Antizionism, new Antisemitism and Islamophobia

Zionism is a late 19th century product born in response to a virulent wave of Christian hatred towards Jews or antisemitism spreading throughout Europe. Jews in Europe were condemned as killers of Christ, treated virtually as a community of untouchables and forced to live in ghettos, the first of which was established in Venice in 1516. It was against this hatred and condemnation that a group of Jewish intellectuals and activists in the 19th century founded the Zionist movement with a mission to achieve a separate state for Jews with the “sovereign right” to control immigration. Theodor Herzl’s journal Der Judenstaat founded in 1896 became the vehicle to spread this demand and in the following two years Zionist congresses were held in Basel, Switzerland to provide international coverage and institutional structure to the rising Jewish aspiration for a homeland. That agitation achieved a remarkable victory in 1917 when the British secretary of state for foreign affairs Arthur James Balfour made that crucial statement known as the Balfour Declaration which said that “His Majesty’s government views with favour the establishment in Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people”. That was finally achieved in 948 when the UN decided to partition the mandated territories of Palestine with connivance of the British and created the state of Israel. With that achievement one may say that antisemitism took the backstage in international affairs.

Israel was created as a Zionist state and to the satisfaction of Zionist leaders like Herzl and Ben Gurion, UN deliberately left undefined the territorial limits of the new state to allow further expansion - the Zionist dream of Eretz or Greater Israel, which would include the West Bank (Judaea and Samaria), the Gaza strip, eastern Sinai, Lebanon, most of Syria and South-eastern Turkey. Israel’s invasion of Gaza in June 2023 with the silent approval of Western powers, and the scale of destruction it unleashed on civilian infrastructure on top of the genocide, all in the name of “mowing the lawn”, is virtually a repetition of what Hiter did to the Jews in Germany.  The so-called ceasefire declared by Donald Trump in 2025 has proved totally meaningless. Israel’s theatre of killing and destruction has extended to southern Lebanon under its military doctrine “Dahiya” meaning the use of disproportionate force targeting civilian infrastructure to cause psychological impact to civilians. Even in Lebanon the destruction and killing continues despite a ceasefire. In Gaza, in south Lebanon and inside Israeli prisons Israel’s crimes against humanity are beyond any historical precedence; and it is against this horror that the antizionist movement was born with its committed support for the liberation and independence of Palestinian Arabs.  The fact that Israel is also an apartheid state and it is that policy which finally led to the rocket attack by Hamas is never published in the Western media. 

To the antizionists therefore Israel’s genocide and destruction in Gaza and the invasion of southern Lebanon are crimes against humanity led by an internationally convicted war criminal with the support of US and Western powers.  The point to note here is that antizionism is not anti-Jewish because even Jews are willing participants and active supporters of pro-Palestine demonstrations. Therefore, to call anti-Zionism as antisemitism is factually and historically incorrect. Why then is this distortion? 

The reason for the rise of new antisemitism should be looked at within the context of a growing far-right political movement throughout the Global North. One of the key elements of the campaign agenda of this politician is its ant-immigration policy and particularly against the immigration of Muslims and spread of Islam. For instance, recently in Australia the leader of One Nation Party, Paulin Hanson, justified her party’s anti-Muslim immigration policy with a remark that “there are no good Muslims”.  Thus, there is growing Islamophobia in the Western world, and it is to exploit this phobia by linking antizionists and pro-Palestine protesters with Muslims and Islam that new antisemitic campaigners are trying to win the sympathy of Western masses towards Israel’s genocide in Gaza and “Dahiya” in south Lebanon.  To the new antisemitic enthusiasts spreading Islamophobia is to win the hearts and minds of Christian Wet.  

There is also another angle from which at least the ruling Trump mafia in Washington is justifying its pro-Israel policy in the Middle East and appealing to members of EU to rally behind Trump’s war against Iran - “a terrorist state” according to Netanyahu. That became clear when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the Munich Security Conference in February this year where he described the current Middle East crisis as a “civilizational struggle” and that US engagement in it is to protect Western civilization. Meanwhile, Rubio’s colleague and Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth provided a Christian religious justification to US involvement. The war against Iran according to him is “God’s Almighty Providence” and he pleaded that Americans should pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”  In short, these two cabinet members presented the Middle East crisis as what Samuel Huntington would call a “clash of civilization”. 

New antisemitism therefore condemns antizionists and accuses pro-Palestinian protestors as agent provocateurs of Muslim terrorism. Their support for Iran is viewed as support for Iran’s terrorist outfits such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthis. Hence, antisemitism’s sympathy for the US-Israel war against Iran and Israel’s crime against humanity. 

Meanwhile, in Israel itself there is growing instability within Netanyahu’s government, and as a result the Knesset has passed a preliminary vote to dissolve itself. If a fresh election is held it is doubtful whether Netanyahu’s Likud Party would be returned to power. Desperate times call for desperate measures and what would new antisemitism do to help Netanyahu only time will tell.