The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. According to its mission statement, it is "a global human rights organization researching the Holocaust
and hate in a historic and contemporary context. The Center confronts
anti-Semitism, hate and terrorism, promotes human rights and dignity,
stands with Israel, defends the safety of Jews worldwide, and teaches
the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations."
The Center closely interacts on an ongoing basis with a variety
of public and private agencies, meeting with elected officials, the United States and foreign governments, diplomats and heads of state. The Center promotes the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, and fights against extremist groups, neo-Nazism, and hate on the Internet. The Center is also involved in Holocaust and tolerance education. Its "Campus Outreach" division is part of the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC).
The Center is named after Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal;
Hier's relationship with Wiesenthal deteriorated during the 1980s, and
in 1993 Wiesenthal unsuccessfully petitioned the Board of Directors for
Hier's removal.
Name and leadership
Simon Wiesenthal
The organization is named after Simon Wiesenthal, a leading Nazi hunter. Simon Wiesenthal had nothing to do with the operation or activities of the SWC other than giving it its name.
The SWC is headed by Rabbi Marvin Hier,
its dean and founder. Rabbi Abraham Cooper is the associate dean and
Rabbi Meyer May is the executive director. The organization publishes a
seasonal magazine, Response.
Museum of Tolerance
The Center's educational arm, Museum of Tolerance, was founded in
1993 and hosts 350,000 visitors annually. Some of the programs sponsored
by the Museum include:
Tools for Tolerance
Teaching Steps to Tolerance
Task Force Against Hate
National Institute Against Hate Crimes
Tools for Tolerance for Teens
Simon Wiesenthal Tolerance Center in New York City
New York Tolerance Center is a professional development multi-media
training facility targeting educators, law enforcement officials, and
state/local government practitioners.
In April 2016, the New York City Council
stopped funding for the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance
following the arrest of a former board member who has been accused of
raising $20 million from a city correctional officers' union through
kickbacks. The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement saying that
the member had resigned from its board on June 15, and that the Centre
was unaware of any alleged unethical or illegal activities regarding its
donors.
Moriah Films
Moriah
Films, also known as the Jack and Pearl Resnick Film Division of the
SWC, was created to produce theatrical documentaries to educate both
national and international audiences, with a focus on contemporary human
rights and ethical issues and Jewish experience. Two films produced by
the division, Genocide (film) and The Long Way Home (1997 film) have received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Through its national and international offices, the Center carries out its above mentioned mission of preserving the memory of the Holocaust.
Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual
Between 1984 and 1990 the Center published seven volumes of Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual, focusing on the scholarly study of the Holocaust, broadly defined. This series is ISSN0741-8450.
Efraim Zuroff,
director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, is the
coordinator of Nazi war crimes research worldwide for the Wiesenthal
Center and the author of its annual (since 2001) "Status Report" on the
worldwide investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals which
includes a "most wanted" list of Nazi war criminals.
In November 2005, the Simon Wiesenthal Center gave the name of
four suspected former Nazi criminals to German authorities. The names
were the first results of Operation Last Chance, a drive launched that year by the center to track down former Nazis for World War II-era crimes before they die of old age.
Official statements
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
In 2013, the SWC released a comprehensive report on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
(BDS) movement, which is a global campaign promoting boycotts of
several types against Israel. The report analyzed the campaign
throughout its various outlets and asserted that the BDS movement is a
"thinly-disguised effort to coordinate and complement the violent
strategy of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim 'rejectionists' who have
refused to make peace with Israel for over six decades, and to pursue a
high-profile campaign composed of anti-Israel big lies to help destroy
the Jewish State by any and all means". The report also said that the
BDS campaign attacks Israel's entire economy and society, holding all
(Jewish) Israelis as collectively guilty.
France
On March
8, 2007, the head of international relations for the Simon Wiesenthal
Center, Stanley Trevor Samuels, was convicted (and later acquitted in an
appeal) of defamation by a Paris courthouse for accusing the French-based Committee for Charity and Support for the Palestinians (CBSP) of sending funds to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
In its filing of the suit, the CBSP labelled the accusations
"ridiculous", stating that its charitable work consisted of providing
aid to some 3,000 Palestinian orphans. The court ruled that documents
produced by the Wiesenthal Center established no "direct or indirect
participation in financing terrorism" on the part of the CBSP, and that
the allegations were "seriously defamatory".
The Wiesenthal Center appealed the court ruling, and the appeal was granted in July 2009.
Iran
After a Canadian newspaper reported upon the 2006 Iranian sumptuary law controversy (based on a report written by Iranian exiles on Iranian religious minorities being forced to wear badges identifying them to Muslims),
the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Marvin Hier, wrote to
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan urging the international
community to pressure Iran to drop the measure.
Numerous other sources, including Maurice Motamed, the Jewish member of the Iranian parliament and the Iranian Embassy in Canada, refuted the report as untrue. The National Post
later retracted the original article ("Iran eyes badges for Jews: Law
would require non-Muslim insignia") and published an article, to the
contrary ("Experts say reports of badges for Jews in Iran is untrue").
However, the Simon Wiesenthal Center refused to admit any mistake on
their part and insisted that the widely debunked allegations were true.
Ireland
In January 2004, the Paris branch of the center asked the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, to suspend the 'Irish Museum of the Year Award' given to the Hunt Museum in Limerick,
until the conclusion of a demanded inquiry into the provenance of a
significant number of items in the collection. He argued that this was
needed due to the close ties of the founders, John and Gertrude Hunt to
the head of the Nazi Party (NSDP-AO) in Ireland, among others, and
British suspicions during the war of espionage activity on the part of
the couple. The center also claimed, 'The "Hunt Museum Essential Guide"
describes only 150 of the over 2000 objects in the Museum's collection
and, notably, without providing information on their provenance - data
that all museums are now required to provide in accordance with
international procedure.'
This essentially accused the Hunt Museum
in Limerick of keeping art and artifacts looted during the Second World
War, which was described as "unprofessional in the extreme" by the
expert Lynn Nicholas that cleared the museum of wrongdoing. The claim was taken so seriously that the examination was supervised by the prestigious Royal Irish Academy, whose 2006 report is available on line.
