Anti-Zionism

Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism, the international Jewish political movement that established a homeland for the Jewish People in Palestine (Hebrew: Eretz Yisra'el, “the Land of Israel”), and continues to support the state of Israel.^[1] Opposition to Zionism has changed over time and has taken on a spectrum of religious, ethical, political or military forms. Some include, opposition to the creation of a Jewish state prior to the appearance of the messiah, objection to the idea of a state based on maintenance of a Jewish majority, differing democratic values and differing dimensions^[2] or rejection of Israel's right to exist in any form.

The legitimacy of anti-Zionist views has been disputed into the present day, along with the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Some commentators argue that anti-Zionism represents fair opposition to Israel or its policies, particularly in the occupied territories.^[3] Others contend that to the extent anti-Zionism represents an opposition even to Israel's existence, it is inherently antisemitic. A range of other views regarding the various forms of anti-Zionism is discussed and debated.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]}

Contents 1 History and context of anti-Zionism 2 Contemporary Jewish discussions about anti-Zionism and antisemitism 3 Parliamentary and government reports 4 Jewish opposition to Zionism 4.1 Secular Jewish opposition 4.2 Religious opposition 5 Arab anti-Zionism 6 Muslim anti-Zionism 7 Western anti-Zionism 8 Soviet anti-Zionism 9 International anti-Zionism 10 See also 11 References

History and context of anti-Zionism

Political Zionism encountered both support and opposition since its small beginnings in the 19th century.^[12] The First Zionist Congress of 1897, which was originally intended to take place in Munich, had to be moved to Basel because of the hostile response from the Munich Jewish community.^[13] The Zionist movement only started to attract the attention of non-Jews as it grew larger. With the beginning of new Jewish settlements in Palestine, and as the settlements grew larger and more numerous, the first anti-Zionist demonstrations by Arabs occurred in March and April 1920, with the latter leading to the 1920 Palestine riots. Periods of violence increased in severity and consequence in the following years.^[14]

Contemporary Jewish discussions about anti-Zionism and antisemitism

In recent years, several commentators have argued that contemporary manifestations of anti-Zionism are often used as a cover for antisemitism, and that a "new antisemitism" rooted in anti-Zionism has emerged.^{[15][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]} Advocates of this concept argue that much of what purports to be criticism of Israel and Zionism is demonization, and has led to an international resurgence of attacks on Jews and Jewish symbols and an increased acceptance of antisemitic beliefs in public discourse.^[16] Critics of the concept argue that the equation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is used to stifle legitimate criticisms of Israel, and trivializes antisemitism.^[17]

Nearly all commentators agree both that anti-Zionism can be anti-Semitic and that anti-Zionism is not necessarily anti-Semitism. The difference is rather one of emphasis with some preferring to emphasize the link and others to separate the issues.

Dina Porat (head of the Institute for Study of Anti-semitism and Racism at Tel-Aviv University) suggests that anti-Zionism is anti-semitic because it is discriminatory:

...antisemitism is involved when the belief is articulated that of all the peoples on the globe (including the Palestinians), only the Jews should not have the right to self-determination in a land of their own. Or, to quote noted human rights lawyer David Matas: One form of antisemitism denies access of Jews to goods and services because they are Jewish. Another form of antisemitism denies the right of the Jewish people to exist as a people because they are Jewish. Antizionists distinguish between the two, claiming the first is antisemitism, but the second is not. To the antizionist, the Jew can exist as an individual as long as Jews do not exist as a people.^[18]

Professor Robert S. Wistrich (head of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem believes that Anti-Zionism is not inherently anti-Semitic and

that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are two distinct ideologies that over time (especially since 1948) have tended to converge, generally without undergoing a full merger.^[19]

He argues that much contemporary anti-Zionism, particularly forms that compare Zionism and Jews with Hitler and the Third Reich, has become a form of antisemitism:

Anti-Zionism has become the most dangerous and effective form of anti-Semitism in our time, through its systematic delegitimization, defamation, and demonization of Israel. Although not a priori anti-Semitic, the calls to dismantle the Jewish state, whether they come from Muslims, the Left, or the radical Right, increasingly rely on an anti-Semitic stereotypization of classic themes, such as the manipulative "Jewish lobby," the Jewish/Zionist "world conspiracy," and Jewish/Israeli "warmongers." ^[6]

In July 2001, the Simon Wiesenthal Center reported that during a visit there, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer stated that "anti-Zionism inevitably leads to antisemitism."

