ABSTRACT
Walzer reviews three historical varieties of Jewish anti-Zionism – Orthodox, Reform and diaspora universalist – before examining the paradox that while the most common leftist version of anti-Zionism claims to derive from an opposition to nationalism and the nation state, the left has supported the right to national self-determination the world over, for over a century, and has reserved its opposition to the nation state to one people, the Jews, and to one state, Israel. Walzer reviews and rebuts arguments made on the left for applying a ‘Luxemburgian loathing’ only to the nation state of Israel, arguing that necessary criticism of the policies of the governments of Israel, several of which he sets out, shouldn’t involve opposition to the existence of the state, any more than criticising the brutal treatment of Muslims in Western China today should involve opposition to the existence of the Chinese state. While there are versions of anti-Zionism on the right and the left that involve anti-Semitic tropes, and these should be energetically opposed, the problem with contemporary left-wing anti-Zionism in the United States and Europe, argues Walzer, is also anti-Zionism itself: it is bad politics.