McAleese, who had been written to by the center, then criticized a Dr.
Samuels of the center for "a tissue of lies", adding that the center had
diminished the name of Simon Wiesenthal.
The center said that it had prepared its own 150-page report in May
2008 that would be published after vetting by its lawyers, but had not
done so as of November 2008. The report was finally made on 12 December 2008.
Israel
A branch
museum in Jerusalem, expected to be completed in 2009, sparked protests
from the city's Muslim population. The museum is being built on what
Rabbi Marvin Hier described as "derelict land": a thousand-year-old
Muslim graveyard called the Mamilla Cemetery,
much of which has already been paved over. The complaints were
rejected by Israel's Supreme Court, leading to a demonstration by
hundreds of people in November 2008.
On November 19, 2008 a group of US Jewish and Muslim leaders sent a
letter to the Wiesenthal Center urging it to halt the construction of
the museum on the site.
As of February 2010, the Museum of Tolerance's plan for
construction has been fully approved by Israeli courts and is proceeding
at the compound of Mamilla Cemetery. The courts ruled that the compound
had been neglected as a spiritual site by the Muslim community, in
effect not functioning as a cemetery for decades (while simultaneously
used for other purposes), and was thus mundra, i.e. abandoned, under Muslim laws.
Canada
The Centre faults the Government of Canada's
efforts to investigate and prosecute Nazi war criminals, and claims
that approximately 2,000 Nazi war criminals obtained Canadian
citizenship by providing false information.
United States
The Simon Wiesenthal Center opposed the construction of Park51, a Muslim community center, two blocks from Ground Zero.
The executive director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of
Tolerance in Manhattan, Rabbi Meyer May said it was "insensitive" to
locate the centre there. The Jewish Week noted that the Center itself was once accused of intolerance when it built a museum in Jerusalem on land that was once a Muslim cemetery, after gaining approval from Israeli courts.
Vatican
The Simon Wiesenthal Center welcomed the news that the Vatican has demanded that Bishop Richard Williamson recant his views denying the Holocaust before being re-admitted to the Roman Catholic Church.
Williamson was one of the four priests from the Society of St. Pius X
who were excommunicated 20 years ago for taking part in the consecration
of Bishops contrary to Canon Law.
Venezuela
The Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized Hugo Chávez
for various statements, including his January 2006 statement that
"[t]he world is for all of us, then, but it so happens that a minority,
the descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ, the descendants
of the same ones that kicked Bolívar out of here and also crucified him in their own way over there in Santa Marta, in Colombia. A minority has taken possession all of the wealth of the world..." The Simon Wiesenthal Center omitted the reference to Bolívar without ellipsis, stated that Chávez was referring to Jews, and denounced the remarks as antisemitic by way of his allusions to wealth. Meanwhile, according to Forward.com, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress,
and the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela defended
Chávez, stating that he was speaking not of Jews, but of South America's
white oligarchy. The Wiesenthal Center's representative in Latin America replied that Chávez's mention of Christ-killers was "ambiguous at best" and that the "decision to criticize Chávez had been taken after careful consideration".
Japan
"Sunday Project" controversy
The Simon Wiesenthal Center strongly denounced politician-journalist Soichiro Tahara for his remarks against former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and his daughter, former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka on his TV Asahi program "Sunday Project" in March 2009.
In the live broadcast, Tahara told Tanaka that her father, former
Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was "done in by America, by the Jews and (Ichiro) Ozawa, (then-leader of the Democratic Party of Japan) too, was done in (by America and/or the Jews)."
Kishidan Nazi outfit controversy
SWC's associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, condemned the Japanese band Kishidan
for wearing uniforms resembling those of the SS, the armed wing of the
Nazi party. The band wore military-inspired uniforms, adorned with the
German medal Iron Cross and Nazi insignia such as the death skull and SS
eagle on MTV Japan's primetime program "Mega Vector." Cooper said in a written protest to the band's management company Sony Music Artists, MTV Japan and the Japanese entertainment group Avex
(Kishidan's label at the time being and also the current one) that
"there is no excuse for such an outrage" and that "many young Japanese are "woefully uneducated" about the crimes against humanity committed byNazi Germany and Japan during the second world war, but global entities like MTV and Sony Music should know better".
As a result, Sony Music Artists and Avex issued a joint statement of public apology on their respective websites.
South Korea
On
November 11th 2018, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Associate Dean and
Director of Global Social Action of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
denounced BTS
with the following statement: “Flags appearing on stage at their
concert were eerily similar to the Nazi Swastika. It goes without saying
that this group, which was invited to speak at the UN, owes the people
of Japan and the victims of the Nazism an apology.”
References in popular culture
The center is featured in the real-life-story-based Freedom Writers. An exterior view of the center is given, and there are scenes inside the museum, showing simulation entrances to gas chambers in death camps.
Proletarian internationalism, sometimes referred to as international socialism, is the perception of all communist revolutions as being part of a single global class struggle rather than separate localized events. It is based on the theory that capitalism is a world-system and therefore the working classes of all nations must act in concert if they are to replace it with communism.
Proponents of proletarian internationalism often argued that the
objectives of a given revolution should be global rather than local in
scope—for example, triggering or perpetuating revolutions elsewhere.
Proletarian internationalism is closely linked to goals of world revolution, to be achieved through successive or simultaneous communist revolutions in all nations. According to Marxist theory, successful proletarian internationalism should lead to world communism and eventually stateless communism. The notion was strongly embraced by the first communist party, the Communist League, as exercised through its slogan "Proletarians of all countries, unite!", later popularized as "Workers of the world, unite!" in English literature.
Proletarian internationalism was originally embraced by the Bolshevik Party during its seizure of power in the Russian Revolution. After the formation of the Soviet Union,
Marxist proponents of internationalism suggested that country could be
used as a "homeland of communism" from which revolution could be spread
around the globe.
Though world revolution continued to figure prominently in Soviet
rhetoric for decades, it no longer superseded domestic concerns on the
government's agenda, especially after the ascension of Joseph Stalin.
