As far as the Middle East is concerned, human rights defenders are today faced with two requirements: to fight against the annihilation of the Palestinians by an Israeli state run by a supremacist and colonial extreme right, and to combat anti-Semitism and all forms of racism, a fundamental battle which they must seize upon. Neither of these two battles can or should be distorted by political stakes or various forms of identity-based reaction. Yet they are being distorted on a daily basis by a deleterious confusion, tragically exploited, between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism on both sides of the Mediterranean.
On the Northern shore, anti-Zionism is seen by most European leaders as a contemporary avatar of anti-Semitism, and they have undertaken to combat it as such. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly called it "the reinvented form of anti-Semitism". Germany's political class - believing it could exonerate itself from its guilt towards the Jews - made the unconditional defense of Israel a "raison d'Etat". In the USA, criticizing Israel is also considered to be a form of anti-Semitism, and is now subject to a panoply of sanctions. Israel's leaders, for their part, have been using this confusion for decades, and even more so since October 7, 2023, to delegitimize any criticism of the appalling war they are waging in Gaza, by describing any condemnation of their policies as anti-Semitic.
Such postures are first and foremost a matter of historical ignorance. For anti-Zionism, which began in the early 20th century, was first and foremost and for a long time driven by liberal European Jewish circles and their most eminent intellectuals, who were concerned about the installation of a Jewish state on a land that was already populated. Before Nazism, many European Jews were also assimilationists, wanting to be full citizens of their respective countries without denying their Jewishness. Another facet of Jewish anti-Zionism at the time was that of the General Union of Jewish Workers of Lithuania, Poland and Russia, the Bund, which called for the recognition of a Jewish cultural nationality in the countries where the majority of the world's Jews lived at the time, before the Nazi Judeocide put an end to the existence of this vast Yiddishland. Finally, Jewish anti-Zionism was reinforced by the importance of the Jewish presence in the international Communist movement up to the end of the Second World War.
In the Arab world, anti-Zionism developed with the expansion of the Jewish homeland into Palestine in the 1930s. It took off with the creation of Israel in 1948 and the ethnic cleansing (the Nakba) that accompanied it. At the time, no one would have thought of labelling any anti-Zionist an anti-Semite. But the development of this state, its treatment of the Palestinians, its disastrous colonial policy and its contempt for all international resolutions have radicalized an anti-Zionism that has reinforced the secular anti-Judaism still rife in the region. The hegemony of Arab nationalist ideologies increased discrimination against Jewish minorities, leading to their emigration between the 1950s and 1970s, which the State of Israel continued to encourage.
Today, there are several types of anti-Zionism: radical anti-Zionism, which denies the existence of Israel as a "Zionist entity"; realist anti-Zionism, which advocates Israel's return to its June 4, 1967 borders and the creation of a fully sovereign Palestinian state alongside it; and anti-Zionism, which advocates a bi-national or unitary state in which all citizens enjoy full equality. These reminders show that anti-Zionism is a political position that challenges Jewish supremacy over former Mandate Palestine, unlike anti-Semitism, which is pure racism and therefore reprehensible.
Unfortunately, our times are ripe for the most dangerous instrumentalizations. On the one hand, Israel's claim to speak for all Jews creates confusion between Jews and Israelis in both North and South, and fuels hostility towards all Jews in many countries, despite the fact that many Jews, particularly on both sides of the Atlantic, publicly refuse to be assimilated with a state whose expansionism they condemn, and take up the cause of defending the rights of Palestinians. Human rights defenders have a duty to work to distinguish between Jews and Israelis, who are all too often confused in public opinion, especially in the Arab world, fuelling hostility towards Jews that has nothing to do with political anti-Zionism.
On the other hand, so-called Christian Zionism is represented by the evangelical movements, which are unconditional defenders of Israeli colonization and its main backers. Yet they are both radical Zionists... and anti-Semites insofar as they derive from their reading of the sacred texts the delusional belief that all Jews must be reunited in the "holy land" and collectively converted to Christianity so that Jesus can return to Earth. Finally, all Western far-right leaders - some of whom, alas, have reached the pinnacle of power - share with the radical Zionists who govern Israel today a hatred of all otherness, a cult of the "purity" of land and blood, and a xenophobic nationalism that feeds their fantasy of homogeneous societies rid of all those they regard as foreigners. It doesn't matter that these extreme right-wing groups stem from an anti-Semitic matrix and maintain links with neo-Nazi movements. Their anti-Semitism coexists without apparent contradiction with the ideological kinship that binds them to their Israeli counterparts. As a result, the world is witnessing the emergence of a neo-fascist extreme right that is, paradoxically, both anti-Semitic and fiercely Zionist. For years, the Israeli right has been strengthening its ties with these sulphurous allies. On the other hand, it condemns anti-Zionist Jews, whose numbers have been growing since the carnage perpetrated by the Israeli army in Gaza. In her eyes, they are dangerous, as they are living proof that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are by no means synonymous.
Indeed, the confusion between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, politically nurtured by identity entrepreneurs of all stripes and Western powers who see Israel as a Western ally and stronghold in the heart of the Middle East, is a calamity for all human rights and freedom fighters. In the name of the fight against anti-Semitism, the states of Europe and North America are waging a veritable witch-hunt against anyone who dares to raise their voice against Israel. According to this logic, the Palestinians' struggle is unambiguously equated with a supposed desire to destroy the Jews, and thus delegitimized and branded as terrorist. In all the countries of the North, freedom of expression on this subject is today in great danger. But south of the Mediterranean, the near-general silence in the face of the sometimes anti-Semitic excesses of anti-Zionism gives grist to the mill of the defenders of Israeli policy, and does a great disservice to the Palestinian cause. It's up to Arab human rights defenders to hold both ends of the chain together: to stand firm in defending Palestinian rights and condemning Israel's genocidal policy against them, and to fight firmly against anti-Semitic excesses in their own countries and among immigrant populations in Europe. The fight against racism knows no exceptions. Nor does the fight for the right of peoples to self-determination.