Officials of the Simon Wiesenthal Center met today with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer to discuss growing concerns that next month's UN conference in Durban on racism and xenophobia may be hijacked to deligitimize the state of Israel and marginalize antisemitism and the memory of the Holocaust.

During the one-hour discussion, Foreign Minister Fischer said that Germany rejects any attempt to label Israel as a racist state, adding that "anti-Zionism inevitably leads to antisemitism." The Minister went on to say that he would continue to speak out against Arab anti-Jewish rhetoric as he did last month during Syrian president Bashar Asad's state visit to Berlin. ^[20]

Brian Klug has argued that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are distinct concepts:

There is a long and ignoble history of "Zionist" being used as a code word for "Jew," as when Communist Poland carried out "anti-Zionist" purges in 1968, expelling thousands of Jews from the country, or when the extreme right today uses the acronym ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government) to refer to the US government. Moreover, the Zionist movement arose as a reaction to the persecution of Jews. Since anti-Zionism is the opposite of Zionism, and since Zionism is a form of opposition to anti-Semitism, it seems to follow that an anti-Zionist must be an anti-Semite. Nonetheless, the inference is invalid. To argue that hostility to Israel and hostility to Jews are one and the same thing is to conflate the Jewish state with the Jewish people. In fact, Israel is one thing, Jewry another. Accordingly, anti-Zionism is one thing, anti-Semitism another. They are separate. To say they are separate is not to say that they are never connected. But they are independent variables that can be connected in different ways.^[21]

In 2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) in its working definition of antisemitism, identified several ways in which antisemitism can manifest itself, such as using double standards against Israel or drawing analogies between its behavior and that of the Nazis. However, it also stated that “criticism of Israel, similar to that leveled against any other country, cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.”^[7]

European Jews for a Just Peace, an association of West-European "Jewish peace organisations", are more forthright in rejecting the association of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism:

Legitimate criticism of Israel, based on its policies against the Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as well as inside Israel cannot be called anti-Semitic. Such an accusation deliberately mis-uses the term, aimed at awakening fear of anti-Semitism, rather than diminishing it. It would represent the silencing of freedom of speech. ^[22]

Parliamentary and government reports

In 2006 the House of Commons of the United Kingdom all-party inquiry into anti-Semitism noted that

One of the most difficult and contentious issues about which we have received evidence is the dividing line between antisemitism and criticism of Israel or Zionism.^[23]

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in its report on campus anti-semitism notes

that anti-Semitic bigotry is no less morally deplorable when camouflaged as anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism.^[24]

The US Department of State report on Global Anti-Semitism states that

The demonization of Israel, or vilification of Israeli leaders, sometimes through comparisons with Nazi leaders, and through the use of Nazi symbols to caricature them, indicates an anti-Semitic bias rather than a valid criticism of policy concerning a controversial issue. ^[25]

The House of Commons inquiry noted that that criticism of Israel is not to be regarded in itself as antisemitic and also that they had seen

no evidence of the accusation of antisemitism being misused by mainstream British Jewish community organisations and leaders. ^[26]paragraph 79

The inquiry warned that among some groups

traditional antisemitic notions of Jewish conspiratorial power, manipulation and subversion are then transferred from Jews (a religious or racial group) on to Zionism (a political movement). This is at the core of the ‘New Antisemitism’ on which so much has been written. Many witnesses described how anti-Zionism has become the “lingua franca of antisemitic movements”.

The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), an agency of the European Union (EU) have a working definition of anti-semitism with regards to the state of Israel which has been widely adopted. This describes anti-semitism with regards to Zionism as

• Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, for example by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.

• Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

• Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (for example claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterise Israel or Israelis.

• Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

• Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.

^[27]

EUMC stresses that calling for or justifying physical attacks on Jews in the name of an ideology or religion, denying the fact or scope of the Holocaust and claiming that Jewish citizens are more loyal to the state of Israel or form part of a global conspiracy are acts of racism.

Jewish opposition to Zionism

Hope for return to the land of Israel is built into the content of the Jewish religion and the history of Zionism goes back to the founding of Judaism. The Hebrew word aliyah, which literally means "ascending" or "going up" is the word used to describe a Jew who has immigrated to Israel, and has been used as such since ancient times.^[28] Aliyah is one of the 613 commandments obligatory for Orthodox Jews. From the Middle Ages and onwards, many famous rabbis (and often their followers) immigrated to the Land of Israel. These included Nahmanides, Yechiel of Paris with several hundred of his students, Yosef Karo, Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk and 300 of his followers, and over 500 disciples (and their families) of the Vilna Gaon known as Perushim, among others.

Among Jews in the Diaspora Eretz Israel was revered in a religious sense. They thought of a return to it in a future messianic age.^[29] Return remained a recurring theme among generations, particularly in Passover and Yom Kippur prayers which traditionally concluded with, "Next year in Jerusalem", and in the thrice-daily Amidah (Standing prayer).^[30]

Support for aliyah does not always translate into support of the modern Zionist movement; and as a result some religious Jews, and secular Jews, do not support Zionism. However, Zionism does have the support of the overwhelming majority of the Jewish religious community, with full support from Orthodax, Conservative, and Reform movements.^[31][32][33]

It should be noted that Jews who were (or are) not Zionists are not necessarily anti-Zionists.

Secular Jewish opposition

The Jewish community is not a single united group and responses vary both between and within Jewish groups. One of the principle divisions is that between secular Jews and religious Jews. The reasons for secular opposition to the Zionist movement (where it existed) were very different from those of religious Jews.

• Prior to WWII

Prior to the Second World War many Jews regarded Zionism as a fanciful and unrealistic movement.^[34] Many liberals during the European Enlightenment had argued that Jews should enjoy full equality only on the condition that they pledge their singular loyalty to their nation-state and entirely assimilate to the local national culture; they called for the "regeneration" of the Jewish people in exchange for rights. Those liberal Jews who accepted integration and/or assimilation principles saw Zionism as a threat to efforts to facilitate Jewish citizenship and equality within the European nation-state context.^[35]

• WWII and the creation of Israel

Attitudes changed during and following the war. In May, 1942, before the full revelation of the Holocaust, the Biltmore Program proclaimed a fundamental departure from traditional Zionist policy of a “homeland”^[36] with its demand "that Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth." Opposition to official Zionism’s firm, unequivocal stand caused some prominent Zionists to establish their own party, Ichud (Unification), which advocated an Arab – Jewish Federation in Palestine. Opposition to the Biltmore Program also lead to the founding of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism^[37]

The full knowledge of the Holocaust altered the views of many who critiqued Zionism before 1948, including the British journalist Isaac Deutscher, a socialist and life-long atheist who nevertheless emphasised the importance of his Jewish heritage. Before World War II, Deutscher opposed Zionism as economically retrograde and harmful to the cause of international socialism, but in the aftermath of the Holocaust he regretted his pre-war views, arguing for Israel's establishment as a "historic necessity" to provide a refuge for the surviving Jews of Europe. In the 1960s Deutscher renewed his criticism of Zionism, scrutinizing Israel for its failure to recognise the dispossession of the Palestinians.

