faq

why not just say “antisemitism”?

Because the term antisemitism does not fully capture how hostility toward Jews operates today. Historically, “antisemitism” referred to a racialized ideology that framed Jews as biologically corrupting. Before that, religious-based libels accused Jews of spiritual corruption or cosmic betrayal.

In the twenty-first century, that same libels reappear in the language of anti-colonial virtue, displaced onto Israel and those perceived to be associated with it—or insufficiently opposed to it. Antizionism performs the same social function as its predecessor ideologies—casting Jews as the unique obstacle to global justice—but in a form adapted to contemporary sensibilities about power, race, and colonialism.

Continuing to rely exclusively on “antisemitism” implies that the problem is static, when in fact it has evolved. Naming antizionism as distinct allows us to identify the current iteration of an old pattern: the targeting of Jewish existence in whatever moral register a society finds acceptable at the time.

Please also see our section on “Is Antizionism Antisemitism?”

why not just say “jew-hatred”?

Because “Jew-hatred” describes the emotional surface of a phenomenon that today operates primarily through structure. The term helpfully encompasses the long continuum of hostility—from antijudaism to antisemitism to antizionism—but it also implies an interior feeling, a conscious loathing. In the modern world, that hatred is often diffused: transposed into institutions, ideologies, and bureaucratic habits rather than shouted from pulpits. Few people today “hate Jews” in their hearts; many participate in systems that make Jewish belonging conditional or suspect.

Antizionism names that system. It is the latest mechanism through which old animus organizes itself in respectable form, spinning the wheel of libel and reactivating the social reflex to purge Jews from moral community. The shift from emotion to structure does not make the danger less urgent—it makes it harder to see.

Recognizing that difference is essential, not only to exposing prejudice, but to understanding how it quietly reproduces itself inside moral and political institutions, even within societies convinced they have transcended anti-Jewish hate.

but what about zionism?

This movement does not aim to define Zionism or describe the State of Israel. Those conversations are well served elsewhere, across an abundance of scholarship, institutions, and debate. Our concern is different: to examine antizionism as a global formation—its logics, consequences, and mechanisms across contexts. To center Zionism in this analysis would be to return to the familiar cycle of Jewish self-explanation, where moral legitimacy is endlessly reargued rather than assumed. We are not here to justify or reinterpret Zionism, but to identify antizionism as a socially sanctioned form of exclusion, one that operates without internal coherence.

Why no hyphen in antizionism?

Because the anti- construction itself is fraudulent: it implies a real, stable counterpart that does not exist in the way antizionists claim. No one today speaks of “Semitism,” just as no serious thinker still treats “anti-Semitism” as literal opposition to a coherent thing called “Semitism.” We understand that the term was always an invention—a pseudo-scientific fig leaf for older hatreds. The same is true here. Antizionism is not the negation of a concrete ideology but the latest rhetorical form through which hostility toward Jews disguises itself as moral critique. Removing the hyphen signals that recognition: there is no balanced dyad, no “anti-” to something real—only the modern grammar of an inherited hate.

can’t you criticize israel?

Criticism of Israel, like criticism of any country, is a normal and necessary feature of public life. But that is not what we are witnessing. The obsessive repetition of libels, the denial of antizionist atrocities, the erasure of Jewish history and identity, the threats painted on synagogues, the forced exile of Jewish people and institutions, the harassment of Jewish students, the masked mobs chanting for Israel’s destruction, the assaults in the street—none of this is civic critique. To describe this pattern as “criticism of Israel” is emotionally dishonest and morally dangerous.

is it libel if it’s true, or contains true elements?

Please see our section on libel here.

what about antizionist jews?

Please see our section on antizionist Jews here.

what about palestinians?

Exposing antizionism as a form of hate does not erase Palestinian trauma or rights. Palestinian suffering is real and demands meaningful political redress. What this project confronts is an ideology that seeks to criminalize Jewish existence as a collective people. True solidarity rejects the zero-sum logic that one people’s liberation depends on another’s annihilation.

what about anti-palestinian racism?

Like all forms of racism, anti-Palestinian racism flattens and distorts, rendering millions invisible unless useful as a symbol. It shows up in language that mocks, erases, or dehumanizes Palestinians. In declarations that deny their existence or their dignity. In the refusal to see Palestinian grief as real.

But resisting a hate movement is not itself hate.

Believing in the right of Israel to exist is not racism. Being Jewish is not racism. Naming libel, exposing double standards, or grieving Jewish dead is not racism. Refusing to submit to a movement that silences, stalks, and purges Jews from public life is not racism. These are moral acts. And antizionism’s attempt to collapse them into “anti-Palestinianism” is not solidarity — it is moral blackmail.

We affirm the necessity of honoring Palestinian humanity without being conscripted into campaigns of Jewish erasure. We affirm the fight against racism while holding fast to truth. We reject anti-Palestinian racism, and we reject the cynical manipulation of that term by those who would use it to legitimize hatred in another form.

are you partisan?

No. This movement transcendes political affiliation and ideological boundaries. Antizionism manifests across the political spectrum, from the progressive left to the far right, articulated in different idioms but serving a common function: the purification of collective identity through the exclusion of Jews. Our work is rooted in universal moral principles and in the understanding that anti-Jewish hatred is not only a Jewish concern but a societal pathology that undermines the foundations of justice. We seek to safeguard that justice from the corrosive influence of antizionism wherever it emerges.

can non-jews participate in your movement?

Yes, and their participation is essential! Because antizionism operates primarily within non-Jewish societies, those societies bear the responsibility for dismantling it. Jewish voices can describe give testimony; non-Jewish allies must help transform the culture that permits it. Joining this work does not require uniformity of thought on Israeli policy or Jewish theology—it requires a principled commitment to oppose scapegoating, reject moral hierarchies that single out Jews, and affirm a shared human obligation to justice and truth.