Zionism versus Judaism

by Dave Nichols

This note is intended to promote a clearer understanding of the debate going on in this country regarding the Palestine-Israel conflict. We need clarification because our government over recent years has cast anyone’s criticism of Israel as a form of antisemitism. We can see this conflation fostered through publicized congressional hearings against university presidents, congressional resolutions, and State Department actions against non citizens who protest in favor of the Palestinians. This has led to the suppression of protests against Israel‘s human rights abuses, charging people who have broken the law protesting against Israel as hate crimes, and the mainstream media routinely referring to violence against people who support Israel as antisemitic hate crimes. The British-Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé, distinguishes Judaism from Zionism by calling the former a religion and the latter an ideology. He explains that a religion is a broad abstract collection of ideas whereas an ideology is more concrete and limited in scope. 

Judaism dates back more than 2000 years. Zionism is a more recent idea and it didn’t originate with Jews. It was actually suggested by the Puritans in the 1600’s to promote the return of Jews to Israel in order to accelerate the 2nd coming of Christ and the end of the world. In the 1800’s, Evangelical Christians promoted the plan among central and eastern European Jews. The first formal Jewish Zionist meeting didn’t occur until 1897 in Switzerland. The movement was attended by both secular and religious Jews. Zionism for them meant that Jews were a people requiring its own nation in Palestine. Most Jews at that time had little interest in the project. However, since Israel’s founding in 1948 a large fraction of Jews and Evangelical Christians in Europe and Americans have become ardent supporters of Zionism. Ilan Pappé estimates about 1⁄2 the Jews today worldwide adhere to Zionism*. In the United States there are more Evangelicals supporting Israel than there are Jewish Americans supporting Israel.

The US has decided to classify anti-Zionism as antisemitic to tamp down protest against Israel’s human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank. I believe that this is having a negative effect on both Jews and Americans in general who wish to live in a country that abhors cruelty and treasures the separation of Church and State.

* Conversation with Ilan Pappè, Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic