"BEFORE THE HOLOCAUST, MOST JEWS WERE ANTI-ZIONISTS"
Like me, I’m sure you’ve seen anti-Zionists make this argument. Though this isn’t exactly accurate (more on that later), if this statement were made in good faith, anti-Zionists might consider why the Holocaust drove so many Jews to Zionism. It is true that in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Zionism became a nearly unanimous position for global Jewry. After all, it actually makes perfect sense that after a devastating genocide and years of abandonment from the international community, most Jews would then conclude that sovereignty was the solution to antisemitic persecution.
Unfortunately, this statement isn’t made in good faith. Instead, the implication is something much more sinister: that the Holocaust traumatized Jews so much that we’ve turned into (or worse than) our Nazi oppressors. The suggestion here is that the abused became the abuser. In other words: Holocaust inversion (I address why Holocaust inversion is always Holocaust denial in a number of other posts).
DEFINING ZIONISM AND ANTI-ZIONISM
- Zionism is the Jewish movement for self-determination in the Land of Israel. In 1897, Zionist delegates at the First Zionist Congress defined Zionism as “Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel [the Land of Israel] secured under public law.” In practice, Zionists support the establishment (pre-1948) and continued existence (post-1948) of a sovereign Jewish state.
Beyond this, Zionists don’t necessarily agree on anything else, as Zionism is a wide political movement, with adherents across the entire political spectrum with drastically different opinions on issues like Israeli policy, the Israeli government, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the ongoing war in Gaza, and the best solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
- Anti-Zionism is opposition to Zionism. Anyone who opposes Zionism is an anti-Zionist.
Just as Zionism is not support for any Israeli government, Israeli policies, or even any particular solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, anti-Zionism is not opposition to any Israeli government, Israeli policies, or any solution to the conflict. Rather, it’s opposition to Jewish sovereignty in Israel in and of itself.
TWO VERY DIFFERENT ANTI-ZIONISMS
Pre-1948 anti-Zionism and post-1948 anti-Zionism are two different movements entirely. The former opposed the establishment of a Jewish state. The latter supports the elimination of an already existing Jewish state, with its 10 million citizens and all.
Pre-1948 and post-1948 Jewish anti-Zionism are especially distinct.
Pre-1948, Jewish anti-Zionists did not:
(1) Deny the historical Jewish claim to the Land of Israel.
(2) Align with antisemites seeking to exterminate the Jews living in the Land of Israel, with a few exceptions, like the Association of German National Jews, which supported the Nazis.
This is very different from the anti-Zionism of contemporary groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, which rely on historical revisionism and oftentimes whitewash – or outright support – groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the IRGC, and the Houthis.
EARLY JEWISH ANTI-ZIONISM
Early Jewish anti-Zionism can be divided into two categories:
(1) Some Orthodox Jews believed a Jewish state should only be established upon the coming of the Messiah. Some fringe Orthodox sects, like the Satmar, still believe this. This is religious anti-Zionism and should not be confused for political anti-Zionism like that of groups like JVP.
(2) Other Jews believed that Zionism was a far-fetched, “reactionary” idea, and that the best course of action for Jewish survival would be for Jews to integrate into full members of their societies.
THE GREAT DEBATE
To understand 19th century and early 20th century Jewish anti-Zionism, we must first understand the historical and social context in which these Jews lived. Zionism emerged as a modern political movement at the tail end of the Haskalah, or the Jewish Enlightenment, and the emancipation of European Jewry (the first European country to emancipate Jews was France in 1791; the last was Norway in 1891).
During the Haskalah, Jewish intellectuals advocated for the integration of Jews into European society, with many believing that this would be the answer to antisemitism. Zionism argued the opposite: the answer to antisemitism was Jewish sovereignty.
Zionism was, initially, of very little consequence to the non-Jewish world, which paid little attention, or regarded it cynically as a “Jewish trick.” But it was cause for rigorous debate among Jews. Secular Jews who took an anti-Zionist position did so on the grounds that they believed that emancipation and integration would be the answer to antisemitic persecution. They were not anti-Zionists because they denied Jewish history or regarded Zionism as colonialism, genocide, apartheid, etc.
WERE MOST JEWS REALLY ANTI-ZIONISTS?
The truth is that this question is virtually impossible to assess. No comprehensive studies or surveys exist on the matter.
We do know the following:
- By the end of World War I, about 3% of Jews were actively involved in the Zionist movement. However, this doesn’t mean that the other 97% were opposed to Zionism.
