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The Bitter Truth About Anti-Zionism
Journalist Michelle Goldberg. Photo: www.michellegoldberg.net.
JNS.org – Collisions are often unintentional. Bumping into someone as you walk down a busy thoroughfare with one eye on your cell phone or scraping a parked car as you reverse along a narrow street are experiences most of us have had at one time or another. And generally speaking, because these events are accidents, reasonable people can reach an understanding in their aftermath.
So my concern when I saw the headline above a March 11 opinion piece in The New York Times by columnist Michelle Goldberg—“Where Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism Collide”—was that readers would interpret the word “collide” here as an indicating an unintentional accident, thereby reinforcing the widely held view that while antisemitism is an unacceptable, intolerable phenomenon, anti-Zionism is a legitimate, morally founded viewpoint that deserves to be engaged.
Hatred of Zionism isn’t a self-contained phenomenon that just happens to collide on occasion with hatred of Jews: That would amount to an unfortunate accident. But anti-Zionism and antisemitism are intimately related. Like non-identical twins, they have a handful of unique features, but fundamentally, they are the same. Hatred of Zionism is a natural outgrowth of the hatred of Jews. Of course, not all of those who define themselves as anti-Zionists see it that way, but that’s because they lack the historical and intellectual grounding to make that determination. When anti-Zionism collides with antisemitism, it’s anything but an accident.
Goldberg, it should be said, doesn’t belong to that crowd. While there was much to disagree with in her piece, I respected her frankness in admitting that as a secular Jew enjoying “the great privilege of an American passport,” she doesn’t feel much of a personal connection to the State of Israel. What she does understand is that the core fixations of anti-Zionism—and particularly its goal of dismantling the Jewish state and replacing it with an Arab one “from the river to the sea”—sound discordantly antisemitic in the ears of the vast majority of Jews in America and around the world.
“I can’t fault Jews who see, in the mounting demonization of Zionism, the replay of an old and terrifying story,” she wrote. “After all, anti-Zionism isn’t always antisemitism, but sometimes it is. And right now, some opponents of Israel seem to be trying to prove that the mainstream Jewish community is right to conflate them.”
This statement is basically true, but it doesn’t reveal the deeper, underlying truth, which is why Goldberg’s piece is fundamentally unsatisfying.
I’ve written in past columns about what I regard as the critical difference between “anti-Zionism” with a hyphen and “antizionism” without one. In historical terms, “anti-Zionism” was a phenomenon of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that commanded the loyalty of many Jews, who mistakenly if honestly believed that a separate Jewish state was not the answer to centuries of Jewish persecution. Not all the early generations of anti-Zionists were free of antisemitism—the Bolshevik ban on Zionist organizations and the study of Hebrew in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution was clearly antisemitic, for example—but there was a greater willingness to critique Zionism on the basis of its claim to be the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, and less reliance on the conspiracy theories and crude memes that pass for critique on social media today.
“Antizionism” without the hyphen marks a new and far more dangerous phase, however. Essentially, it involves tearing up a complex reality in favor of an ideologically blinkered, implacably hostile caricature of what Zionism actually is.
Today’s “antizionists” have made their hatred of Israel’s sovereign existence the main focus of their antisemitism, which then uncomplicatedly imports older themes—Jews as disloyal to the countries where they are citizens, Jews as engaged in well-funded conspiracy to mask the malign effects of their actions—into its discourse. This explains, as Goldberg seems to realize, how a Lyft driver in San Francisco is moved to punch a passenger in the face upon realizing that he is Jew from Israel, or how a literary magazine in Brooklyn can abruptly remove an essay on Israel and cancel its Jewish author solely because of the pressure of a fanatical mob.
The other overarching issue that troubles Goldberg is the unresolved Palestinian question. Again correctly, she understands that a binational state is a pipe dream, arguing that if the Walloon and Flemish nationalities in Belgium can’t get along, how could Israelis and Palestinians possibly do so? Yet what she seems unable to perceive is that the Palestinian vision of what such a state would look like for its Jewish citizens was provided on Oct. 7 last year, when Hamas terrorists executed a bestial pogrom against defenseless Israelis and opinion polls in its immediate wake indicated overwhelming support for the atrocities among ordinary Palestinians. Indeed, it made a mockery of the notion of a binational state. From the river to the sea, a “free” Palestine will be a place where Jews are brutally subjugated as a prelude to their eventual expulsion or even elimination. The stream of statements from Palestinian politicians—not just Hamas, but also Fatah, and notably Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas—describing Israel as a colonial interloper, the Holocaust as a fabrication and the Oct. 7 pogrom as an act of noble resistance are all the evidence we need here.