Contemporary Jewish American linguist, Noam Chomsky, reports a change in the boundaries of what are considered Zionist and anti-Zionist views.^[38] In 1947, in his youth, Chomsky's support for a socialist binational state, in conjunction with his opposition to any semblance of a theocratic system of governance in Israel, was at the time considered well within the mainstream of secular Zionism; today, it lands him solidly in the anti-Zionist camp.^[39]

On the other hand, Alvin H. Rosenfeld in his much discussed essay, Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism, ^[40], claims that a "number of Jews, through their speaking and writing, are feeding a rise in virulent antisemitism by questioning whether Israel should even exist."^[41] :Rosenfeld general claims are:

1. “At a time when the de-legitimization and, ultimately, the eradication of Israel is a goal being voiced with mounting fervor by the enemies of the Jewish state, it is more than disheartening to see Jews themselves adding to the vilification. That some do so in the name of Judaism itself makes the nature of their assault all the more grotesque.”
2. "Their contributions to what’s becoming normative discourse are toxic. They’re helping to make [anti-Semitic] views about the Jewish state respectable - for example, that it’s a Nazi-like state, comparable to South African apartheid; that it engages in ethnic cleansing and genocide. These charges are not true and can have the effect of delegitimizing Israel."

Religious opposition

Main article: Haredim and Zionism

In the early history of Zionism many traditional religious Jews opposed ideas of nationalism (Jewish or otherwise) which they regarded as a secular ideology and because of an inherent suspicion of change. Key traditionalist opponents of Zionism included Isaac Breuer, Hillel Zeitlin, Aaron Shmuel Tamares, Hayyim, Elazar Shapiro (Muncatz), and Joel Teitelbaum, all waged ideological religious, as well as political, battles with Zionism each in their own way.^[42]

Many Hassidic Jews in particular opposed any attempt to create a secular Jewish state, and a few contemporary hassidic sects have remained steadfast in their anti-Zionism, notably the Satmar sect. The leader of the Satmar hasidic sect, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum's book, VaYoel Moshe, published in 1958, expounds one Orthodox position on Zionism, based on a literal form of midrash (biblical interpretation). Citing to Tractate Kesubos 111a of the Talmud Teitelbaum states that God and the Jewish people exchanged three oaths at the time of the Jews' exile from ancient Israel.

The most prominent and largest Jewish religious group opposed to Zionism are the Satmar Hassidim, which numbers less than 130,000 adherents world wide. Even more strongly opposed to Zionism is the small Haredi Jewish organization known as Neturei Karta.^[43][44] , which has less than 5,000 members, almost all actually living in Israel. (According to The Guardian, "[e]ven among Charedi, or ultra-Orthodox circles, the Neturei Karta are regarded as a wild fringe". ^[45])

Arab anti-Zionism

Anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist narratives—particularly popular in Arab countries with violent experiences of colonial rule—focus especially on parallels with cases such as Algeria or Rhodesia, seeing it in terms of a foreign power encouraging immigration into the country of a group which then sought to dominate the country. According to this view, the natural means of combating Zionism is considered to be Palestinian revolution, and the expulsion or weakening of the Zionist "occupiers". Among Palestinians, examples of notable individuals or political parties that emphasize anti-imperial and anti-colonial narratives in their opposition to Zionism include: Ghassan Kanafani, Edward Said, Leila Khaled, George Habash, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and The Palestinian Revolutionary Communist Party. Examples of Palestinian solidarity groups that root their activism against Zionism in anti-imperial and anti-colonial terms include: Students for Justice in Palestine, Al-Awda [5], and Sumoud [6]. Critics of these movements argue that it is a red herring to compare Zionism to imperialism or colonialism, as Zionist ideology is focused on return to an ancestral homeland, rather than an attempt to exploit Arab Palestinians and that many Zionists are Arab Jews.

Pan-Arabist narratives—which enjoyed their heyday in the 1960s in the Nasser era, but have declined since—emphasize the idea of Palestine as a part of the Arab world taken by others (partly overlapping with the previous.) As such, Israel is seen as both a symbol of Arab weakness and—insofar as it geographically cuts the Arab world into two noncontiguous halves—an obstacle to any union of the Arab world. In this narrative, the natural means of combating Zionism is Arab nations uniting and attacking Israel militarily. Pan-Syrian narratives, promoted mainly by Syria, are essentially parallel.

