From anti-Zionist to pro-Palestine

Editor's note: this piece was written before the stabbings in Golders Green on 29 April 2026.

The meaning of anti-Zionism has been in the news recently, beyond the usual, inevitable, sterile demands to label it a form of antisemitism. I want to try and go beyond such debates, to have a conversation that is firmly within the left and the pro-Palestine movement, that examines the efficacy and tactical wisdom of the labels we choose to use.

First out the stable door was Zarah Sultana, who attempted to make anti-Zionism a calling card for her “Grassroots Left” slate in the Your Party Central Executive Committee (CEC) elections. Alongside full support of trans rights, and in opposition to social conservatives (an implicit dig at Independent Alliance MPs like Adnan Hussain), Sultana called for Your Party to be formally anti-Zionist. On 19 February Sultana posted “After witnessing Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, the least we can do is speak plainly: Zionism is racism, and it has been since its foundation. We must be proudly anti-Zionist. That means fighting for a single democratic Palestinian state from the river to the sea, with equal rights for all”. She claimed that a 2019 statement she’d made on Zionism had been issued due to Labour leadership pressure, adding “I’ve regretted that decision for years, and I won’t compromise on my anti-Zionism ever again”. That 2019 statement was nuanced, stating that “While for many Palestinians, Zionism is seen as the ideology of the Israeli government, representing illegal settlements and second-class citizenship for Palestinians. For many Jewish people, Zionism represents Jewish people’s rights to a nation state, and right to safety after the Holocaust and the centuries of oppression and persecution preceding it. I’ve learnt how important it is to be mindful and sensitive of these different perspectives.”

The idea that Zionism has meant different things to different people is useful and has been articulated by Palestinian intellectuals like Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi. In any case, this debate in Your Party has become historical after Corbyn’s “The Many” slate were victorious in the recent internal elections, and Corbyn, for all his passionate Palestine solidarity activism, has declined to identify as anti-Zionist and does not want the party to be labelled as such.

But Your Party remains in chaos, while the Greens are surging in the polls, so inevitably the debate within the Greens is more consequential. A motion was drawn up in advance of their Spring Conference which called on the Greens to become a formally anti-Zionist party. The motion’s preamble defined Zionism as “a political ideology which called for the creation – and, now it exists, the continuity – of an ethnonationalist Jewish State in historic Palestine to the exclusion and/or domination of the non-Jewish population”. In a significant clarification, it stated that it was aimed at Zionism and not “at the religious or ethnic background of those who may identify as Zionists” – rightly noting that “not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews”. It added that “Rejecting Zionism and supporting the liberation of the Palestinian people is not discriminatory against Jewish people. Nor is it discriminatory to support the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian State between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea with equal rights for all.”

The motion proper stated that the party should reject “attempts to normalise the racist subjugation and oppression of Palestinians; to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism; to deny or minimise Palestinian human rights; to create hierarchies of racism; and to normalise or attempt to justify apartheid, ethnic cleansing or genocide” and that “definitions of anti-Jewish discrimination should not equate Jewish identity with Zionist ideology or political practice”. It supported “the establishment of a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, equal rights for all, and the right of return for Palestinians and their descendants”. The motion called for BDS, the release of all Palestinian prisoners, the de-proscription of Palestine Action, and implicitly supports the armed struggle; affirming “the right of the Palestinian people to resistance and liberation from Israeli occupation, domination and subjugation”, and acknowledging that “the struggle to achieve that liberation by all available means under international law is legitimate”. But for the Jewish Greens group — the self-styled “Liberation group for Jewish members of the Green Party” formed in 2019 — most controversial was the “actions to take” section, which included the clause “Zionism, as defined above, will be treated as any other form of racism, and this motion will be implemented by the Anti-Racism Policy Working Group as appropriate and in accordance with its ordinary practice”. 

Jewish Greens argued that a possible outcome of passing this motion would be to “actively proscribe members who consider themselves (or who others accuse of being) Zionists”. Noting (correctly, in my view) that “most Jewish institutions in the UK have some sort of connection to Zionism”, Jewish Greens argued that the motion would give “the party the option to expel almost any Jew involved in organised communal life or who has ever been, including our party leader”. This would appear to be hyperbole – nothing in the motion discussed disciplinary issues. And, to its credit, the motion said nothing of “Zionists”, only Zionism and Zionist ideology. It sought to overthrow the material consequences of Zionism in Israel-Palestine, rather than penalise individuals who may self-define (or be defined by others) as Zionist. 

The motion was not debated at the conference, as it did not attract sufficient support in the priorities ballot, although some alleged foul play to keep it off the agenda. The motion will likely return at the main Green conference in the autumn however, and the issues it raised remain relevant and worthy of discussion. 