- By the time of the 21st Zionist Congress in 1939, the World Zionist Congress had 1,040,540 affiliated members in 61 different countries. At the time, the total Jewish population was about 16.6 million. Again, this figure only accounts for official membership with the organization. Many Jews very well could’ve ideologically supported Zionism without actually becoming members of the World Zionist Congress.
- Membership with actively anti-Zionist Jewish groups was much lower. For example, in 1920, the International Jewish Labor Bund had some 33,890 members.
THE JEWISH LABOR BUND
There is no group that today’s left-wing Jewish anti-Zionists idealize more than the Jewish Labor Bund, a Jewish socialist anti-Zionist party formed at the tail end of the Russian Empire and presented as an alternative to Zionism. The Bund was officially disbanded in the 1920s, as the Soviet Union cracked down on its Jewish population – thus ironically proving the Zionists correct – but its legacy continued through the International Jewish Labor Bund.
The Bund’s anti-Zionist beliefs can be summarized as follows:
- They believed that Zionism was a “distraction” and a form of “escapism.”
- The Bundist principle of “Doikayt,” translating to “here-ness,” encouraged Jews to fight for better conditions in their countries of residence, rather than seek them elsewhere.
THE HOLOCAUST CHANGED EVERYTHING
"Perhaps the most enduring wound for Jews from the Holocaust is the memory of aloneness. For 12 long years, the international community scarcely intervened as Nazi persecution gradually turned to extermination."
-Yossi Klein Halevi
By the end of World War II, Jewish support for Zionism was virtually universal. In Displaced Persons camps across Europe, even Bundists, who had long repudiated Zionism as “escapism,” called for the British government to lift its ban on Jewish immigration to Palestine. The Reform movement, which in the 19th century had denounced Zionism as a form of “separatism” that would become a barrier to Jewish integration in other Diaspora societies, reversed this stance in the Columbus Platform of 1937.
In a poll of 19,000 Jewish DPs, 97 percent of them stated they wanted to go to Palestine. When asked for a second choice, many wrote “crematorium.”
"With respect to possible places of resettlement for those who may be stateless or who do not wish to return to their homes, Palestine is definitely and pre-eminently the first choice. Many now have relatives there, while others, having experienced intolerance and persecution in their homelands for years, feel that only in Palestine will they be welcomed and find peace and quiet and be given an opportunity to live and work. In the case of the Polish and the Baltic Jews, the desire to go to Palestine is based in a great majority of the cases on a love for the country and a devotion to the Zionist ideal." - The Harrison Report, 1945
In 1945, in response to growing concern about the dire conditions in Displaced Persons camps in Europe, President Truman commissioned a report by Earl G. Harrison, who toured the camps and issued an assessment of the conditions, needs, and wants of the refugees. The report notes the near-unanimous Zionist sentiment among the Jewish Displaced Persons.
THE BUND CHANGES ITS STANCE
After the Holocaust, the Bund, who’d long opposed Jewish immigration to Palestine, called for the British government to open Palestine to Jewish refugees. They still opposed the 1947 UN Partition Vote, calling for a binational state instead based on democratic federalism. By 1955, however, they had changed their stance, deciding that the establishment of a Jewish state could be a positive development. At the 1955 World Conference of the International Jewish Labor Bund, the delegates decided that they could support Israel under a few conditions:
(A) the authorities of Israel should treat the state as property of the Jews of the world;
(B) but it would mean that the affairs of the Jewish community in Israel should be subordinate to those of world Jewry.
(C) the policy of the state of Israel would be the same toward all citizens regardless of their nationalities.
(D) Israel should foster peace with the Arabs. This required halting territorial expansion and resolving the Palestinian refugee problem.
(E) Yiddish should be taught at all educational institutions and would be promoted in public life.
WHAT ABOUT MIZRAHIM?
Anti-Zionists often describe Zionism as a “European” movement, noting that in the beginning, Zionism wasn’t popular among Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews. This, too, isn’t exactly accurate. For more on that, read my post IS ZIONISM EUROPEAN?
An important fact to note is that governments in the Middle East and North Africa and elsewhere in the Islamic world criminalized Zionism, thus making it dangerous for Jews -- already a vulnerable minority -- to openly affiliate with the movement.
Consider this, for example: in 1926, the Cairo Jewish Council sympathetically acknowledged the establishment of a Zionist organization in Alexandria, but 15 years later, the same council wrote a letter complaining of Zionist activity. As more of the Egyptian general population became hostile to Zionism, the Jewish community sought to distance itself from it more for their safety.
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