The Anti-Zionist Ideology

f the anti-imperialist “resistance” to imperialism and thereby progressive. As a result, parts of the left redefined themselves as (not very) critical supporters of, or at least apologists for, whatever reactionary forces were doing the shooting, including radical Islamists. (“Rejoice!” said Socialist Worker in response to 7 October.)

8/ The reactionary anti-imperialist mind-set was expressed with admirable candour by Judith Butler – a Professor at Berkeley and one of the most influential academics on the planet. She defined the antisemites of Hamas and Hezbollah as “social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left.”

9 / These ‘antizionist’ assumptions about the very Being of Palestinians and Israelis then reshaped international media coverage of the conflict. One example: the reactions to the killing of four Jews at prayer in Jerusalem in 2014. The Guardian altered a Reuters dispatch about the massacre to remove any reference to Palestinians. The Reuters headline was 'Palestinians kill four in Jerusalem synagogue attack' and the wire began ''Two Palestinians armed with a meat cleaver and a gun killed four people in a Jerusalem synagogue on Tuesday before being shot dead by police…." The Guardian also changed their headline to "Four worshippers killed in attack on Jerusalem synagogue." And cut any reference to Palestinians until it read "Two men armed with axes, knives and a pistol have killed four Israelis and wounded several others in a Jerusalem synagogue.”

10/ In the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the writer Amira Hass wrote about "the despair and anger that pushed the Abu Jamals to attack Jews in a synagogue (emphasis added)." (Yes, the anti-Zionist Ideology is widely held on the Israeli Left.) The Jerusalem Post reported that “CNN ran a ticker that read, ‘4 Israelis, 2 Palestinians dead in Jerusalem,’ failing to note that the two Palestinians were the terrorists.” (CNN later apologised.)

11/ And so we arrived at 7 October 2023 after *decades* of the Anti-Zionist Ideology being spread throughout the West, mis-framing the conflict in terms of its demonising / exculpatory assumptions about Palestinians and Israelis. These assumptions long ago seeped out from the cloisters of academia into the western public square. It’s been going on for decades. And our side didn’t put resources into those platforms and institutions that could have challenged it. For a long time our side didn’t even take the Ideology seriously. It stupidly thought it could get by with bullet points and talking points. (At a seminar at INSS in Israel I was once asked – they were genuinely puzzled – why I was bothering to critique Ilan Pappe. They thought him irrelevant. In fact, he has shaped thinking in the UK about Israel possibly more than any other single writer. Only Robert Wistrich understood.) And so now we are where we are.