it explains less and less; failing us when we most need clarity.
Referring to antizionism as “sometimes antisemitism” doesn’t work. This is because, to the antizionist, it still feels moral—and we’ve done nothing to combat that feeling.
Fighting modern Jew-hatred requires that antizionism is understood. We cannot do this without describing it accurately.
Part 2 will be published in JWire tomorrow.
Joshua Dabelstein is the Movement Against Antizionism’s Australian liaison.
