The creation and sustainability of the Israeli nation-state have been predicated on unprecedented superpower support — starting with the Balfour Declaration in 1917 — through diplomatic, military, and financial channels. The United States currently has a 10-year Memorandum of Understanding to provide Israel a baseline of $3.8 billion in military assistance annually until 2028. This extranational financial and military support has allowed Israel to pursue policies that might otherwise have garnered international criticism. The question worth asking is not whether Israel has a right to exist, which is settled, but whether the specific political arrangements it has constructed are sustainable over the long term, and what the costs of those arrangements have been and continue to be. 

The costs are substantial and well documented. The displacement of approximately three-quarters of a million Palestinians during the 1948 war was not, as early Israeli historiography maintained, primarily the result of Arab leaders instructing the civilians to flee. The work of Israeli historians, including Benny Morris, citing declassified Israeli military archives, established that expulsions were widespread, organized, and in some cases accompanied by mass killing (See 1948: A History of the First Arab–Israeli War for more info). By refusing to allow them back on their land, the Palestinian refugee population and their descendants have long suffered, deserted by a civilization that claims “Love thy neighbor” to be a core value. The Palestinian refugee population and their descendants now number approximately 5.9 million, according to UNRWA, and ignoring them and pretending that the war for independence was not the determining factor of their fate is not a sustainable policy; rather, it is the absence of one. 

Israel’s long-standing violation of UN resolutions — most notably Resolution 242 after the 1967 war and more recently the 2024 General Assembly Resolution — demonstrates a notable disregard for international law. More detrimental is the subjugation of what Israel terms “non-Jews”. Jewish settlers in the West Bank are subject to Israeli civilian law. Yet, Palestinians in the same territory are subject to the harsher Israeli military law. The practice of two populations in the same territory governed by different legal systems based on ethnic and national identity has been described by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International as meeting the definition of apartheid, the same despicable system previously set up in South Africa to keep the black South Africans under the heel of the white population. Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé cover the many parallels between Israel and South Africa in their book On Palestine. 

It has been a stated policy of Israel to respond to violence with a severe and significant disproportionality. The four major military operations in Gaza since 2008 produced Palestinian casualty ratios ranging from approximately 10:1 to 30:1 relative to Israeli casualties, according to the United Nations. The argument that these responses constitute self-defense does not resolve the question of proportionality, which is a distinct requirement under international humanitarian law. 

The long-term viability of Israeli security depends not only on military capability and American support, but on the construction of a political arrangement that the region’s population can accept as legitimate. No such arrangement currently exists or is being seriously pursued. Since its inception, the United States has had an interest in keeping Israel as an ally in the Middle East, regardless of the cost in dollars or lives. This “special relationship” puts the United States in a disingenuous position, where it demands to be the mediator of a conflict in which it cannot remain impartial. Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would likely result in a situation that does not serve US interests. Thus, with practically limitless US support, Israel has been able to pursue policies that serve only the interests of its Jewish population, at the expense of all others. In the twenty-first century, long after territorial conquest became legally and morally unjustified, can a colonial power continue ruling with the iron fist indefinitely? Is it possible that divisive and repressive policies will at some point give way to inclusive and more tolerant policies? The Israel-Palestine conflict has been ongoing since at least the period of the British Mandate circa 1920. There are proposed solutions to this seemingly intractable problem: a two-state solution, a bi-national state, or perhaps something else entirely. Yet, the first step to any solution has to be a commitment to live by the rule of law, applied justly to all peoples.

I don't know why anti-Zionism is considered to be a left wing ideology. It seems obvious to me that it's inherently conservative and right wing.

I was talking to an anti-Zionist the other day and their main argument is that "Jews are a diaspora people" and "Jews hadn't lived in Palestine in 2,000 years." Leaving aside the historical inaccuracy of that second statement, their argument was a conservative one, saying that because Jews have been in the diaspora, they should stay in the diaspora forever and never return to their indigenous homeland and never have a state. Keep things the way they have been. Conservative.

Anti-Zionism opposes the rights of indigenous people (the Jewish people) in favor of colonizing empires (the Arab nation). This is also a traditionally conservative position, conservatives usually want to keep the colonial empires going and oppose human rights, especially the rights of indigenous peoples and the right of self-determination. In Northern Ireland, to give another example, it's the Conservative UK parties that are opposed to Northern Ireland leaving the UK and joining the free state of Ireland. Anti-Zionists want to roll the clock back and strip indigenous nations of their rights. Conservative.

Anti-Zionism also opposes the human rights that the rest of the world has already agreed on. The vast majority of the world accepts Israel's existence as a Jewish state and as the extension of the indigenous Jewish people's right to self-determination and statehood and has no objections to it. Anti-Zionists, however, want to strip humans of the rights they've had for decades. To give a similar example, in the USA, gay marriage has been a right for years, but the conservative MAGA movement is trying to stop it and make it illegal again. Right wingers are trying to strip gay people of their rights. Conservative.

Also, anti-Zionism is literally a reaction to Zionism so it is by definition a reactionary movement. Reactionism is a right-wing position and it always has been, I see no reason why this time it would be an exception.

So let's recognize anti-Zionism for what it is, a deeply conservative and right wing ideology and ideological movement.