Despite this, the Soviet Union continued to foster international ties
with communist and left-wing parties and governments around the world. It played a fundamental role in the establishment of several socialist states in Eastern Europe after World War II and backed the creation of others in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
The Soviets also funded dozens of insurgencies being waged against
non-communist governments by leftist guerrilla movements worldwide. A few other states later exercised their own commitments to the cause of world revolution—for instance, Cuba frequently dispatched internationalist military missions abroad to defend communist interests in Africa and the Caribbean.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Proletarian internationalism is summed up in the slogan coined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "Workers of all countries, unite!", the last line of The Communist Manifesto,
published in 1848. However, Marx and Engels' approach to the national
question was also shaped by tactical considerations in their pursuit of a
long-term revolutionary strategy. In 1848, the proletariat was a small minority in all but a handful of countries. Political and economic conditions needed to ripen in order to advance the possibility of proletarian revolution.
For instance, Marx and Engels supported the emergence of an
independent and democratic Poland, which at the time was divided between
Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Rosa Luxemburg's biographer Peter
Nettl writes: "In general, Marx and Engels' conception of the
national-geographical rearrangement of Europe was based on four
criteria: the development of progress, the creation of large-scale
economic units, the weighting of approval and disapproval in accordance
with revolutionary possibilities, and their specific enmity to Russia". Russia was seen as the heartland of European reaction at the time.
First International
The trade unionists who formed the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), sometimes called the First International,
recognised that the working class was an international class which had
to link its struggle on an international scale. By joining together
across national borders, the workers would gain greater bargaining power
and political influence.
Founded in 1864, the IWA was the first mass movement with a
specifically international focus. At its peak, the IWA had 5 million
members according to police reports from the various countries in which
it had a significant presence. Repression in Europe and internal divisions between the anarchist and Marxist currents led eventually to its dissolution in 1876. Shortly thereafter, the Marxist and revolutionary socialist
tendencies continued the internationalist strategy of the IWA through
the successor organisation of the Second International, though without
the inclusion of the anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist movements.
Second International
Proletarian internationalism was perhaps best expressed in the resolution sponsored by Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg at the Seventh Congress of the Second International at Stuttgart in 1907 which asserted:
Wars between capitalist states are, as a rule, the
outcome of their competition on the world market, for each state seeks
not only to secure its existing markets, but also to conquer new ones.
In this, the subjugation of foreign peoples and countries plays a
prominent role. These wars result furthermore from the incessant race
for armaments by militarism, one of the chief instruments of bourgeois
class rule and of the economic and political subjugation of the working
class.
Wars are favored by the national prejudices which are
systematically cultivated among civilized peoples in the interest of the
ruling classes for the purpose of distracting the proletarian masses
from their own class tasks as well as from their duties of international
solidarity.
Wars, therefore, are part of the very nature of
capitalism; they will cease only when the capitalist system is abolished
or when the enormous sacrifices in men and money required by the
advance in military technique and the indignation called forth by
armaments, drive the peoples to abolish this system.
The resolution concluded:
If a war threatens to break out, it is the duty of the
working classes and their parliamentary representatives in the countries
involved, supported by the coordinating activity of the International
Socialist Bureau, to exert every effort in order to prevent the outbreak
of war by the means they consider most effective, which naturally vary
according to the sharpening of the class struggle and the sharpening of
the general political situation.
In case war should break out anyway, it is their duty to
intervene in favor of its speedy termination and with all their powers
to utilize the economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse
the masses and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule.
In fact, Luxemburg and Lenin had very different interpretations of the national question. Lenin and the Bolsheviks opposed imperialism and chauvinism by advocating a policy of national self-determination,
including the right of oppressed nations to secede from Russia. They
believed this would help to create the conditions for unity between the
workers in both oppressing and oppressed nations. Specifically, Lenin
claimed: "The bourgeois nationalism
of any oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is
directed against oppression and it is this content that we
unconditionally support". By contrast, Luxemburg broke with the mainstream Polish Socialist Party in 1893 on the national question.
Luxemburg argued that the nature of Russia had changed since
Marx's day as Russia was now fast developing as a major capitalist
nation while the Polish bourgeoisie now had its interests linked to
Russian capitalism. This had opened the possibility of a class alliance
between the Polish and Russian working class.
The leading party of the Second International, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, voted overwhelmingly in support of Germany's entry into World War I
by approving war credits on 4 August 1914. Many other member parties of
the Second International followed suit by supporting national
governments and the Second International was dissolved in 1916.
Proletarian internationalists characterized the combination of social democracy and nationalism as social chauvinism.
World War I
The hopes of internationalists such as Lenin, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were dashed by the initial enthusiasm for war. Lenin tried to re-establish socialist unity against the war at the Zimmerwald Conference, but the majority of delegates took a pacifist rather than a revolutionary position.
In prison, Luxemburg deepened her analysis with The Junius Pamphlet
of 1915. In this document, she specifically rejects the notion of
oppressor and oppressed states: "Imperialism is not the creation of one
or any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of
ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international
condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognisable only in all its
relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof at will".
Proletarian internationalists now argued that the alliances of World War I had proved that socialism
and nationalism were incompatible in the imperialist era, that the
concept of national self-determination had become outdated and in
particular that nationalism would prove to be an obstacle to proletarian
unity. Anarcho-syndicalism was a further working class political
current that characterised the war as imperialist on all sides, finding
organisational expression in the Industrial Workers of the World.
The internationalist perspective influenced the revolutionary wave towards the end of World War I, notably with Russia's withdrawal from the conflict following the October Revolution and the revolt in Germany beginning in the naval ports of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven
that brought the war to an end in November 1918. However, once this
revolutionary wave had receded in the early 1920s, proletarian
internationalism was no longer mainstream in working class politics.
Third International: Leninism versus left communism
Following World War I, the international socialist movement was
irreconcilably split into two hostile factions: on the one side, the
social democrats, who broadly supported their national governments
during the conflict; and on the other side Leninists and their allies who formed the new communist parties that were organised into the Third International, which was established in March 1919. During the Russian Civil War, Lenin and Leon Trotsky
more firmly embraced the concept of national self-determination for
tactical reasons. In the Third International, the national question
became a major bone of contention between mainstream Leninists and "left communists".
