OP-ED: The moral bankruptcy of anti-Zionist Jews

Dotan Rousso writes, "There is something uniquely painful about the spectacle of Jews marching under banners that denounce Zionism."

Source: Wikimedia Commons

By Dotan Rousso

There is something uniquely painful about the spectacle of Jews marching under banners that denounce Zionism. It is not their criticism of Israeli policy that wounds, but their rejection of Israel’s very right to exist. They claim to act in the name of moral universalism — as if turning against one’s own people were a higher form of virtue. Yet history and logic reveal how hollow that posture is.

Anti-Zionist Jews often present themselves as the moral conscience of the Jewish people, free from the burden of national identity. Yet this “freedom” is nothing more than a show of moral pride. By rejecting Jewish self-determination, they distance themselves from the stigma of collective guilt. Their moral stance depends on the existence of Israel — the very state they condemn — to give meaning to their rejection.

Philosophically, this self-negation exposes a contradiction at the heart of their worldview. They defend the right of every people to govern itself — except the Jews. Their “universalism” collapses into selective empathy, applied to all but their own. It is a morality of empty ideas, detached from historical reality. The same Jews who cite “never again” as a moral lesson forget that it was the absence of sovereignty that made “again” possible in the first place.

What passes for virtue is, in truth, moral cowardice. To oppose Zionism today is not an act of courage; it is an act of conformity. In elite academic and activist circles, anti-Zionism is fashionable. It costs nothing. It earns applause. For Jews who crave acceptance in progressive spaces, renouncing Israel becomes a ticket to belonging — an identity cleansed of its historical burden. But belonging purchased through betrayal is not virtue; it is moral surrender.

This moral inversion is not confined to distant ivory towers. In Canada, organizations such as Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) Canada have publicly declared themselves anti-Zionist, critiquing Zionism as the political ideology that underlies Israel’s settler-colonial policies. While IJV frames its stance in the language of human rights and justice, it illustrates how easily moral rhetoric can become a vehicle for rejecting Jewish self-determination under the guise of universal compassion.

For some, that rejection went even further. A minority of anti-Zionists moved beyond words and began attending and amplifying demonstrations that openly cheered or otherwise legitimized the perpetrators of October 7 — not merely in the late stages of the war but soon after the massacre itself. They appeared alongside movements that praise Hamas, whose original charter includes a hadith calling on Muslims to kill Jews as a religious duty. To align oneself with forces that celebrate or excuse such actors is not principled dissent; it is a crossing of a moral line.

There is also an unspoken irony. The very safety that allows these Jews to denounce Israel exists because Israel exists. In every generation, Jews have needed a refuge from those who sought their destruction — and when the next wave comes, Israel will again stand. The anti-Zionist may live in London, New York, or Montreal, but if antisemitism makes those places unsafe, it will not be the Palestinian Authority or any Western protest movement that opens its gates — it will be Israel, the same nation they defame, that shelters them.

To reject the ideology of anti-Zionist Jews is not to hate them personally but to condemn the moral blindness they embody — the denial of reciprocity that every ethical system demands. You cannot demand empathy for others while refusing it to your own.

History will judge Israel by its deeds, as it should. But it will also judge those who, in an age of rising antisemitism, chose applause over solidarity and purity over truth. The lesson of Jewish history is not that nationalism corrupts morality, but that without sovereignty, morality offers no shield against hatred.

For comments: dotanrousso@yahoo.com