In response to the Pan-Arabist narrative, Israeli historian Benny Morris commented:

Remember another thing: the Arab people gained a large slice of the planet. Not thanks to its skills or its great virtues, but because it conquered and murdered and forced those it conquered to convert during many generations. But in the end the Arabs have 22 states. The Jewish people did not have even one state. There was no reason in the world why it should not have one state. Therefore, from my point of view, the need to establish this state in this place overcame the injustice that was done to the Palestinians by uprooting them.^[46]

Local nationalist narratives of non-Palestinian Arabs emphasize the idea of Israel as a threat to the nation (commonly citing extremist Israeli individuals' dreams of a nation stretching "from the Nile to the Euphrates"). Among Palestinians, these emphasize other issues, such as the Palestinian refugee problem, and that in their view, over 90% of the pre-1948 British Mandate of Palestine is controlled by Israel.

Israel on the other hand claims that it controls only 23% of the original mandate, with the rest under the control of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which already has a majority Palestinian Arab population.

A poll of Arab-Israelis conducted by the Israeli Democracy Institute in 2007 found that 75% of Arab-Israelis support the existence of a Jewish state:

A vast majority of Israeli Arabs would support a constitution that maintained Israel's status as a Jewish and democratic state while guaranteeing equal rights for minorities. Among the 507 people who participated in the poll, some 75 percent said they would agree with such a definition while 23 percent said they would oppose it.^[47]

Muslim anti-Zionism

Muslim anti-Zionism generally opposes the state of Israel as an intrusion into what many Muslims consider to be Dar al-Islam, a domain rightfully, and permanently, ruled only by Muslims.^[48][49][50] Once Islamic rule is established in a country, non-Muslims are given dhimmi status as protected from violence.^[51] Thus any sovereign, non-Muslim government in what is now Israel would be anathema.

Palestinian and other Muslim groups, as well as the government of Iran (since 1979 Islamic Revolution), insist that the State of Israel is illegitimate and refuse to refer to it as "Israel", instead using the locution "the Zionist entity" (see Iran-Israel relations). In an interview with Time Magazine in December 2006, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said "Everyone knows that the Zionist regime is a tool in the hands of the United States and British governments" [7].

An example of this view is the work of Ismail al-Faruqi (1926-1986). In Islam and the Problem of Israel (1980), he argued that Zionism was a "disease" largely influenced by European romanticism far removed from Judaism. He opposed the Zionist occupation of Palestine and called for the dismantling of Israel and the launch of a jihad. He said that the injustice caused by Zionism is such as to necessitate war. From the standpoint of Islam, Faruqi wrote, Zionism represents apostasy against Judaism.

Western anti-Zionism

Matthias Küntzel wrote concerning contemporary European antisemitism that

It is a historical fact that since the year 1921 there has been an antisemitic anti-Zionism in existence. Alfred Rosenberg wrote his first book against Zionism in that year, and it is completely antisemitic. Second, antisemitism has been a part of Europe for two millennia. And antisemitism is like a chameleon that changes its complexion over time as its environment changes. In such a deeply antisemitic world as Europe, it’s just common sense to look for the ways in which the establishment of a Jewish state would reshape antisemitic thinking.^[52]

In the liberal Western world, opposition to Zionism has often focused on the United Kingdom since it was the UK's decision to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. The decision was controversial from the start as some British people believed the Balfour declaration undermined Britain's relationship with Muslims in the Middle East and India. Between 1919 and 1939 the British government steadily reduced its support for Zionism. In 1939 Britain formally announced its intention to create an Arab state in the whole of Palestine, ending its support for the Balfour declaration.

There was little opposition to Zionism in other countries but as Arab states became independent the desire to maintain positive relations with Arab states has often affected attitudes to Zionism.

Although supporting the creation of Israel, from 1949 onwards Communist countries adopted increasingly anti-Zionist and antisemitic positions ^[53] and this affected attitudes of Communists in the West. The increasing popularity of a world-view emphasizing a global class struggle in which the Third World proletariat fought western exploiters placed the Palestinians as a focal point in global relations. In this "Third Worldist" worldview, Israel was generally described as a tool of western imperialism and a colonial settler state.

