Introduction

Introduction

This glossary is written almost three years after the October 7, 2023 massacres in southern Israel, and the international response that followed. In this period, a recognizable set of terms, phrases, and slogans has spread rapidly across media platforms, colleges, and public spaces. Much of the language appears contemporary, when in fact, it can be followed to specific origins. Most of it has traceable historical precedents with identifiable authors, various channels of transmission, and other recognizable characteristics. Some, so incredibly obvious as to remove deniability–take no more than a few seconds to understand the conditions under which they were created. This history matters because the vocabulary did not arrive as a single dictionary might. It accumulated in layers, each one translating older slanders and tropes into the preferred language of the time.

A large portion of modern-day terminology directed at Israel reflects earlier social and intellectual interests. These include Soviet state publications, Arab nationalist organizations, Islamist ideas, Iranian messaging, the Western left, the Global South, and academic endeavors adopted by Universities. Distribution has occurred through media, conferences, publications, student organizations, and regional broadcasters. Some of them are even traceable to state-sponsored programs like Qatar's Al-Jazeera network, Iran’s Islamic Radio and Television Union, and Hamas-owned Al-Aqsa TV. The vocabulary itself largely predates the current war–in fact, depending on what lines you trace, it can go as far back as 1881.

Interestingly enough, one of the first non-Jewish anti-zionist writings was composed in good faith. In 1899, Yousef al-Khalidi, former mayor of Jerusalem, who—out of worry that violence might develop upon the arrival of the Zionists—wrote to Zadok Kahn, the chief rabbi of France. He stated that because of the “brutal force of circumstances” under the Ottoman Empire, Zionism would have “no hope of realisation” in Palestine. Al-Khalidi refers to Zionism as “natural, beautiful, and just” because, asked ironically, “who can dispute the rights of the Jews to Palestine?” Anti-Zionist in a very limited sense, but not in any other. Modern antizionism developed from sources across overlapping European and Middle Eastern state campaigns, political organizations, and publishing houses.

The first major modern layer was Soviet. If we were to begin anywhere, in terms of sheer number and influence, we would start with the Soviets. In the Russian Empire, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1903) circulated claims of coordinated Jewish global control and conspiracy; later messaging replaced religious wording with secular terminology, while preserving the content. After World War II, Joseph Stalin initially supported the UN Partition Plan and recognized Israel in May 1948. Partly to limit British influence and partly hoping the state–who’s foundation was influenced by leftists like Russian Marxist Ber Borochov and his Labor Zionism, Lenin-admirer David Ben-Gurion and his socialist Mapai party, and Ze’ev Jabotinsky–would side with Eastern Bloc communism. By the early 1950s, Soviet policy reversed.

The Slánský Trial in Czechoslovakia, and the Doctor’s Plot in Moscow merged state anti-Zionist with conspiracies of Zionism being a satellite for the Western world. It brought about accusations of dual loyalty, and in its paranoia, saw Jews as potential saboteurs, traitors, and spies for the enemy–the proverbial "fifth column." Stalin’s Jew-hatred, it seemed, could not be detoured.

Following Israel's victory in the Six-Days War (1967), the Soviet Union severed diplomatic relations and intensified messaging depicting Zionism as racist, expansionist, and aligned with American power. Trofim Kichko's Judaism Without Embellishment (1963), a modernized reworking of The Protocols, indicted Jews in a worldwide banking conspiracy using Nazi-imagery, grounding their supposed “subversive behavior” in Judaic religious beliefs, had already laid the groundwork for this. Yuri Ivanov’s Beware! Zionism (1969), circulated widely in Eastern Bloc distribution networks, similarly presenting Zionism as an all-encompassing sinister force.

Disinformation programs, including the KGB's “Operation SIG” in the 1970s, promoted similar claims internationally. Soviet lobbying contributed to the passage of UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 (1975), which declared Zionism "a form of racism and racial discrimination," before its repeal in 1991. The explosion of antizionism since October 7th has led the British Green Party recently to voting on whether to adopt “Zionism is Racism” as an official position. The past seems to repeat, and there just might be nothing new under the sun.

A second layer developed in the Arab world. During the British Mandate period, organized opposition to Jewish immigration and the UN Partition Plan consolidated into regional movements. Haj Amin al-Husseini–the grand Mufti of Jerusalem–emerged as a central political and religious figure linking Palestinian leadership to broader Arab nationalism.

Arab anti-Zionism was also shaped by a canon of translations, pamphlets, speeches, and political tracts that supplied much of its later language. Among the earliest and most influential was the prior mentioned Protocols, translated into Arabic in the early twentieth century and widely circulated by the 1920s. Imported from Tsarist Russia, the forgery claimed Jews secretly manipulated governments, finance, revolutions, and wars. Its themes proved influential enough that Gamal Abdel Nasser later recommended it as a useful guide to the “Jewish mind,” while later Arab rulers from Anwar Sadat, King Faisal, and Muammar Qaddafi treated it with seriousness. A Russian secret-police fabrication had entered the Arab world’s political minds, and was treated as genuine.

