Anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

Conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism is a distortion tactic. Anti-Zionism is opposition to a settler-colonial movement that instrumentalized Judaism in pursuit of a Jewish state in Palestine. Palestinians resist Zionism because it has subjected them to ethnic cleansing, occupation, apartheid, and genocide. There would have been resistance to Zionism regardless of the religion of the colonizers.

Equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism also distorts history. The systematic persecution of Jews from expulsions and pogroms to the Holocaust emerged from Europe. At the same time, Jewish communities lived across Palestine and the broader region as integral parts of their societies, sharing common languages, cultures, and histories. It was Zionism that recast Jewish identity as a homogenized national identity, disrupted centuries of coexistence, and projected the hostility generated by colonization onto the colonized.

This claim collapses under the weight of Jewish opposition to Zionism. Millions of Jews, alongside organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, Independent Jewish Voices, and Neturei Karta, oppose Zionism on moral, religious, and political grounds, refusing to allow apartheid and genocide to be carried out in their name.

Delinking Zionism from Judaism is crucial, but the burden should not fall on Palestinians to constantly make that distinction in every word or action they take. The conflation was constructed by Zionism itself. Israel defines itself as the "Jewish state," grants exclusive rights on that basis, and claims to represent Jews worldwide. This is not merely rhetorical. Palestinian life under colonial rule is shaped by Israeli Jewish soldiers and settlers enforcing dispossession and genocide. Yet when Palestinians resist those directly oppressing them, they are accused of fighting Jews rather than resisting colonial domination.

Ironically, Zionist leaders collaborated with antisemitic officials and regimes in pursuit of their colonial project. Herzl, the founder of Zionism, wrote that "the anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies." After World War II, colonialism and antisemitism increasingly lost international legitimacy. As Joseph Massad writes, "the only defence Israel could mount in the new world that was opposed to both colonialism and anti-Semitism was to use one in defense of the other." In this way, accusations of antisemitism became a political tool to shield Zionism's colonial project from accountability.

Conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism is a deliberate strategy to repress resistance and solidarity for Palestine. This is exemplified by the widespread adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism to suppress criticism of Israel. In practice, this has resulted in censorship in mainstream media, sanctions against students and academics, canceled events, defunded cultural initiatives, and coordinated smear campaigns against activists and solidarity groups. The systematic repression of opposition to Israel under the guise of combating antisemitism is itself rooted in anti-Palestinian racism.

No state is entitled to immunity from scrutiny. Israel is a state, not a religion. Criticizing it is no more inherently antisemitic than criticizing Saudi Arabia is Islamophobic or criticizing India is anti-Hindu.