Acknowledging this ugly reality doesn’t, it is true, automatically suggest how the Palestinian question can be resolved humanely. And for most Israelis, frankly, that is not a priority right now, as they understandably are more concerned with preventing another Oct. 7 from occurring. If that outcome could be secured through a political solution, then few would object. But such a solution is only possible if two conditions are satisfied: Firstly, that the Palestinians recognize Israelis as human beings with a right to self-determination in their historic homeland; and secondly, that any solution focuses on the physical separation of the two peoples, rather than attempts to bring them closer together.
For American liberals and progressives, among them many Jews, such a viewpoint is distasteful and jarring, to say the least. For Israelis, though, this is literally a matter of survival. Stop trying to kill us, let us live in peace, they are saying, and our guns will fall silent, and we’ll make a deal. That is the message the Palestinians refuse to hear, in large part because their political culture is saturated with antisemitism. For as long as the outside world mollifies them in this regard, nothing will change for the better.
The post The Bitter Truth About Anti-Zionism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire
Explosions send smoke into the air in Gaza, as seen from the Israeli side of the border, July 17, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
The spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said on Friday that while the Palestinian terrorist group favors reaching an interim truce in the Gaza war, if such an agreement is not reached in current negotiations it could revert to insisting on a full package deal to end the conflict.
Hamas has previously offered to release all the hostages held in Gaza and conclude a permanent ceasefire agreement, and Israel has refused, Abu Ubaida added in a televised speech.
Arab mediators Qatar and Egypt, backed by the United States, have hosted more than 10 days of talks on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day truce in the war.
Israeli officials were not immediately available for comment on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on a call he had with Pope Leo on Friday that Israel‘s efforts to secure a hostage release deal and 60-day ceasefire “have so far not been reciprocated by Hamas.”
As part of the potential deal, 10 hostages held in Gaza would be returned along with the bodies of 18 others, spread out over 60 days. In exchange, Israel would release a number of detained Palestinians.
“If the enemy remains obstinate and evades this round as it has done every time before, we cannot guarantee a return to partial deals or the proposal of the 10 captives,” said Abu Ubaida.
Disputes remain over maps of Israeli army withdrawals, aid delivery mechanisms into Gaza, and guarantees that any eventual truce would lead to ending the war, said two Hamas officials who spoke to Reuters on Friday.
The officials said the talks have not reached a breakthrough on the issues under discussion.
Hamas says any agreement must lead to ending the war, while Netanyahu says the war will only end once Hamas is disarmed and its leaders expelled from Gaza.
Almost 1,650 Israelis and foreign nationals have been killed as a result of the conflict, including 1,200 killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Over 250 hostages were kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.
Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
The post Hamas Says No Interim Hostage Deal Possible Without Work Toward Permanent Ceasefire first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel
People hold images of the victims of the 1994 bombing attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community center, marking the 30th anniversary of the attack, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Irina Dambrauskas
Iran on Friday marked the 31st anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires by slamming Argentina for what it called “baseless” accusations over Tehran’s alleged role in the terrorist attack and accusing Israel of politicizing the atrocity to influence the investigation and judicial process.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the anniversary of Argentina’s deadliest terrorist attack, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.
“While completely rejecting the accusations against Iranian citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns attempts by certain Argentine factions to pressure the judiciary into issuing baseless charges and politically motivated rulings,” the statement read.
“Reaffirming that the charges against its citizens are unfounded, the Islamic Republic of Iran insists on restoring their reputation and calls for an end to this staged legal proceeding,” it continued.
Last month, a federal judge in Argentina ordered the trial in absentia of 10 Iranian and Lebanese nationals suspected of orchestrating the attack in Buenos Aires.
The ten suspects set to stand trial include former Iranian and Lebanese ministers and diplomats, all of whom are subject to international arrest warrants issued by Argentina for their alleged roles in the terrorist attack.
In its statement on Friday, Iran also accused Israel of influencing the investigation to advance a political campaign against the Islamist regime in Tehran, claiming the case has been used to serve Israeli interests and hinder efforts to uncover the truth.
“From the outset, elements and entities linked to the Zionist regime [Israel] exploited this suspicious explosion, pushing the investigation down a false and misleading path, among whose consequences was to disrupt the long‑standing relations between the people of Iran and Argentina,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said.