During the interwar years, these conspiratorial motifs fused with older Islamic and Christian anti-Jewish traditions, producing a distinctly Middle Eastern theory of Zionism described as both a local threat and a global force. The Palestinian educator Khalil Sakakini wrote in the 1930s that Britain had fallen “under Jewish sway” and depicted Zionism as a philosophy of betrayal and domination. Rashid Hajj Ibrahim warned in the late 1940s that Jewish ambitions extended far beyond Palestine into Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Hijaz, anticipating later claims of perpetual Zionist expansion. After the Arab defeat in 1948, Muhammad Nimr al-Khatib argued that the Arabs had not lost to local Jews, but to “world Zionism,” which supposedly controlled Truman, Churchill, London, New York, and Washington.

Fayez Sayegh’s Zionist Colonialism in Palestine (1965), issued through the Palestine Liberation Organization’s research program, described Zionism as a European settler-colonial implant. These ideas moved from pamphlets into ministries, classrooms, newspapers, and forums. After Israel's establishment, and particularly after the Six-Day War, multiple Arab governments formally defined Zionism as “colonial aggression.” The Khartoum Resolution of 1967 declared the "three no's": no peace with Israel, no recognition, and no negotiations. The Palestine Liberation Organization's original charter denied Jewish national legitimacy and classified Zionism as colonial and racist.

In Lebanon, the Cairo Agreement authorized Palestinian armed operations from Lebanese areas, contributing to long-term regional armed-struggles. The Lebanon War coincided with the emergence of Hezbollah, whose Open Letter explicitly called for the destruction of Israel. In Syria, President Hafez al-Assad incorporated anti-Zionism into Baʿathist state and military philosophy, including participation in the Yom Kippur War.

A third layer came through revolutionary Iran. Iran's Islamic Revolution, under Ayatollah Khomeini, transformed opposition to Israel into a state principle. Its annual "Quds Day" events are proof of this. Former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei repeatedly described Israel as illegitimate and called for its destruction in official speeches. The Middle East during the 1960s, up to the Iranian Revolution, had almost entirely turned against the nation-state of Israel. Khamenei was recently killed by a joint US-Israeli airstrike that began what we are currently calling the Iran War.

A fourth layer moved through the Western left and the academy. From the late 1960s onward, the Western New Left movement used post-colonial Arab literature as sources for their anti-imperialism and revolutionary culture. Works such as Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), and Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), alongside innumerable others, used categories critical of European empires and applied them to Zionism and Israel. The Durban Conference (2001) marked a major point for boycott language and legal accusations against Israel. The launch of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign in 2005 utilized terms like “apartheid” to condemn Israel.

After October 7, 2023, these streams converged with unusual speed. University encampments and demonstrations across North America and Europe accelerated the public use of slogans like "settler-colonial state," "apartheid," and "globalize the intifada," showing the convergence of Soviet propaganda, Arab nationalism, and post-colonialism, into a widely repeated vocabulary. In this cauldron, a multicultural and global antizionist language had emerged.

Natan Sharansky’s 3D test distinguishes criticism of Israel from antisemitism by asking whether the criticism turns into demonization, applies double standards, or denies Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state. Regarding antizionism, this test matters because the antizionists often shift from what Israel does to whether Jewish sovereignty should exist at all. This work uses his analysis to understand antizionism.

Writer believes neutrality a myth, effort is undertaken to assist others in discovering the meanings of these revived morphologies, which meant leaving behind a certain amount (not all) of iconoclastic vigor in the heart of the author.

This volume does not answer foreign policy disputes: it catalogs language. Its task is to identify what specific terms mean, who promoted them, and how they are used. Words do not merely describe conflicts as a passive instrument might; they assign roles, form their own troops, and have their own wars.

For this reason, when referring to its current manifestation, the book uses the form “antizionism” (or Antizionism) without a hyphen. The hyphenated anti-zionism (or Anti-Zionism) suggests a disagreement with a political theory. It harkens back to pre-state Jewish debates surrounding the viable and possible consequences of forming a nation-state. While modern antizionism shares a name with, say, early forms of Reform Judaism, it is not simply a “political critique” or an “opposition to Zionism.” The unhyphenated form identifies a historical grouping expressed through recurring verbiage, social acceptance, cultural symbols, and coordinated public mobilization. The model follows the scholarly standardization of antisemitism, which likewise names a distinct phenomenon, not a dispute over “Semitism.” Antizionism and Zionism will each have three parts in their entries: 1) before the state of Israel, 2) the state of Israel until the day before October 7, 2023, and 3) its development from the massacres to the present day.

To understand a movement, its vocabulary must be mapped. To map the vocabulary, a glossary is required.