The utility of anti-Zionism

In such debates, proponents and critics seem to agree on the choice being put forward; it is between being Zionist or being anti-Zionist. The debate thus proceeds on familiar polemical grounds. But what if this assumption is not the case? What if there are people who reject Zionism while being queasy about identifying as anti-Zionists? Or others who reject anti-Zionism but do not consider themselves Zionist? What is the political efficacy of the anti-Zionism moniker? And what if the opposite of being Zionist is not anti-Zionism, but rather being pro-Palestine: supporting a free Palestine between the river and the sea?

There are two groups for whom, for different reasons, the language of anti-Zionism is particularly helpful and clarifying: Palestinians and Jews. For Palestinians, Zionism has a material and deleterious impact on their lives; it is the ideology which underpins their oppression. For those in Gaza, Zionism is the force behind the genocide against them and the wholesale destruction of the territory; for those living in the West Bank it is the ideology behind apartheid, dispossession and ongoing ethnic cleansing; for ’48 Palestinians (those living within the Green line) it is the political movement which discriminates against them, which treats them as a demographic threat and which treats their political representatives as beyond the pale. The Palestinian diaspora also materially suffers from Zionism; for many of them, Zionism prevents them from even visiting their areas of family origin in historic Palestine, still less being allowed to return home permanently. For Palestinians, Zionism is concrete, a form of structural oppression, and its dismantlement would contribute to their liberation. For that reason, certain Palestinians (and some Jewish-Israeli dissidents) have talked of de-Zionisation, the removal of apartheid and discriminatory laws that prevent a free Palestine from coming into existence. For Palestinians, anti-Zionism is focused squarely on the territory between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea and seeks Palestinian liberation through the annulment of Zionist laws which privilege Israeli Jews over Palestinian Arabs.

There is also a case for other peoples who are oppressed by Zionism in the Middle East – Lebanese and Iranian people in the current climate – to identify as anti-Zionist. However, in their cases I wonder if anti-war, anti-genocide or simply opponents of the Israeli state might be better. Zionism doesn’t intrinsically oppose Iranian and Lebanese national self-determination as it does towards that of Palestinians, though I accept that in recent times it has begun to look that way. Rather, Israel has sought to create weak or client states in the region so that its hegemony will be unchallenged. The idea of a greater Israel stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates has been a minority current in Zionist thought, even if it is represented in the current government. That said, I wouldn’t quarrel with Iranians and Lebanese people calling themselves anti-Zionist.

The term is also useful for Jews; Jews can in a different way name Zionism as an ideology which oppresses them. Most early Zionist leaders were secularists who sought to reject religious Judaism and replace it with the idea of Jews as a nation; but after 1948, and particularly after 1967 the movement shifted course and began claiming that it was synonymous with Judaism, and the inevitable result of Jewish history and texts.

Any Jews who wish to practice forms of Judaism that resist a Zionist reading are marginalised or treated with extreme hostility. Speaking diasporic Jewish languages such as Yiddish, Ladino or Judaeo-Arabic rather than Ivrit? Deeply odd, if not suspicious behaviour. Praying in a Hebrew pronunciation or nusakh different from that used in the state of Israel and in synagogues that have aligned with it? Bizarre antiquarianism – your synagogue chair or rabbi will no doubt tell you to cease such nonsense at once. Believing that Jewish life can flourish and grow in the diaspora? This is getting seriously subversive. Having an interpretation of Judaism which is rooted in Torah and ethics rather than Jewish peoplehood, the state of Israel and antisemitism? You will never get a job in a Jewish institution, and you will be labelled a threat in any vaguely mainstream community you choose to operate in. 

This is not even to mention the very real ways the state of Israel in its early years oppressed, stigmatised and oppressed Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. The attempt to wipe out Arabic language and culture from such Jews is a symptom of this phenomenon. Zionism has had very real material consequences for any Jew who has resisted its hegemony over Jewish life and attempts to hold on to forms of Judaism that existed (and were predominant) before the Zionist takeover. Anti-Zionism can thus be a very useful label for Jews, separate from its wider usage.

Beyond Jews, Palestinians, and neighbouring peoples under bombardment, I question how useful the term really is. I suggest that westerners instead describe themselves as pro-Palestine, or supporters of a free Palestine. First, there is much to be said for using positive language in politics; to state what we are for rather than what we are against. Positive language is more effective in building coalitions and for giving clarity as to what we are working towards. Socialist rather than anti-capitalist; supporters of equality and liberation over anti-racist. Second, the term pro-Palestine centres the Palestinian people, who are the primary victims of Zionism; it is better to focus our attention on the oppressed rather than on the oppressors. And third, it puts the focus where it should be – on the territory between the river and the sea, and those exiled from it. Zionism, for most of its history, has been focused on controlling the land of historic Palestine and ensuring that as much as possible of it is dominated by Jews, with as few Palestinian Arabs as possible. Even when it has engaged in regional expansionism it has done so primarily to protect its hegemonic rule in Palestine. And Zionism has never sought to control Europe or North America – only to lobby governments for its Palestine-centred interests. Our focus – and our labels – should be squarely on Palestine.