“Clear, undeniable evidence now shows the Zionist regime and its affiliates exerting influence on the Argentine judiciary to frame Iranian nationals,” the statement continued.
In April, lead prosecutor Sebastián Basso — who took over the case after the 2015 murder of his predecessor, Alberto Nisman — requested that federal Judge Daniel Rafecas issue national and international arrest warrants for Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei over his alleged involvement in the attack.
Since 2006, Argentine authorities have sought the arrest of eight Iranians — including former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2017 — yet more than three decades after the deadly bombing, all suspects remain still at large.
In a post on X, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), the country’s Jewish umbrella organization, released a statement commemorating the 31st anniversary of the bombing.
“It was a brutal attack on Argentina, its democracy, and its rule of law,” the group said. “At DAIA, we continue to demand truth and justice — because impunity is painful, and memory is a commitment to both the present and the future.”
31 años del atentado a la AMIA – DAIA. 31 años sin justicia.
El 18 de julio de 1994, un atentado terrorista dejó 85 personas muertas y más de 300 heridas. Fue un ataque brutal contra la Argentina, su democracia y su Estado de derecho.
Desde la DAIA, seguimos exigiendo verdad y… pic.twitter.com/kV2ReGNTIk
— DAIA (@DAIAArgentina) July 18, 2025
Despite Argentina’s longstanding belief that Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terrorist group carried out the devastating attack at Iran’s request, the 1994 bombing has never been claimed or officially solved.
Meanwhile, Tehran has consistently denied any involvement and refused to arrest or extradite any suspects.
To this day, the decades-long investigation into the terrorist attack has been plagued by allegations of witness tampering, evidence manipulation, cover-ups, and annulled trials.
In 2006, former prosecutor Nisman formally charged Iran for orchestrating the attack and Hezbollah for carrying it out.
Nine years later, he accused former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner — currently under house arrest on corruption charges — of attempting to cover up the crime and block efforts to extradite the suspects behind the AMIA atrocity in return for Iranian oil.
Nisman was killed later that year, and to this day, both his case and murder remain unresolved and under ongoing investigation.
The alleged cover-up was reportedly formalized through the memorandum of understanding signed in 2013 between Kirchner’s government and Iranian authorities, with the stated goal of cooperating to investigate the AMIA bombing.
The post Iran Marks 31st Anniversary of AMIA Bombing by Slamming Argentina’s ‘Baseless’ Accusations, Blaming Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns
Murad Adailah, the head of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, attends an interview with Reuters in Amman, Jordan, Sept. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jehad Shelbak
The Muslim Brotherhood, one of the Arab world’s oldest and most influential Islamist movements, has been implicated in a wide-ranging network of illegal financial activities in Jordan and abroad, according to a new investigative report.
Investigations conducted by Jordanian authorities — along with evidence gathered from seized materials — revealed that the Muslim Brotherhood raised tens of millions of Jordanian dinars through various illegal activities, the Jordan news agency (Petra) reported this week.
With operations intensifying over the past eight years, the report showed that the group’s complex financial network was funded through various sources, including illegal donations, profits from investments in Jordan and abroad, and monthly fees paid by members inside and outside the country.
The report also indicated that the Muslim Brotherhood has taken advantage of the war in Gaza to raise donations illegally.
Out of all donations meant for Gaza, the group provided no information on where the funds came from, how much was collected, or how they were distributed, and failed to work with any international or relief organizations to manage the transfers properly.
Rather, the investigations revealed that the Islamist network used illicit financial mechanisms to transfer funds abroad.
According to Jordanian authorities, the group gathered more than JD 30 million (around $42 million) over recent years.
With funds transferred to several Arab, regional, and foreign countries, part of the money was allegedly used to finance domestic political campaigns in 2024, as well as illegal activities and cells.
In April, Jordan outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s most vocal opposition group, and confiscated its assets after members of the Islamist movement were found to be linked to a sabotage plot.
The movement’s political arm in Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, became the largest political grouping in parliament after elections last September, although most seats are still held by supporters of the government.
Opponents of the group, which is banned in most Arab countries, label it a terrorist organization. However, the movement claims it renounced violence decades ago and now promotes its Islamist agenda through peaceful means.
The post Jordan Reveals Muslim Brotherhood Operating Vast Illegal Funding Network Tied to Gaza Donations, Political Campaigns first appeared on Algemeiner.com.