By the time World War II broke out in 1939, only a few prominent communists such as the Italian Marxist Amadeo Bordiga and the Dutch council communistAnton Pannekoek remained opponents of Russia's embrace of national self-determination. Following the collapse of the Mussolini regime in Italy in 1943, Bordigists regrouped and founded the International Communist Party (PCInt). The first edition of the party organ, Prometeo (Prometheus),
proclaimed: "Workers! Against the slogan of a national war which arms
Italian workers against English and German proletarians, oppose the
slogan of the communist revolution, which unites the workers of the
world against their common enemy — capitalism". The PCInt took the view that Luxemburg, not Lenin, had been right on the national question.
Socialist internationalism and the postwar era
There
was a revival of interest in internationalist theory after World War
II, when the extent of communist influence in Eastern Europe
dramatically increased as a result of postwar military occupations by the Soviet Union. The Soviet government defined its relationship with Eastern European states it occupied such as Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary as based on the principles of proletarian internationalism. The theory was used to justify installing "people's democracies" in these states, which were to oversee the transition from fascism to communism.
By the early 1960s, this thinking was considered obsolete as most of
the "people's democracies" had established cohesive postwar communist
states.
Marxist ideologues believed that proletarian internationalism was no
longer accurate to describe Soviet relations with the newly emerging Eastern European communist bloc, so a new term was coined, namely socialist internationalism. According to Soviet internationalist theory under Nikita Khrushchev,
proletarian internationalism could only be evoked to describe
solidarity between international peoples and parties, not governments. Inter-state relationships fell into a parallel category, socialist internationalism.
Socialist internationalism was considerably less militant than
proletarian internationalism as it was not focused on the spread of
revolution, but diplomatic, political and to a lesser extent cultural
solidarity between preexisting regimes. Under the principles of socialist internationalism, the Warsaw Pact governments were encouraged to pursue various forms of economic or military cooperation with each other and Moscow. At the Moscow International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties
in June 1969, seventy-five communist parties from around the world
formally defined and endorsed the theory of socialist internationalism.
One of the key tenets of socialist internationalism as expressed during
the conference was that the "defense of socialism is the international
duty of communists", meaning communist governments should be obliged to
assist each other militarily to defend their common interests against
external aggression.
Khrushchev's successor, Leonid Brezhnev,
was an even more outspoken proponent of both proletarian and socialist
internationalism. In 1976, Brezhnev declared that proletarian
internationalism was neither dead nor obsolete and reaffirmed the Soviet Union's
commitment to its core concepts of "the solidarity of the working
class, of communists of all countries in the struggle for common goals,
the solidarity in the struggle of the peoples for national liberation
and social progress, [and] voluntary cooperation of the fraternal
parties with strict observance of the equality and independence of
each".
Under Brezhnev, the Soviet and Warsaw Pact governments frequently
evoked proletarian internationalism to fund leftist trade unions and
guerrilla insurgencies around the globe.
Foreign military interventions could also be justified as
"internationalist duty" to defend or support other communist states
during wartime.
With Soviet financial or military backing, a considerable number of new
communist governments succeeded in assuming power during the late 1960s
and 1970s.
The United States and its allies perceived this as an example of Soviet
expansionism and this aspect of Brezhnev's foreign policy negatively
affected diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the West.
Outside of the Warsaw Pact, Cuba
embraced its own aggressive theory of proletarian internationalism,
which was primarily exercised through support for leftist revolutionary
movements.
One of the fundamental aspects of Cuban foreign policy between 1962 and
1990 was the "rule of internationalism", which dictated that Cuba must
first and foremost support the cause of international revolution through
whatever means are available to her. At the founding of the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America in 1966, Cuban President Fidel Castro
declared that "for Cuban revolutionaries, the battleground against
imperialism encompasses the entire world...the enemy is one and the
same, the same one who attacks our shores and our territory, the same
one who attacks everyone else. And so we say and proclaim that the
revolutionary movement in every corner of the world can count on Cuban
combat fighters".
By the mid 1980s, it was estimated that up to a quarter of Cuba's
national military was deployed overseas, fighting with communist
governments or factions in various civil conflicts. The Cuban military saw action against the United States while fighting on behalf of the Marxist New Jewel Movement in Grenada. It was also instrumental in installing a communist government in Angola and fighting several costly campaigns during that nation's civil war.
Leftist opposition to proletarian internationalism
In
contrast, some socialists have pointed out that social realities such
as local loyalties and cultural barriers militate against proletarian
internationalism. For example, George Orwell
believed that "in all countries the poor are more national than the
rich". To this, Marxists might counter that while the rich may have
historically had the awareness and education to recognize cross-national
interest of class, the poor of those same nations likely have not had
this advantage, making them more susceptible to what Marxists would
describe as the false ideology of patriotism.
Marxists assert that patriotism and nationalism serve precisely to
obscure opposing class interests that would otherwise pose a threat to
the ruling class order.
Marxists would also point out that in times of intense
revolutionary struggle (the most evident being the revolutionary periods
of 1848–1498, 1917–1923 and 1968)
internationalism within the proletariat can overtake petty nationalisms
as intense class struggles break out in multiple nations at the same
time and the workers of those nations discover that they have more in
common with other workers than with their own bourgeoisie.
On the question of imperialism and national determination, proponents of Third-Worldism
argue that workers in "oppressor" nations (such as the United States or
Israel) must first support national liberation movements in "oppressed"
nations (such as Afghanistan or Palestine) before there can be any
basis for proletarian internationalism. For example, Tony Cliff, a leading figure of the British Socialist Workers Party,
denied the possibility of solidarity between Palestinians and Israelis
in the current Middle East situation, writing that "Israel is not a
colony suppressed by imperialism, but a settler’s citadel, a launching
pad of imperialism. It is a tragedy that some of the very people who had
been persecuted and massacred in such bestial fashion should themselves
be driven into a chauvinistic, militaristic fervour, and become the
blind tool of imperialism in subjugating the Arab masses".
