Claims that Zionism is aligned with antisemitism or white supremacy distort history, endanger Jews, and revive some of the oldest libels ever used against the Jewish people.
By: Ron East | The J.ca | Mar 9, 2026
Israeli flag at Masada Public Domain.
In an era of rising antisemitism and ideological extremism, it is no small matter when organizations claiming to speak in the name of justice recycle accusations that place Jews and Jewish self-determination at the center of global evil. Recent claims by Jewish Voices for Peace that Zionism is aligned with white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and fascism are not only false but also echo classic antisemitic tropes that have endangered Jews for centuries.
Zionism is not a conspiracy, a racial doctrine, or a supremacist ideology. It is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. It holds that Jews, like any other people, have the right to self- determination in their ancestral homeland. That homeland includes Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the broader Land of Israel, where Jewish history, culture, and identity formed over millennia.
To claim that Zionism requires a Jewish-only state is to misrepresent both history and reality. Israel is a nation-state of the Jewish people, but it is also home to millions of non-Jewish citizens who vote, hold office, sit on courts, and participate in public life. No serious observer of Israel’s political system can credibly argue that it resembles the racial hierarchies of white supremacist movements in the United States or Europe.
The charge that Zionists pursue genocide or ethnic cleansing is among the most pernicious accusations made against Jews today. It is a modern blood libel. Israel’s population has grown alongside a growing Palestinian population, with Arab citizens of Israel numbering more than two million. Palestinian population figures in Judea and Samaria and Gaza have increased dramatically over the past decades. These are demographic facts, not opinions.
Equally dangerous is the assertion that Zionists manipulate antisemitism to advance racism. This claim inverts reality. Antisemitism is not a rhetorical tool invented by Jews. It is a documented and persistent form of hatred with lethal consequences, from medieval expulsions to pogroms to the Holocaust, and now to synagogue attacks and street violence across the West.
Zionists do not need to invent antisemitism. Jews experience it directly when Jewish schools require armed guards, when Jewish students are harassed for supporting Israel, when Jewish businesses are vandalized, and when mobs chant for violence against Jews under the banner of anti Zionism. These are not abstractions. They are lived realities.
Jewish Voices for Peace further claims that so-called antisemitic Zionists dominate right-wing movements and pose the greatest threat to Jews. This framing obscures a critical truth. Jews do not define their safety by the motives of non Jews who support Israel for their own reasons. Zionism does not require ideological purity tests from allies. It requires a Jewish agency.
The greatest threat to Jews today is not Jewish self-determination. It is the normalization of antizionism that treats Jewish nationalism as uniquely illegitimate while excusing or romanticizing violence against Israelis. It is the erasure of Jewish history from Jerusalem. It is the denial that Jews are an indigenous people of the Middle East.
There is nothing progressive about telling Jews they must abandon Zionism to be morally acceptable. The overwhelming majority of Jews worldwide identify with Israel and with Zionism in some form. To declare that Zionism is inherently racist is to declare that most Jews are morally suspect by definition. That is antisemitism, regardless of the language used to dress it up.
The alliance that should concern anyone committed to justice is not between Zionists and imaginary fascists. It is between radical ideologies that excuse or justify violence against Jews and movements that claim Jews are the central obstacle to liberation everywhere else. History teaches where that road leads.
Zionism is not a threat to democracy or pluralism. It is a response to Jewish vulnerability and Jewish resilience. It does not deny Palestinian rights. It insists that Jewish rights exist too.
The choice facing those who claim to oppose hatred is simple. Reject the recycled libels that portray Jews as manipulators, supremacists, or architects of genocide. Or accept that in attacking Zionism as uniquely evil, they are continuing an old tradition with very modern consequences.
Justice does not begin by demanding that Jews give up their right to exist as a people.
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