The growing conflict between Palestinians and Israeli settlers and between Palestinian liberation movements and the state of Israel has also generated an increase in anti-Zionism in the West.

Soviet anti-Zionism

Main articles: Soviet Union and the Arab-Israeli conflict and History of the Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union

Zionism was viewed in the Soviet Union as a form of bourgeois nationalism, and its active promotion among Jews was discouraged and eventually banned. From 1919 through most of Joseph Stalin's rule, the Tsarist government's anti-Jewish policies of the previous century were reverted and actively denounced. The rise of various forms of Jewish nationalism prompted the government in 1928 to establish and promote a "Soviet Zion" in Birobidzhan, a project that failed to meet population goals and was soon abandoned.^[54]

Throughout this, the official position of the Soviet Union and of its satellite states and agencies was that Zionism was a tool used by the Jews and Americans for "racist imperialism." The meaning of the term Zionism was misrepresented to conform to a policy of the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union: "the main posits of modern Zionism are militant chauvinism, racism, anti-Communism and anti-Sovietism,... overt and covert fight against freedom movements and the USSR."^[55]

During the years of Joseph Stalin's rule Soviet Jews were frequently attacked as "Zionists," although the majority of Soviet Jews at that time did not hold strong Zionist convictions. After the creation of Israel, however, many Soviet Jews began to sympathise with the Jewish state, thus arousing further antagonism from the Soviet government, which saw Zionism as a potential source of disloyalty.

However, from late 1944 through 1948, the Soviet Union's stance toward Zionism was strongly influenced by geopolitical concerns, and the government officially supported the foundation of Israel^[56] , although this was hidden from the Soviet media.^[57] From the end of 1948, the Soviet Union changed positions to support Arab concerns against Israeli interests through the end of the Cold War, and Israel began to emerge as a close Western ally.

During the last years of Stalin's rule, roughly 1948-1953, official Soviet anti-Zionism was intensified. While Stalin's campaigns were officially carried out under the banner of anti-Zionism, critics argue that they had a strong antisemitic content, often borrowed directly from traditional Russian antisemitism. This included a campaign against so-called "rootless cosmopolitans" and the fabrication of the Doctors' plot. After Stalin's death, anti-Zionism continued through the rise of "Zionology" in the 1960s and subsequent activities of official organizations such as the Anti-Zionist committee of the Soviet public.

During the Cold War, the spectre of Zionism raised fears of internal dissent and opposition. The Soviet government liquidated almost all remaining Jewish organizations, and placed synagogues under police surveillance, both openly and through the use of informers. At the same time, the persecution of Soviet Jews emerged as a major human rights issue in the West. See Jackson-Vanik amendment.

In 1975, the Soviet Union sponsored the UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, discussed below.

International anti-Zionism

Many of the most important authorities on ethics in the 20th century have contributed to the debate on Zionism, with some, such as Mahatma Gandhi in the 1930s and '40s,^[58] expressing opposition to the Zionist movement. U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall strongly opposed the creation of the Jewish state in 1948^[59] but lost the internal debate in the White House over formal U.S. support of Zionism.

In contrast Martin Luther King is said to have replied to a black student who criticized "Zionists" at a 1968 dinner, "Don't talk like that! When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism."^[60] (The accuracy of this quotation is debated, and it became the source of a serious hoax.)^[61][62]

Paralleling the rise of anti-Zionist sentiment in the west was increased hostility towards Israel at the international level. During the 1950s and 1960s Israel made great efforts to cultivate good relations with the newly independent states of Africa and Asia, and hostility to Israel was confined to the states of the Arab-Muslim world and the Communist bloc. A combination of inter-related circumstances in the 1970s radically changed this situation.

The first was the increased hostility to Israel following the onset of the Israel-Palestinian conflict in the late 1960s. The second was the decline in the prestige of the United States following the end of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The third was increased economic power of the Arab oil-producing states in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and the resulting energy crisis. The fourth was the rise of radical anti-western regimes in a series of African countries. The fifth was the increased diplomatic and economic presence of the Soviet Union, China and Cuba in Africa.

