Who – and what – are the anti-Zionist Jews?

The existence of the state of Israel is the great, unifying denominator for Jews across the world. Jews may be critical of its government or sections of Israeli society, but, overwhelmingly, they support its right to exist. Ninety percent of Australian Jews support close ties between their community and Israel. The idea of a Jewish anti-Zionist is viscerally offensive to most Jews.

Yet there are people who describe themselves as anti-Zionist Jews and in the aftermath of October 7 and in the face of the Israel-Hamas War, they have been disproportionately loud voices among the avalanche of criticism of Israel. Some are rabid and incoherent, others are more considered. The younger voices are more strident, the older ones more restrained. Some are individuals, others are in groups.

Though some have articulated common platforms, they do not necessarily share the same views or articulate definitions of what it means to be anti-Zionist. Indeed, the vagueness over what Zionism means has made it easier for people to weaponise the word to suit their views.

“It isn’t actually clear what the word Zionism means nowadays – even to most Zionists,” says Doodie Ringelblum, leader of the Bundist movement in Melbourne. “The Gen 17 survey of Australian Jews found that 70% of Australian Jews self-define as Zionist. It was the only question in the entire survey which had to explain what the question meant, because otherwise it was going to be too unclear.”

But calling oneself an anti-Zionist must mean something more than opposing the war in Gaza or calling for Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, or campaigning for the rights of Palestinians to a state. These are positions shared by many Zionists.

Anti-Zionism implies a rejection of the entire Zionist project: the right of the Jewish people to a state in their ancestral land.

It is easy to dismiss Jewish anti-Zionists as a handful of fringe-dwellers looking for a target on which to project their anti-West world views. Their activities rarely attract more than a couple of dozen participants. But the swelling of their voices suggests a rising tide, particularly among younger Jews.

Young, Jewish, anti-Zionist

At the vanguard of the young “Israel-phobic” brigade are Elsa Tuet-Rosenberg and Nevo Zisin, activists who use terms like “Zios” and “Zimbos” to describe Zionists, often with curses attached. Their anti-Zionism is part of a package of activist positions, including LGBTQ+, Indigenous and anti-racism activism.

Tuet-Rosenberg describes herself as “a queer, Jewish and Chinese woman of colour”. Her mother is Jewish, her father Chinese and Muslim. She has claimed to feel “a huge amount of affection toward my Jewish culture” which she credits with giving her the foundation for her social justice beliefs. She is the founder of Hue, a social-justice and antiracism organisation that runs antiracism training and consulting.

Tuet-Rosenberg gained national notoriety last month when she was named as one of five activists who doxed Jewish creatives and academics, leading to death threats and boycotts.

“Let these f..king Zionists know no f..king peace,” she urged her 8,000 social media followers.

She also appears to buy into conspiracy theories about Jewish power.  In a social media post in February, she wrote that “Zimbos” maintain their positions due to other Zionists “in management”.

Nevo Zisin describes themself “a Jewish, queer, non-binary writer, activist and public speaker”.  Zisin was raised embedded in the mainstream Jewish community, attending The King David School in Melbourne, and spending a gap year in Israel with Habonim.

Their father is Israeli, their mother an Australian Jew who has lived in Israel and, at a pro-Palestinian rally in Melbourne in November, Zisin described themselves as a “white Jewish settler coloniser on violently stolen Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung land”.

Zisin eschews the description of anti-Zionists as self-hating Jews, describing themselves on social media as a “self-loving Jew” and claiming their anti-Zionism springs from Jewish values.

“The ongoing occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people goes against my Jewish values,” they said in a statement released by a group of Jewish anti-Zionist demonstrators who Zisin who stormed the office of Defence Minister Richard Marles’ in November, to protest against Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

Another member of the group that occupied Marles’ office was Noemie Huttner-Koros, a Jewish artist and writer, who also describes her anti-Zionism in the context of her Jewish identity: “As a descendant of Holocaust survivors, I refuse to let Israel’s far-right government weaponise our grief, pain and fear for the purpose of war crime, invasion and genocide. We want to show Jewish people in the diaspora that we can speak up. Jews and Palestinians can and do live together. I see it as my ancestral duty to fight for justice, peace and liberation for all,” she said.

