It is remarkable the extent to which anti-Zionism – which I would regard as a form of anti-Semitism – has become central to the outlook of the new class. The main social bases for anti-Zionism in the West are the elite universities, media and NGOs. Scholar-activists in such colleges play a key role in propagating anti-Zionist ideas to their students. And the graduates of such institutions often end up in prominent positions in the media and NGOs.
To be clear when I say anti-Zionism I am not referring to critics of Israel. People should be free to criticise Israel’s government and policies. I mean those who demonise the Jewish state as the embodiment of the evils of western civilisation and modernity. Those who are obsessed with Israel as supposedly guilty of apartheid, colonialism, genocide and much more. Opposing Israel is seen as a litmus test, as the central defining feature of any progressive person. “We are all Palestinians” as the activist chant goes.
It should also be noted that the hostility to Israel is in line with the more general technocratic aversion to the nation-state. The new class sees itself as cosmopolitan and globalist. In contrast, Israel is loathed as an expression of national sovereignty.
The conclusion that naturally follows from these flawed premises is that Israel has no right to exist. It should destroyed. A verdict that is not made on any other states.
It is widely recognised there is also an Islamist element to contemporary anti-Zionism. And that is an important topic. But my focus here is the relatively secular anti-Zionism of the “left”.
In this session I want to do three things:
· Look at the nature of the shift. What is being argued and who is promoting the arguments?
· Explain how identity politics informs it.
· Show how in turn a mood of social pessimism among the “left” has in turn driven this outlook.
The nature of the shift
After the 7 October pogrom
The nature of anti-Israel language has changed substantially since 7 October 2023. The conflict is no longer generally cast as a territorial dispute but rather one between good and evil. Israel is viewed as a demonic force.
Before the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel it was common for anti-Israel activists to talk about opposing “the occupation”. By this they meant Israel’s direct control of the West Bank (AKA Judea and Samaria) and its indirect control of the Gaza strip. The implication was that a two-state solution to the conflict – one Israeli and one Palestinian – was the best option.
Since then talk of “the occupation” has diminished. Instead it has become common for activists to chant “from the river to the sea” and “free Palestine”. The implicit message is that Israel should not exist at all.
Such calls run in parallel with routine denunciations of Israel as personifying apartheid, colonialism and genocide. There are also the frequent comparisons with Nazi Germany. All of these are designed to portray the Jewish state as exemplifying the worst evils of western civilisation.
Student activists may feel comfortable using more intemperate language but their older peers are making similar points. Academic-activists, journalists and NGO figures are also calling Israel’s right to exist into question. Some arguing that the whole notion of a state’s right to exist is nonsense (Beinart 2025). Others are talking in apparently enlightened universalistic terms of one state (Pappe 2018) or a binational state (Boehm 2021). But what is being proposed is the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
Naturally there are debates to be had about what is meant by a Jewish state and how it can be squared with democracy. But then it is also important to discuss what the end of Israel would mean in reality rather than in idealised terms. The seemingly enlightened universalistic case for Israel’s end come in a world where it is facing avowedly anti-Semitic Islamist movements intent on its destruction. Whatever the stated intentions of self-proclaimed western universalists be the actual end of Israel would likely be exceedingly bloody in practice. At least under current circumstances or anything remotely resembling them.
2001 and after
Although the 7 October pogrom acerated these trends they were already becoming apparent at the turn of the millennium. Most infamously – at least for those who follow such things – at the 2001 Durban conference on anti-racism (Hirsh & Miller 2021). There Israel and its supporters were systematically lambasted by supposed anti-racists. The conference included a motion that equated Zionism with racism.
Also in 2001 the calls for academic boycotts of Israel started at western universities (Erakat 2010). Not, it should be noted, at the behest of Palestinian “civil society”. That came a few years later. Western academics took the lead in arguing that higher education institutions in the West should boycott those of Israel.
This was the start of a move to try to purge Israeli influence in the world through cultural boycotts and economic measures such as disinvestment and sanctions. This, it should be noted, runs parallel to the notion that Israel is a force for evil. From that flawed premise it makes sense to argue that the world should be purged of Israeli influence.
It is the technocratic elite who are shifting
It should also be noted that anti-Zionist sentiment is particularly prevalent particular types of elite institutions. For example, a study of the anti-Israel protests on American campuses in 2024 showed that they were large concentrated at elite universities (Kelchen & Novicoff 2024).