This anti-Zionist trend was manifested in organisations such as the Organization for African Unity and the Non-Aligned Movement, which passed resolutions condemning Zionism and equating it with racism and apartheid during the early 1970s. It culminated in the passing by the United Nations General Assembly of Resolution 3379 in November 1975, declaring that "Zionism is a form of racism." This resolution was passed by 72 votes to 35, with 32 abstentions.

The 72 votes in favour consisted of 12 Communist countries (including East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Byelorussia and the Ukraine), all 20 Arab states, another 12 Muslim-majority states (including Turkey), 14 non-Muslim African states, and 14 other states (including Brazil, India, Mexico and Portugal).

Those opposing included 5 African states (one of them Moslem), most of Latin-America and practically the entire English speaking world.

By 1991 this international situation had been reversed following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the American-led victory over Iraq in the Gulf War and the return of the United States to global political and economic dominance.

On December 16, 1991, the General Assembly passed Resolution 4686, repealing resolution 3379, by a vote of 111 to 25, with 13 abstentions and 17 delegations absent. Thirteen out of the 19 Arab countries, including those engaged in negotiations with Israel, voted against the repeal, another six were absent. No Arab country voted for repeal. The PLO denounced the vote. All the ex-Communist countries and most of the African countries who had supported Resolution 3379 voted to repeal it. Only three non-Muslim countries voted against the resolution: Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. The rest abstained (including Turkey) or absented themselves.

International anti-Zionism, like domestic anti-Zionism in many countries, rises and falls in parallel with events in the Middle East, and the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 saw some revival of anti-Zionism in some countries; however, it is also possible that it was not until this time that media attention focused on the phenomenon.

See also

• Works related to Zionism at Wikisource
• Post-Zionism - Neo-Zionism
• Anti-globalization and antisemitism
• Israel and the apartheid analogy
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Israel
• Dr Thomas Haury on Left-Wing anti-Semitism http://www.workersliberty.org/node/6705
• US Commission on Civil Rights, Public Education Campaign to End Campus Anti-Semitism: http://www.usccr.gov/campusanti-semitism.html

References

Zionism Topics and concepts Zion · Land of Israel · Aliyah · Homeland and state (Proposals)  · Hafrada · Law of Return · Yishuv · Territorialism · Promised Land · Settlement · Negation of the Diaspora Schools of ideology General · Labor · Revisionist · Reform · Religious · Cultural · Federal · Anti-Zionism · Post-Zionism · Neo-Zionism  · Non-Zionism · Christian · Muslim · Kahanism Organizations Histadrut · World Zionist Organization · Zionist Organization of America · Religious Zionists of America · Anti-Defamation League · Shinui · Likud · Jewish National Fund · Poale Zion · Jewish Agency for Israel · Jewish National Council · Haganah · Irgun · Betar · Kach and Kahane Chai · JRM History History of Zionism · History of Israel · History of Palestine · Israeli-Palestinian conflict · List of Zionist figures · Timeline of Zionism · Attitudes before 1948 · Political violence Figures Chaim Arlosoroff · David Ben-Gurion · David Baazov · Meir Bar-Ilan · Menachem Begin · Hugo Bergman · Dov Ber Borochov · Max Bodenheimer · Max Brod · Abba Eban · Albert Einstein · L. L. Zamenhof · Aaron David Gordon · Dov Gruner · Theodor Herzl · Arthur Hertzberg · Moses Hess · Ahad Ha'am · Zeev Jabotinsky · Rabbi Meir Kahane · Berl Katznelson · Abraham Isaac Kook · Moshe Leib Lilienblum · Golda Meir · Nahum Goldmann · Samuel Mohilever · Max Nordau · Leon Pinsker · Arthur Ruppin · Pinhas Rutenberg · Solomon Schechter · Moshe Sharett · Nahum Syrkin · Joseph Trumpeldor · Menahem Ussishkin · Chaim Weizmann · Felix Weltsch · Robert Weltsch · Orde Wingate · Israel Zangwill Related Haredim and Zionism · Jewish Autonomism · Jewish Emancipation · Colonialism · Greater Israel