Anti-Zionist groups

These individuals come together under several banners campaigning for Palestinians: the Tzedek collective, the Loud Jew collective, and Jews Against Facism, among them. But it can be difficult to distinguish anti-Zionist groups from those who are vocal in their criticism of Israel and even harder to work out what groups who call themselves anti-Zionist actually mean.  It’s a term that groups throw around, but individuals often duck when questions are asked.

The Tzedek Collective describes itself as “an intergenerational leftist anti-Zionist Jewish community and action based in and around Warrang (Sydney)”. Tzedek has been campaigning to stop British political commentator Douglas Murray from speaking at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre on March 24, describing him as a “far-right, Zionist ideologue” who “has been providing ideological fodder for Israel’s genocide in Gaza since October 7”.

The Loud Jew Collective told The Jewish Independent it is “against all forms of nationalism, including Zionism. We are opposed to Zionism because it is an ideology of Jewish nationalism that has dispossessed Palestinians from their land”.

The Collective was formed in 2021 by a group of “over 15 Jews between the ages of 20 and 60”, it says, “to be a home and community for inspiring and radicalising Jewish cultures”. It does not have a formal membership structure but claims to have hundreds of people on its mailing list and over 7000 followers on Instagram.

The Collective says it doesn’t want it members to be identified because “many of us have experienced bullying, harassment and doxxing from Zionist members of the Jewish community, including from friends and family”.

Jews Against Fascism has called on Jews to quit Zionist youth movements in support of Palestine but avoids using the term anti-Zionist.

None of the Jewish anti-Zionists cited above, except Loud Jew Collective, was willing to explain their positions. Zisin and Huttner-Koros declined to answer questions for this article. Tuet-Rosenberg and Silverstein did not reply to repeated approaches.

Established voices

Not all Jews see Israel as the centre of Jewish life. Since the 19^th Century, the Bund, a social democratic movement, has always promoted the idea of Diaspora Jewish life.

Last month The Forward published an article on Bundism which sought to include the Melbourne Bundists within the Jewish anti-Zionist fold. The group firmly rejects the suggestion. “The Bund does not define itself in relation to Zionism. We are not anti-Zionist. We're not interested in debating Zionism. We’re interested in debating what is the best outcome for the Jewish people,” Doodie Ringelblum told The Jewish Independent. “The Bund is defined in terms of Bundism, which is a positive program. We have a view on Jewish identity, activity and cultural autonomy.”

In Australia, established activists including Vivienne Porzsolt and Antony Loewenstein have long staked a claim to the idea that you can be Jewish without being a Zionist.

Porzsolt is one of the leading voices in Jews Against the Occupation. Porzsolt describes herself as anti-Zionist in the following terms: “I am against the state of Israel structured as a Zionist state privileging Jews. I am not against the state as such. Like being against South African apartheid without opposing the existence of the state of South Africa.”

Porzsolt told The Jewish Independent that the group’s numbers have grown from about a dozen before October 7 to 30, while the membership of Tzedek, a younger activist group, has “grown absolutely exponentially”. According to its Facebook page, Tzedek has 732 followers.

Independent journalist and author Antony Loewenstein is an outspoken critic of Israel. His most recent book is The Palestine Laboratory and he has spent many years writing about the Middle-East, from here and over there. Loewenstein describes himself as an anti-Zionist because he opposes the concept of a Jewish state. “The idea of a Jewish state which gives superior rights to Jews above anybody else is by definition, discriminatory and by definition racist,” he told The Jewish Independent.

“But this view is not just because it's a Jewish state. I have similar views and have written extensively about the concept of, for example, a Hindu fundamentalist state, which is what India is becoming, or a Christian or Muslim exclusionary state.”

Loewenstein rejects the distinction that many Jews make between criticising the occupation and supporting the state. “Of course, you can be opposed to the occupation and many Jews are. But when a state is 75 years old, and a sizeable proportion, arguably the whole population has been discriminating against non-Jews, that is the state. It's in its DNA.”

He believes that since October 7, the number of Jews aged 18-35 espousing this view in Australia and the US has exploded because of what they are seeing happen to the Palestinians. “They are saying that if this is what a Jewish state means, then this is not a Jewish state I can support.”