Pro-Israel demagogues – increasingly supported by the legal system of “democratic” nations – claim that antizionism is antisemitism and must be punished as a hate crime.
Protest marches that advocate for the freedom and equality of Christian and Muslim Arabs – often led by Jewish people – are seen as an attack on the safety and right to self-determination of the Jewish people.
This view – mainstreamed for most of my life – is extremely antisemitic and devoid of history.
Jewish voices and the political expressions they take is not monolithic. Zionism has been criticized for as long as it’s existed – and that’s been for 130 years of the 4,000 year old religion (3% of Judaism).
Molly Crabapple’s book, Here Where We Live Is Our Country – The Story Of The Jewish Bund (2026), provides a detailed account of diversity in the blood, sweat and tears of Jewish voices towards European antisemitism.
Russian Empire and Pogroms
Jews in Eastern Europe were forced to live in the large geographical space commonly called The Pale of Settlement. This geographical area encompassed all of modern day Belarus and Moldova, and parts of Latvia, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia.
After Tsar Alexander II’s 1881 assassination, Christians across the Russian Empire scapegoated Jews resulting in a “blood libel” where collective punishment was encouraged towards all Jews across The Pale.
The violent attacks (pogroms) increased in frequencies and intensity – despite the fact that the assassins weren’t actually Jewish. This – not surprisingly – led Jewish communities to consider new approaches for their safety and equality.
The Bund and Zionism were both formed in 1897 as distinct and competing responses to the threats of antisemitism across Eastern Europe.
The Bund
Crabapple’s frequent use of, “here where we live is our country” provides the biggest distinction between those competing visions.
The Bund looked to make life better for Jews in Europe by promoting equality between Jew and Gentile wherever Jews lived – Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Russia, etc. They didn’t want to move to a new country where they’d displace Arabs the same way they were displaced.
The Bund promoted the idea that Jews should be able to live wherever they had their roots. They promoted practical means to improve their lives where they lived and purposefully rejected call of mass migration to Palestine.
Zionists raised money and establish militias in Palestine to terrorize the British and indigenous Arabs. The goal was the same for both – to get them to leave to make room for a new nation.
The Bund rejected achieving salvation by oppressing other human beings. Instead they invested in Europe. The Bund provided community self-defense, violent resistance, mutual-aid (orphanages, old-age homes, co-ops, free clinics and credit unions), preservation of Yiddish as the language of European Jews and organized labour, especially the general strike.
The Bund was the predominant Jewish power across Eastern Europe up to and including the Warsaw Uprising. However, the Second World War decimated 1/3 of the world’s Jewish population and pushed Jews towards the reality that Europe would never promise their safety.
The Holocaust
The Bund’s surviving members no longer had political power. Many ex-Bund converted to Zionism while others found refuge in America, Australia and Western Europe.
The argument for a Jewish State gained popularity.
The Zionists had won the ideological war. Those Bundists who immigrated to New York continued to warn that the oppressed was becoming the oppressor.
Zionists received support from world governments to hold drafts for surviving Jews across Europe. That support was largely out of self-interest in not wanting to take Jewish immigrants.
These drafts helped to solidify an army who’d take Palestine by force – and continue to do so through the entire existence of Israel.
Diversity in Ideology
Crabapple’s book demonstrates that it’s historically incorrect to conflate Zionism and Judaism. Zionism is the prevailing ideology post-holocaust. That ideology is cracking as young Jews look to the past recognizing that many of their grandparents detested Zionism for years.
Additionally, Haredi ultra-orthodox Jews radically oppose Zionism based on interpretations of the Talmud.
The fact that a certain sect of Jews (and their evangelical Christian supporters) shame opposing Jewish people as “self-hating” is antisemitic. Every religion in the world has a wide range of political views.
Zionism is but one of those Jewish ideologies. Its post-holocaust monopoly is fading as fast as it gained traction in the 1940s. Fortunately history presents alternatives to Zionism that have always existed.
Short Solo 