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?”

But what about zionism?

This project is not an inquiry into Zionism or an analysis of the State of Israel. Those subjects already have a vast body of scholarship, institutions, and debate devoted to them. Our focus is different: to study the antizionist complex—its logic, its effects, and its mechanisms across social, political, and cultural contexts. The “Zionism” invoked by contemporary antizionists is not a faithful representation of Jewish history or political thought, but a rhetorical construct, engineered to stand in for the Jew as the object of collective blame. To center that construct would be to accept its terms and to return once again to the cycle of Jewish self-explanation, where legitimacy must be endlessly reargued rather than assumed. Our task is not to defend or reinterpret Zionism, but to examine antizionism as a hate movement, sustained by its own ideological machinery.

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 spreading of antizionist conspiracies, the denial of antizionist atrocities, the erasure of Jewish history and identity, the threats painted on synagogues, the vandalism of Jewish businesses, the purging of Jews from social and professional spaces, 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 diminish Palestinian trauma or rights. Palestinian suffering is real and demands meaningful political redress—including the dismantling of the antizionist complex that exploits that suffering for its own ends. 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.

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.