Switching to positive language

I wholly reject the suggestion that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism”. Given the forms of it laid out above it would be ridiculous to claim otherwise. But we need to acknowledge that some people who have used the language of anti-Zionism had ulterior motives for doing so – they either used Zionist as a codeword for Jews, or opposed Zionism not because it was a form of settler colonialism but because it was Jewish. This is most obviously true of Nazi operatives in the Middle East in the 1930s and 1940s and former Nazis who fled Germany after WW2 and established themselves as propagandists in the Arab world, particularly in Egypt. They brought with them their absolute antisemitism, but now framed it through the prism of Israel, which they saw as the project of Jewish control par excellence. 

Unfortunately, some Arab leaders, such as Nasser, failed to see through this and believed them to be genuine supporters of the pan-Arabist cause. There were a range of fascists who came in their wake – such as the National Front in Britain – who frequently used Zionist as a codeword for Jews, or for Jews who are politically organised. Their usage had nothing to do with Palestine – they thought Jews were attempting to take over Britain, and, since the Race Relations Act of 1965 had criminalised them saying such a thing, they found a new method to do so.

Then there was the anti-Zionism of the Soviet Union after 1967. This wasn’t nakedly antisemitic like the fascist forms, but did tend to play down Zionism’s role in controlling Palestine and play up what it portrayed as Zionism’s role in controlling the world. Thus, campaigns against Zionists in the Eastern Bloc could easily become campaigns against Jews. A particularly notorious example of this occurred in 1968 in Poland, where a case of score-settling against political enemies took the form of a campaign against Zionists, most of whom were simply Jews, who had nothing to do with Israel. Thousands of them left the country under duress. While Hasbaraists have made too much of Soviet anti-Zionism, unfairly conflating it with anti-Zionism as such, it was a real phenomenon.

Today, we have figures such as David Miller who obsessively campaign against what they call Zionism, defined far more as a global phenomenon than a system of structural oppression in historic Palestine. For far-right adjacent figures like Miller, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens, their choice to identify as “anti-Zionist” rather than “pro-Palestine” is telling; they are motivated not by solidarity with the Palestinian people but rather by an obsessive focus on Zionism, which they oppose because they see it as a nefarious movement seeking to control Western governments, and, in the final analysis, because they see it as Jewish. Another tell is that such figures tend to focus on Zionists rather than Zionism – as if your average Zionist has any meaningful sway over the state of Israel. If they start using words like “goyim”, “ZOG”, or “synagogue of Satan”, and referring to the Talmud as a malevolent force, then you know you are in the presence of far-right antisemitic “anti-Zionism”, whether the authors realise it or not.

I am not for a second suggesting that most anti-Zionists are like Miller and Carlson; rather they are motivated by genuine outrage with Israel’s apartheid and genocide. Nonetheless, some outlets supportive of the Palestinian cause have unfortunately amplified these commentators. Instead, we on the left should be very angry with such far-right figures, who have taken a good and precise concept and created a racist parody of it. I do think though that those in the west who wish to continue using the language of anti-Zionism have an obligation to distinguish their form from the racist, far-right variety, given its growing prominence. They ought to clarify that, by identifying as anti-Zionist, they mean that they support the creation of single secular state in historic Palestine with equal rights for all, rather than opposing an (invented) notion of global Jewish supremacy. Zionists are deeply invested in conflating these two anti-Zionisms; it is in the interests of all who care about Palestinians to distinguish between them. 

Far right anti-Zionism will not bring about a free Palestine; its racism will eventually be turned on Palestinians and Arabs. But given these distortions of the term, and the option of switching to a more precise and positive language, isn’t there a case for switching to the language of pro-Palestine?

Palestine is not only the cause of the Palestinian people, wherever they are; it’s also the name of a country, one that was literally wiped off the map in 1948. Palestine was its primary name for thousands of years, and for around a century it functioned under the minimal control of the Ottomans. With British Mandatory rule, Palestine was formally constituted as a country, and all its inhabitants held Palestinian nationality, whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish. To be pro-Palestine is thus to support the re-establishment of Palestine as an independent state between the river and the sea with equal rights for all. Palestinian is not a narrow ethnic category; it is the inclusive name of a state in which all its inhabitants can flourish under conditions of equality. When we call ourselves pro-Palestine we are saying that Israel’s Jews can once again be Palestinians; that they will be equal citizens of a free Palestine once they exchange privilege for equality. This is a positive and transformative vision for a one-state solution that we need to articulate loudly and clearly. The call is not to move from anti-Zionism to non-Zionism or still less to liberal Zionism, but rather to separate egalitarian anti-Zionism from racist appropriations of the term, and to build a positive case for a free Palestine between the river and the sea.▼