Trotskyists argue that there must be a permanent revolution in Third World countries
in which a bourgeoisie revolution will inevitably lead to a worker's
revolution with an international scope. This can be seen in the October
Revolution before the movement was stopped by Stalin, a proponent of socialism in one country.
Because of this threat, the bourgeoisie in Third World countries will
willingly subjugate themselves to national and capitalist interests in
order to prevent a proletarian uprising.
Internationalists would respond that capitalism
has proved itself incapable of resolving the competing claims of
different nationalisms and that the working class (of all countries) is
oppressed by capitalism, not by other workers. Moreover, the global nature of capitalism and international finance make "national liberation" an impossibility. For internationalists, all national liberation movements, whatever their "progressive" gloss, are therefore obstacles to the communist goal of world revolution.
Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. The term is broadly defined in the modern era to denote opposition to the political movement of Jews to self-determination within the territory of the historic Land of Israel (also referred to as Palestine, Canaan, or the Holy Land). Anti-Zionism is also defined as opposition to the State of Israel or, prior to 1948, its establishment.
The term is used to describe various religious, moral and
political points of view, but their diversity of motivation and
expression is sufficiently different that "anti-Zionism" cannot be seen
as having a single ideology or source. There is also a difference
between how it is discussed philosophically and how it is enacted within
a political or social campaign. Many notable Jewish and non-Jewish sources take the view that anti-Zionism has become a cover for modern-day antisemitism, a position that critics have challenged as a tactic to silence criticism of Israeli policies. Others, such as Steven M. Cohen, Brian Klug and Todd Gitlin, see no correlation between the two.
History
Jewish anti-Zionism
Jewish anti-Zionism is as old as Zionism itself, and enjoyed widespread support in the Jewish community until World War II.
The Jewish community is not a single united group and responses vary
both among and within Jewish groups. One of the principal divisions is
that between secular Jews and religious Jews.
The reasons for secular opposition to the Zionist movement are very
different from those of religious Jews. Opposition to a Jewish state
has changed over time and has taken on a diverse spectrum of religious,
ethical and political positions.
The legitimacy of anti-Zionist views has been disputed to the
present day, including the more recent and disputed relationship between
anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Other views regarding the various forms of anti-Zionism have also been discussed and debated.
Before 1948
There is a long tradition of Jewish anti-Zionism that has opposed the Zionist project from its origins. The Bundists, the Autonomists, Reform Judaism and the Agude regarded both the rationale and territorial ambitions of Zionism as flawed. Orthodox Judaism,
which grounds civic responsibilities and patriotic feelings in
religion, was strongly opposed to Zionism because, though the two shared
the same values, Zionism espoused nationalism in secular fashion, and
used "Zion", "Jerusalem", "Land of Israel", "redemption" and
"ingathering of exiles" as literal rather than sacred terms,
endeavouring to achieve them in this world. Orthodox Jews also opposed the creation of a Jewish state prior to the appearance of the messiah, as contradicting divine will.
By contrast, reform Jews rejected Judaism as a national or ethnic
identity, and renounced any messianic expectations of the advent of a
Jewish state.
Religious
Hope for return to the land of Israel is embodied in the content of the Jewish religion. Aliyah,
the Hebrew word meaning "ascending" or "going up", is the word used to
describe religious Jewish return to Israel, and has been used since
ancient times. From the Middle Ages and onwards, many famous rabbis and often their followers returned to the land of Israel. These have included Nahmanides, Yechiel of Paris, Isaac Luria, Yosef Karo, Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk among others. For Jews in the DiasporaEretz Israel was revered in a religious sense. They prayed, and thought of the return, as being fulfilled in a messianic age. Return remained a recurring theme for generations, particularly in Passover and Yom Kippur prayers, which traditionally concluded with, "Next year in Jerusalem", as well as the thrice-daily Amidah (Standing prayer).
Following Jewish Enlightenment however, Reform Judaism dropped many traditional beliefs, including aliyah, as incompatible with modern life within the Diaspora. Later, Zionism re-kindled the concept of aliyah
in an ideological and political sense, parallel with traditional
religious belief; it was used to increase Jewish population in the Holy
Land by immigration and it remains a basic tenet of Zionist ideology.
Support for aliyah does not always equal immigration however, as a
majority of the world Jewish population remains within the Diaspora.
Support for the modern Zionist movement is not universal and, as a
result, some religious Jews as well as some secular Jews do not support
Zionism. Non-Zionist
Jews are not necessarily anti-Zionists, although some are. Generally
however, Zionism does have the support of the majority of the Jewish
religious organizations, with support from segments of the Orthodox movement, and most of the Conservative, and more recently, the Reform movement.
Many Hasidic rabbis oppose the creation of a Jewish state. The leader of the Satmar Hasidic group, 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, forbidding the
Jewish people from massively immigrating to the Land of Israel, and from
rebelling against the nations of the world.
Secular
Prior to the Second World War many Jews regarded Zionism as a fanciful and unrealistic movement. 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.
The Jewish Anti-Zionist League, in Egypt, was a Communist-influenced anti-Zionist league in the years 1946–1947. In Israel, there are several Jewish anti-Zionist organisations and politicians, many of these are related to Matzpen.
After World War II 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" 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 led to the founding
of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism.
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 lifelong 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.
Post-Zionism, a related term, has been criticized as being equivalent to anti-Zionism.
Religious
Neturei Karta call for dismantling of the state of Israel at AIPAC conference in Washington, DC, May 2005
Most Orthodox religious groups have accepted and actively support the
State of Israel, even if they have not adopted "Zionist" ideology. The World Agudath Israel
party (founded in Poland) has at times participated in Israeli
government coalitions. Most religious Zionists hold pro-Israel views
from a right-wing viewpoint. The main exceptions are Hasidic groups such
as Satmar
Hasidim, which have about 100,000 adherents worldwide, as well as
numerous different, smaller Hasidic groups, unified in America in the Central Rabbinical Congress of the United States and Canada and in Israel in the Edah HaChareidis.
David Novak writes that many Jewish anti-Zionists resent the way Zionism 'mak(es) Jewishly unwarranted claims on them and other Jews. According to Jonathan Judaken,
'numerous Jewish traditions have insisted that preservation of what is
most precious about Judaism and Jewishness "demands" a principled
anti-Zionism or post-Zionism.' This tradition dwindled in the aftermath
of the Holocaust, and the establishment of Israel but is still alive in
religious groups such as Neturei Karta and among many intellectuals of Jewish background in both Israel and the diaspora, such as George Steiner, Tony Judt and Baruch Kimmerling .
Secular
Noam Chomsky has reported a change in the boundaries of what are considered Zionist and anti-Zionist views. 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.
"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."
"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."
Some Jewish organizations oppose Zionism as an integral part of their anti-imperialism. Some secular Jews today, particularly socialists and Marxists,
continue to oppose the State of Israel on anti-imperialist and human
rights grounds. Many oppose it as a form of nationalism, which they
argue to be a product of capitalist societies. One secular anti-Zionist
group today is the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network,
a socialist, anti-war, and anti-imperialist organization that calls for
"the dismantling of Israeli apartheid, the return of Palestinian
refugees, and the ending of the Israeli colonization of historic
Palestine".
Outside the Jewish community
Palestinians
Anne de Jong asserts that direct resistance from inhabitants of historic Palestine
"focused less on religious arguments and was instead centred on
countering the experience of colonial dispossession and opposing the
Zionist enforcement of ethnic division of the indigenous population".
Palestinian Christian owned Falastin was founded in 1911 in the then Arab-majority city of Jaffa.
The newspaper is often described as one of the most influential
newspapers in historic Palestine, and probably the nation's fiercest and
most consistent critic of the Zionist movement. It helped shape Palestinian identity and nationalism and was shut down several times by the Ottoman and British authorities, most of the time due to complaints made by Zionists.
British colonial officials
The British anti-ZionistJohn Hope Simpson
believed that the Arabs were "economically powerless against such a
strong movement" and thus needed protection. Charles Anderson writes
that Hope Simpson was also "wary of the gulf between Zionist rhetoric
and practice, observing that 'The most lofty sentiments are ventilated
in public meetings and in Zionist propaganda' but that the Jewish National Fund and other organs of the movement did not uphold or embody a vision of cooperation or mutual benefit with the Arabs".
Anti-Zionism in the Arab world emerged at the end of the 19th
century, very soon after the First Zionist Congress was held in Basel in
1897.
However, only after the Young Turk revolution in 1908 did opposition to
Zionism in Palestine and Greater Syria became widespread.
According to philosopher Michael Neumann, Zionism as an "expansionist threat" has caused Arab hostility toward Israel and even antisemitism. Pan-Arabist narratives in the 1960s Nasser era emphasized the idea of Palestine as a part of the Arab world
taken by others. In this narrative, the natural means of combating
Zionism is Arab nations uniting and attacking Israel militarily.
Anti-Zionist Muslims consider the State of Israel as an intrusion into what many Muslims consider to be Dar al-Islam,
a domain they believe to be rightfully, and permanently, ruled only by
Muslims due the fact it was historically conquered in the name of Islam.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) has been described as taking anti-Zionist positions in connection with its criticisms of Israeli policy.
It is claimed the council has focused disproportionately on activities
and publications criticizing Israel in comparison with other human
rights issues. The council members have been characterized by Israel's former Justice minister Amnon Rubinstein as anti-Zionist, saying "they just hate Israel".
The WCC has been charged with prioritising Anti-Zionism to the extent
it has neglected appeals from Egyptian Copts to raise their plight under
Sadat and Mubarak in order to avoid distracting world attention.
Presbyterian Church of USA
After publishing "Zionism unsettled", which it initially commended as
"a valuable opportunity to explore the political ideology of Zionism", the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) promptly withdrew the publication from sale on its website
following criticism that it was Anti-Zionist, one critic claimed it
posits that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is fueled by a 'pathology
inherent in Zionism.'
In February 2016, the General Assembly was lobbied by its Advisory
Committee on Social Witness Policy (ACSWP) to lay aside a two state
solution and support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Presbyterians for Middle East Peace described this proposal as a "one-sided, zero-sum solution".
“
Political
Zionism and Christian Zionism are anathema to Christian faith.... The
true Israel today is neither Jews nor Israelis, but believers in the
Messiah, even if they are Gentiles.... John Stott
”
Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization
In January 2015, the Lausanne movement, published an article in its official journal made comparisons between Christian Zionism, the crusades and the Spanish Inquisition and described Zionism as "apartheid on steroids". The Simon Wiesenthal Center described this last claim as "the big lie", and rebutted the "dismissal of the validity of Israel's right to exist as the Jewish State".
Church of Scotland
Despite its strong historic support for Restorationism, famously by Robert Murray M'Chyene and by both Horatius and Andrew Bonar, in April 2013 the Church of Scotland published "The Inheritance of Abraham: A Report on the Promised Land",
which rejected the idea of a special right of Jewish people to the Holy
Land through analysis of scripture and Jewish theological claims. The
report further denied the "belief among some Jewish people that they
have a right to the land of Israel as a compensation for the suffering
of the Holocaust" and argued "it is a misuse of the Bible to use it as a
topographic guide to settle contemporary conflicts over land." The
report was criticised by Jewish leaders in Scotland as "biased, weak on
sources, and contradictory. The picture it paints of both Judaism and
Israel is barely even a caricature."
Subsequently, the Church issued a statement saying that the Church had
not changed its "long-held position of the rights of Israel to exist". It also revised the report.
Methodist Church of Great Britain
Charles and John Wesley, founders of the Methodist Church, held Restorationist views. Following the submission of a report titled 'Justice for Palestine and Israel' in July 2010, the UK Methodist Conference questioned whether 'Zionism was compatible with Methodist beliefs'.
Christian Zionism was characterised as believing that Israel "must be
held above criticism whatever policy is enacted", and conference called
for a boycott of selected Israeli goods "emanating from illegal
settlements".
The UK's Chief Rabbi described the report as "unbalanced, factually and
historically flawed", and said that it offered "no genuine
understanding of one of the most complex conflicts in the world today.
Many in both communities will be deeply disturbed."