However, it would be wrong to see this as simply a student phenomenon. On the contrary, the students were reacting not so much against their teachers but implementing what they had been taught. As Christopher Rufo, a conservative commentator, has pointed out this works on several levels (Rufo 2024):
· Ideology. The anti-Israel protests at elite universities by approaches such as critical race theory and post-colonial theory. In broad terms this divides the world into oppressor groups (white) and oppressed groups (people of colour). Israel is firmly cast as a colonial-settler state. Israel is not seen as the only bad actor, far from it, but it is seen as exemplifying all that is malign about western civilisation. It is also an assertive nation state in a world which, for the technocratic elites, is supposed to be globalist.
· Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). A key assumption is that privilege cannot be eliminated. On the contrary, resources can be taken from those deemed oppressors to the oppressed. This is the meaning of “equity” rather than equality. The world is seen as defined by a zero-sum game in which those deemed privileged, including Jews, must be penalised.
· Activism encouraged. Student activism is all too often not something done against the authorities but encouraged by them. For example, Columbia university, arguably at the epicentre of this movement, engages extensively with NGOs and promoted human rights studies as an academic discipline. Many of its students are interested in the non-profit and social justice sector judging by the university’s career education site (Columbia).
Identity politics: the contemporary elite outlook
The demonisation of Israel chimes with identity politics:
*The notion that the world is sharply divided into immutable identity groups. These include (white) oppressors and the oppressed (including people of colour and Muslims). From this premise it is easy to present Jews and Israel as among the worst forces on the wrong side of history. Jews can be cast as “hyper-white” beneficiaries of privilege (Paresky 2021) Israel can be seen as the embodiment of white supremacy in the global south.
*This is in sharp contrast to, for example, the American civil rights movement of the 1960s. Back when the motivating force was the idea it was possible to transcend such differences. As Martin Luther King, the great black American civil rights leader, argued in his famous quote, people should be judged “not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character” (King 1963). He certainly could not be accused of being unaware of huge social discrepancies between, for example, black and white Americans. But his belief and aspiration was that they should be overcome. It is notable that in the same speech he also talked about the distinction between Jew and gentile being transcended.
*Israel – along with America, Australia, Brazil, Canada and others – can be portrayed as settler colonial states. In this iteration of settler colonialism, unlike earlier versions (eg Sayegh 2012, Rodinson 1973) settler colonialism is not an historical anomaly but a living reality. Authors such as Patrick Wolfe have argued that settler-colonialism is a “structure”, that is part of an ongoing process, rather than an artefact of history (Wolfe 2016). In the case of almost all of these states it is hard to imagine an indigenous people taking control. But in the case of Israel the Palestinians are cast as indigenous people who, through their resistance, can destroy a settler-colonial enterprise. Following the title of a key paper on this question “Decolonization is not a metaphor” (Tuck & Yang 2012). That helps explain why student activists and academics lauded the 7 October atrocities as heroic resistance.
Driven by pessimism
This fundamental shift in attitudes towards social difference help point to why anti-Semitism has come to the fore recently. It has flourished in an era of profound social pessimism. We live in an era where few believe we can overcome social difference. Instead they are seen as embedded in the way society works. The best that can be achieved, from this perspective, is to take from the privileged and give to the oppressed.
It is in this environment where it is all too easy to see society divided into a simple binary between good and evil. Under these circumstances those assigned with the role of oppressed are seen as good. The flip side of that is that the alleged oppressors, most clearly the Jews, are assigned the role of evil.
What passes for the left is amenable to these ideas because of the profound social defeats it has suffered. It is widely believed that there is no alternative to the way society is presently constituted. The attempts to transform society – most notably the disaster that was the Soviet Union – have completely failed to live up to their promise.
The contemporary left now typically loathes its own societies – seeing them as profoundly racist and discriminatory – but has no alternative vision. From its perspective Israel is seen as the epitome of all that is evil about western societies. Jews are the personification of rapacious western capitalists.
This social pessimism – which permeates western elites – is at the root of contemporary anti-Zionism, the most prevalent form of contemporary anti-Semitism.
Conclusion
By anti-Zionism I am not referring to criticism of Israel but its demonisation. And calls, implicit and sometimes explicit, for the destruction of the Jewish state.
Israel is not just seen as a standalone evil. It is seen as symbolic of the supposed wider evils of western civilisation and modernity. It is also the expression of an assertive nation state in a world which is, for the technocratic elite, supposed to be globalist in outlook.
This is a view widely held by the elite technocratic class in universities, the media and NGOs.
And it is part of a broader package of identity politics which is in turn driven by a pervasive social pessimism. The new “left” has given up on changing the world for the better. Instead it sees supporting “resistance” to Israel, with a view to its destruction, as central to its broader loathing of the West and modernity.