Some Lessons about Zionism and Anti-Zionism from an Ongoing Genocide

Ostensible supporters of Palestine who dissembled or backed down after October 7 in deference to the Zionist entity deserve to suffer endless shame.  Not because they made an error of judgment; not because they got suckered by a propaganda campaign; not because they ignored more skeptical colleagues; not even because in their haste to disassociate from Palestinian resistance they validated the rationale for genocide.  They should be shamed for knowing so little about Zionism.  

Those of us who actually know Zionism—i.e., its victims, not its advocates or supposed dissidents—recognized immediately that any wishy-washiness in the days after October 7 would only fuel Israeli bloodlust.  We’ve been forced to understand through decades of violence and trauma that Israeli bloodlust has a purpose:  extirpation of the Palestinian people.  Whatever Palestinians do is immaterial to the execution of that purpose.  Israel’s existence and Palestinian nonexistence are coterminous. 

I don’t presume to lead a debate on the utility of Palestinian violence.  It’s enough at this moment to say that discussion of Palestinian violence, however it might be defined, mainly serves to elide a deeper reckoning with the nature of Zionism.  Palestinian violence is an important matter, but one that should never serve as its own point of departure. 

Like many of you, I’ve spent the past nine months trying to make sense of Israel’s barbarity.  Maybe “making sense of” isn’t the right phrase.  On one hand, the barbarity is devastatingly forthright:  no matter how much you dress it up in underdog narratives and pretentions of victimhood and fantasies of salvation, Zionism is a degenerate ideology.  From its messianic to its cultural variations, Zionism traffics in myth and exclusion.  The current genocide is simply its logical endpoint.  Zionism couldn’t have developed any other way, at least not while Palestinians are still around. 

On the other hand, nine months of horrific imagery (with no relief in sight) present new questions about what it means to be anti-Zionist.  Too many activists and public intellectuals conceptualize Palestinians as captive to an atavistic culture of vengeance, as if Palestinians developed outside of history (or are a mythical people) rather than as actors in a perfectly legible continuum of human behavior across space and time (destruction of foreign settlements, slave revolts, guerilla warfare, urban uprisings, and so forth).  Generally speaking, Palestinians have behaved as all communities facing extinction behave.  Their so-called violence, subject to endless rumination by celebrity academics, isn’t a conundrum to lament; it is an opportunity to more thoroughly explore the mutual depravities of Zionism and capitalism. 

What, then, have we learned about anti-Zionism in the Anglosphere since October 7? 

To begin with, diasporic Palestinians had clearly underestimated Zionism’s strength as a social and discursive phenomenon.  I don’t mean this as a criticism of a community with which I identify.  We were fully aware of the breadth and depth of Zionism in Western Europe and North America, but many of us were probably surprised to see so many self-identified anti-Zionists repeating Israeli atrocity propaganda (although for others it was no surprise at all).  Many of the same crowd also hastened to condemn Palestinian resistance under the guise of moral concern.  (Careerism was the more likely motive.) 

It’s hard to view these deeds as innocent.  Real anti-Zionists know never to believe Zionist officials or their accomplices in corporate media.  Real anti-Zionists put no faith in U.S. politicians.  Real anti-Zionists make no concession to bourgeois common sense.  Real anti-Zionists refuse on principle to disavow militancy in front of Western audiences. 

In turn, a distinct and likely permanent rupture has opened between the radical and accommodationist wings of the Palestine solidarity movement.  The radicals aren’t entertaining soft-Zionist bullshit anymore.  You’re either all-in against the genocide—i.e., serious about Palestine’s liberation—or you get put into the same category as the reactionaries you claim to deplore.  No need to hash out sophisticated criteria to distinguish the real ones from the frauds.  It takes less than a minute to know the difference. 

I observed months ago that lots of public figures who have traded on Palestine as a branding device weren’t prepared to deal with October 7 or its aftermath.  Mostly, they didn’t know how to prioritize the native’s well-being because of unacknowledged affinity for the settler.  The lack of preparation was troublesome in the moment, but now, after untold destruction and suffering, it feels more like an obscenity.  Shifting with the tide of public opinion doesn’t make things right. 

The rupture is a welcome development.  The Palestine solidarity movement should remain hardened against the idea that liberal Zionism has redeeming features.  Recent history shows that if anything liberal Zionism—in the form of electoralism, movement building among social democrats, overemphasis on Israeli anguish, and appeals to dialogue—is doubly onerous because it requires the anti-Zionist to expend energy on supposedly friendly in addition to openly hostile spaces.  (Kudos for working so hard, but you won’t get DSA to stop its liberal Zionist shenanigans because liberal Zionism is baked into the organization.)  

Genocide isn’t simply a physical event.  It also disrupts political norms and loyalties.  As with its predecessors, the Zionist genocide has made it difficult for people to hide their most deeply-felt sentiments.  For institutions, those sentiments will inevitably align with power.  And individuals are no longer able to camouflage depravity with humane-sounding political labels.  Campuses and corporate media are wired for genocide.  Anybody disposed to social climbing will adjust their discourse accordingly. 

Because it affects the marketplace of punditry, political violence tends to flush out these deeply-felt sentiments, ensuring that the marketplace will always be hostile to Palestinians.  Anyone who pays attention to professional yappers will know the telltale signs:  condemning Hamas (or Palestinian “violence”); reciting Israeli government talking points; berating Palestinians on behalf of Democratic politicians; humoring cynical accusations of “antisemitism”; earning a platform in the first place.  Sometimes it can be even simpler, as when supposed dissidents refuse to engage with the Palestinian intellectual tradition.  Distancing oneself from Palestinians, especially when they become active rather than passive victims, is a good way to maintain standing with tastemakers in the pundit economy.  

So what have we learned about Zionism since October 7? 

Not much, really.  Zionism has merely confirmed what we already knew it to be.  But these past nine months of continuous savagery have created an impassable frontier between the people who are serious about ending genocide and those who just can’t drop the idea of “Israel.”