There is a particular form of Zionism that thrives on college campuses, within academic circles, and among liberal movements and opinion pages, known as Liberal Zionism.
It manages to express two contradictory ideas together: a strong commitment to a state whose laws and symbols are designed to prioritize its Jewish character, and a belief in democratic principles of equality for “all.”
That has always been a comforting story for those who avoid confronting the harsh reality of the state of Israel, an apartheid state built through brutal colonial force by eradicating the native people, the Palestinians, from the land.
At the same time, we are told in the U.S. that Israel is our “friend of the Middle East” and the “only democracy” in the region.
Politicians tell us that we can support a two-state solution as a concept, a quick fix, and diplomatic cover without questioning or acknowledging the struggle of the Palestinian national liberation movement against a colonial force that is displacing them while promoting “diplomacy.” It was a convenient fictional story, a way of understanding the situation that allowed people to ignore the realities of the Palestinians and their cry for sovereignty and justice. It was a way to deceive people in the U.S. into thinking that we just need to vote for the right people who believe in a two-state solution that can help Israelis and Palestinians coexist.
But like all fictions, it was vulnerable to the relentless pressure of facts. That pressure has now become an unbearable force, and the fiction of liberal Zionism is shattering for the world to see.
The Roots of Zionism
Throughout the late nineteenth century, modern political Zionism—the movement to create an exclusively Jewish state—began gaining momentum as a response to the antisemitic bigotry that appeared in the United States and Europe. Across Eastern Europe and Russia, Jewish people faced anti-Jewish massacres, pogroms, and hatred. In 1882, a small number of Zionists started arriving in historic Palestine.
The early Zionist settlers who arrived, like the first European settlers in North America, received support from the Indigenous people. Only for Zionists, it was the Palestinian Arab population that assisted them. These settlers consisted of a small group in Palestine who came mainly to escape oppression and poverty during the late nineteenth century. At the same time, more than a million Jewish immigrants were arriving in the United States.
Albert Einstein said, “I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish State.”
Zionism became a more organized movement in the late 1890s, and Theodore Herzl emerged as its leader. Herzl published “The Jewish State” in 1896, which is considered the founding manifesto of the Zionist movement. The first Zionist Congress was held in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland, and the movement considered various sites for their future homeland, such as Uganda, Argentina, and Palestine, the last of which was the land of the biblical kingdoms of Israel and Judah, small states that existed in ancient times.
Using the Bible as a land deed or going back thousands of years of history to determine land ownership, laws, and their rightful ownership is, to say the least, unfeasible and unrealistic. Erich Fromm, a Jewish German writer, once said, “If all nations would suddenly claim territory in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse.”
Albert Einstein said, “I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish State.”
Why can the U.S. provide military, economic, political, and academic support for Zionists to “reclaim” their land in Palestine, but ignore the calls of Indigenous peoples across the Americas? Because it is not about self-determination for Jews but a colonial-imperial one to dominate that region of the world and its natural resources.
The first Zionist Congress's goal was to “create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.” Various delegations visited Palestine, and multiple reports came back with the same results: The land is already inhabited by Palestinians.
This undeniable reality didn’t deter Zionist leaders from pursuing their colonial ambitions. They promoted the racist idea of “A land without people for a people without a land.” For Zionist and most other European leaders, it meant a land without Europeans in it. Sound familiar?
In 1903, Herzl advocated for Uganda as a site for the Zionist project at the Sixth World Zionist Congress. Herzl died in 1904, and in the following year, his proposal was defeated at the Seventh Zionist Congress (1905).
An essential factor in the success of the Zionist project was gaining the support of a mighty colonial power like the U.S. or the United Kingdom. In 1902, Herzl solicited the racist Cecil Rhodes:
“You are being invited to help make history. That cannot frighten you nor will you laugh at it … It doesn’t involve Africa but a piece of Asia Minor, not Englishmen but Jews. But had this been on your path, you would have done it by now … How then do I happen to turn to you? Because it is something colonial.”