Third Position, fascist, and right-wing
The flag of the Knights Party, the political branch of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Anti-Zionism has a long history of being supported by various individuals and groups associated with Third Position, right-wing and fascist (or "neo-fascist") political views. A number of militantly racist groups and their leaders are anti-Zionist, David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan for example, and various other Aryan / White-supremacist groups. In these instances, anti-Zionism is usually also deeply anti-Semitic, and often revolves around conspiracy theories discussed below
Soviet Union
During the last years of Stalin's rule, official support for the
creation of Israel in 1948 was replaced by strong anti-Zionism.
According to Izabella Tabarovsky, a researcher with the Kennan Institute:
"[T]he
Soviets ... [claimed] that their ideology was anti-Zionist, not
anti-Semitic. ... Soviet ideologues relied for inspiration on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, on the ideas of classic religious anti-Semitism, and even Mein Kampf, but adopted them to the Marxist
framework by substituting the idea of a global anti-Soviet Zionist
conspiracy for a specifically Jewish one. Jewish power became Zionist
power. The rich and conniving Jewish bankers controlling money,
politicians, and the media became the rich and conniving Zionists. The
Jew as the anti-Christ became the Jew as the anti-Soviet. Instead of
the Jew as the devil, they presented the Zionist as a Nazi."
The decision was revoked on 16 December 1991, when 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 Palestine Liberation Organisation
denounced the vote. All of the ex-communist countries and most of the
African countries who had supported Resolution 3379 voted to repeal it.
African-American
After Israel occupied Palestinian territory following the 1967 Six-Day War,
some African-Americans supported the Palestinians and criticized
Israel's actions, for example by publicly supporting Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat and calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Immediately after the war, the black power organization Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
published a newsletter criticizing Israel, and asserting that the war
was an effort to regain Palestinian land and that during the 1948 war, "Zionists conquered the Arab homes and land through terror, force, and massacres." In 1993, philosopher Cornel West
wrote: "Jews will not comprehend what the symbolic predicament and
literal plight of Palestinians in Israel means to blacks.... Blacks
often perceive the Jewish defense of the state of Israel as a second
instance of naked group interest, and, again, an abandonment of
substantive moral deliberation."
African-American support of Palestinians is frequently due to the
consideration of Palestinians as people of color – political scientist Andrew Hacker
writes: "The presence of Israel in the Middle East is perceived as
thwarting the rightful status of people of color. Some blacks view
Israel as essentially a white and European power, supported from the
outside, and occupying space that rightfully belongs to the original
inhabitants of Palestine."
In the early 21st century, it was also claimed that a "new antisemitism" had emerged that was rooted in anti-Zionism. 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.
Critics of the concept have suggested that the characterization of
anti-Zionism as antisemitic is inaccurate, sometimes obscures legitimate
criticism of Israel's policies and actions and trivializes antisemitism.
View that the two are interlinked
A number of sources link anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
Campus research in 2016 in the US has also reported close geographical
correlation between the two phenomena, accompanying a recent upsurge in
anti-Semitism.
Government officials
French President Emmanuel Macron calls anti-Zionism "a reinvention of anti-Semitism." French Prime Minister Manuel Valls expressed similar views.
In the 2015, a German court in Essen
ruled that "'Zionist' in the language of antisemites is a code for
Jew". Taylan Can, a German citizen of Turkish origin, yelled "death and
hate to Zionists" at an anti-Israel rally in Essen in July 2014, and was
convicted for hate crime. In contrast, in February 2015, a court in Wuppertal convicted two German Palestinians of an arson attack on a synagogue, but denied that the crime was motivated by antisemitism.
Academia
Professor Kenneth L. Marcus, former staff director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, identifies four main views on the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, at least in North America. Marcus also states:
"Unsurprisingly, recent research has shown a close correlation between
anti-Israeli views and anti-Semitic views based on a survey of citizens
in ten European countries."
"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".
Nevertheless, I believe that the more radical forms of anti-Zionism that
have emerged with renewed force in recent years do display unmistakable
analogies to European anti-Semitism immediately preceding the Holocaust....
For example, 'anti-Zionists' who insist on comparing Zionism and the
Jews with Hitler and the Third Reich appear unmistakably to be de facto
anti-Semites, even if they vehemently deny the fact! ... For if Zionists
are 'Nazis' and if Sharon
really is Hitler, then it becomes a moral obligation to wage war
against Israel. ... Anti-Zionism is ... also the lowest common
denominator and the bridge between the Left, the Right, and the militant
Muslims; between the elites (including the media) and the masses;
between the churches and the mosques; between an increasingly
anti-American Europe and an endemically anti-Western
Arab-Muslim Middle East; a point of convergence between conservatives
and radicals and a connecting link between fathers and sons."
... 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.
British sociologist David Hirsh wrote a book called Contemporary Left Antisemitism in which he studied anti-Zionism empirically.
Philosophically, one might privately find under a set of theoretical
circumstances that it is possible to be an anti-Zionist without being an
antisemite, but according to Hirsh's book, "When anti-Zionism gets a
foothold [in an organization] and becomes popular and normal and
legitimate, it brings antisemitism with it."
Others
According to the December 1969 issue of Encounter, a student attacked Zionism in the presence of Dr. Martin Luther King,
an American civil rights activist. King responded to the student,
"When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking
anti-Semitism."
Israeli journalist Ben-Dror Yemini maintains that anti-Zionism is "politically correctantisemitism"
and argues that the same way Jews were demonized, Israel is demonized,
the same way the right of Jews to exist was denied, the right for Self-determination is denied from Israel, the same way Jews were presented as a menace to the world, Israel is presented as a menace to the world.
Israeli American journalist Liel Leibovitz
says that 21st century "anti-Zionists" do not like Jews whether they
live in Israel or anywhere else in the world. He cites the example of
the "anti-Zionist" professor at Oberlin who posted antisemitic conspiracy theories on her website and the "anti-Zionist" Stanford University student who claimed that many of the classical antisemitic conspiracy theories are not antisemitic.