Herzl approached several colonial powers with this project and returned with the saying, “Support our project and the resulting state will serve your interests.” This quid pro quo of Herzl’s was crucial for advancing the Zionist effort. The British takeover of most of the Middle East in 1918, along with the Balfour Declaration issued the previous year, set the stage for the Zionist project to take off.
Since Zionism received support from British imperialism and later U.S. imperialism, it has caused widespread destruction of the land and displaced millions. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, there are 5.2 million Palestinian refugees in the world today.
In 1948, during Nakba, former U.S. president Harry Truman said, “The Zionists, particularly those who were against anything that was to be done if they couldn’t have the whole of Palestine and everything handed to them on a silver plate, so they wouldn’t have to do anything. It couldn’t be done. We had to take it in small doses. You can’t move five or six million people out of a country and fill it up with five or six million more and expect both sets of them to be pleased.”
The whole responsibility for the displacement of the Palestinians lies with the United States and the United Kingdom's political and financial support of the Zionist project.
Liberal or Not, Zionism Is A Colonial Project
The rise of Israel’s government, featuring ministers who openly advocate for the expulsion of Palestinians and the annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, is not a distortion or a mistake.
Earlier this month, Israel’s Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, said, “We conquer, cleanse, and stay. On the way, we annihilate everything that remains. We’re breaking Gaza apart, leaving it as a pile of rubble, total unprecedented destruction.”
Back in May, he said Israel would level Gaza as it did with Rafah.
Israeli officials do not hide the fact that they want to completely remove all Palestinians from their homeland for their “Greater Israel” project. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he’s “On a historic and spiritual mission” in his Greater Israel project.
It is the logical endpoint of a project designed from its inception to maintain regional dominance through control of land and resources. The current government of Netanyahu didn’t create the situation; it simply stopped pretending it was working towards a two-state solution or anything that resembles a peace plan with the Palestinians to coexist. It discarded the polite language that Liberal Zionism relied upon to mask the system’s inherent inequalities.
On August 20th, Israel announced its plan to seize Gaza City and called up 60,000 reservists, despite mediation efforts by Egypt and Qatar for a ceasefire, according to Al Jazeera English. Palestinians have long claimed that Israel wanted to take all of Gaza, as they did with all of historic Palestine; now those decades-old claims are ringing true today.
The fundamental mistake of Liberal Zionism is its belief that the occupation is a temporary flaw in an otherwise healthy democracy. This is a critical misunderstanding and misdiagnosis. Although some prominent liberal Zionists claim they don’t support Netanyahu’s government like Bernie Sanders, who in 2019 said, “I am 100 percent pro-Israel and that it is every right to exist, and to exist in peace and security and not be subjected to terrorist attacks. But the United States needs to deal with not just Israel, but with the Palestinian people as well.” That still means they fully support and endorse the Zionist endgame of an ethno-state.
Therefore, liberal Zionists support the occupation of Palestine. The occupation isn’t a minor issue; it’s a key part of Israel’s system. They control infrastructure, checkpoints, permits, the legal system, water resources, food, settlements, segregated roads, and government operations—it’s not an accidental policy. Even if Netanyahu were to be removed tomorrow, the apartheid state would still stand.
“In theory and in practice, then, Zionism is a regarded repetition of European imperialism,” said Edward Wadie Said, Palestinian American Academic.
The occupation is the foundation of how Palestinians live every day. It is the tool Zionism uses to control the Palestinian population, which the state governs but refuses to give equal rights to as the original inhabitants. It is an apartheid state.
“Free Palestine” Is Not Antisemitic
Over the past twenty months, mounting evidence has revealed the true nature of Zionism to the world across all social media platforms. Anti-Zionism is not the same as antisemitism, nor is it about abandoning Jewish people or their history of persecution; it is about applying the lessons of that history correctly and preventing a further genocide.
It involves rejecting the politics of ethnic supremacy, or an ethnostate, and instead embracing a future based on equality and justice for everyone.
The moment of reckoning has arrived, and we must wake up and face the truth before us. What kind of world are we living in where we allow millions of people to starve to death because of where they are from?
We need to stand on the side of justice and stop the genocide of the Palestinian people.