British socialist Adam Langleben had been a supporter of the British Labour Party all of his life until its leader, Jeremy Corbyn,
was caught on video accusing "Zionists" of lacking a sense of irony
possessed by other British citizens. Although Corbyn used the word
"Zionist" and not the word "Jew," Langleben asserted, "[F]or any Jewish
person watching the video we will have heard ‘Jew,’ because most Jews in
Britain subscribe to being a Zionist or supportive of the state of
Israel—not the policies, but the existence [of the Jewish state]." Langleben's break with Labour came after repeatedly defending Corbyn from critics.
Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times op-ed columnist Bret Stephens
wrote that anti-Zionists "excel in making excuses for the wicked and
finding fault with the good. When you find yourself on the same side as
Hassan Nasrallah, Louis Farrakhan and David Duke
on the question of a country’s right to exist, it’s time to re-examine
every opinion you hold." Stephens admitted, "Anti-Zionism might have
been a respectable point of view before 1948, when the question of
Israel’s existence was in the future and up for debate. Today,
anti-Zionism is a call for the elimination of a state — details to follow regarding the fate befalling those who currently live in it" (emphasis in the original).
In another column, Stephens wrote, "Of course it’s theoretically
possible to distinguish anti-Zionism from anti-Semitism, just as it’s
theoretically possible to distinguish segregationism from racism. But the striking feature of anti-Zionist rhetoric is how broadly it overlaps with traditionally anti-Semitic tropes."
View that the two are not interlinked
On the appointment of Steve Bannon, who is reputed to be anti-semitic, as Donald Trump's White House Chief Strategist
and Senior Counselor in 2016, several commentators said Bannon's
personal attitudes would not necessarily translate into opposition to
Israel. The sociologist Steven M. Cohen finds little correlation between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, while Todd Gitlin stated that anti-Semitism and right-wing Zionism can coexist without difficulty.
Brian Klug
argued, "We should unite in rejecting racism in all its forms: the
Islamophobia that demonises Muslims, as well as the anti-semitic
discourse that can infect anti-Zionism and poison the political debate.
However, people of goodwill can disagree politically - even to the
extent of arguing over Israel's future as a Jewish state. Equating
anti-Zionism with anti-semitism can also, in its own way, poison the
political debate."
On 15 January 2004, Klug wrote, "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."
View that anti-Zionism leads to antisemitism
According to David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,
"there has been an insidious, creeping attempt to delegitimize the
state of Israel, which spills over often into anti-Semitism."
In July 2001, the Simon Wiesenthal Center reported that during a visit there, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer stated, "anti-Zionism inevitably leads to antisemitism."
In 2015, the Center observed in a newsletter introducing its report on
North American campus life, that 'virulent anti-Zionism is often a
thinly-veiled disguise for virulent anti-Semitism'.
Conspiracy theories
The antisemitic hoaxThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion came to be used among Arab anti-Zionists, although some Arab anti-Zionists have tried to discourage its usage.
Antisemitic sources have claimed that The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion were read at the First Zionist Congress. Neil J. Kressel asserts
that for many years the line between antisemitism and anti-Zionism has
been blurry.
It
seems that the interest of the Zionist movement, however, is to inflate
this figure [of Holocaust deaths] so that their gains will be greater.
This led them to emphasize this figure [six million] in order to gain
the solidarity of international public opinion with Zionism. Many
scholars have debated the figure of six million and reached stunning
conclusions—fixing the number of Jewish victims at only a few hundred
thousand.
”
In 1968, the East German communist paper Neues Deutschland justified the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia with the headline "In Prague Zionism is in power". In 1995, William Korey released a work titled Russian antisemitism, Pamyat, and the demonology of Zionism. Korey's central argument is that the Soviet Union promoted an "official Judeophobic propaganda campaign" under the guise of anti-Zionism from 1967 to 1986; after this program was shut down by Mikhail Gorbachev, a populist and chauvinist group called Pamyat emerged in the more open climate of Glasnost to promote an openly antisemitic message. Korey also argues that much official late-period Soviet antisemitism may be traced back to the influence of Protocols of the Elders of Zion. He notes, for instance, that a 1977 Soviet work titled International Zionism: History and Politics
contains the allegation that most major Wall Street financial
institutions are "large financial-industrial Jewish monopolies"
exercising control over many countries in the world. Russian antisemitism was reviewed by Robert O. Freedman in the Slavic Review;
while he concurs with the book's central thesis, Freedman nevertheless
writes that the actual extent of Soviet antisemitism may have been less
than Korey suggests.
Accusations have been made regarding Zionism and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, claiming that prominent Zionists were forcing Western governments into war in the Middle East for Israel's interests.
The Sudanese government has alleged that the Darfur uprising (in which some 500,000 have been killed) is part of a wider Zionist conspiracy. Egyptian media have alleged that the Zionist movement deliberately spreads HIV in Egypt.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Neo-Nazi and radical Muslim groups allege the U.S. government is controlled by Jews, describing it as the "Zionist Occupation Government".
Article 22 of the 1988 Hamas charter claims that the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, colonialism
and both world wars were created by the Zionists or forces supportive
of Zionism. Article 32 alleges that the Zionist movement seeks to create
an Empire stretching from the Nile in Egypt to the Euphrates river in
Iraq.
In April 2010, Abd Al-Azim Al-Maghrabi, the deputy head of
Egyptian Arab Lawyers Union, stated in an interview with Al-Manar TV (as
translated by MEMRI) that the Hepatitis C
virus was produced by "the Zionists" and "this virus is now spreading
in Egypt like wildfire." He also called for it to be "classified as one
of the war crimes perpetrated by the Zionist enemy".
In June 2010, Egyptian cleric Mus'id Anwar gave a speech that aired on Al-Rahma TV (as translated by MEMRI) in which he alleged that the game of soccer (as well as swimming, bullfighting and tennis) was in fact a Zionist conspiracy, stating that:
As you know, the Jews, or the Zionists, have The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Over 100 years ago, they formulated a plan to rule the world, and they
are implementing this plan. One of the protocols says: "Keep the
[non-Jews] preoccupied with songs, soccer, and movies." Is it or isn't
it happening? It is [...] the Zionists manage to generate animosity
among Muslims, and even between Muslim countries, by means of soccer.