An inflection point for the anti zionist movement?

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After a year of feeling doom, and wondering how bad it will get(yes those Nazi comparisons again) events of recent weeks have given some Pro Zionists a feeling of turning a corner. Be it a combination of Israel's spectacular intelligence successes and the cancellation campaigns against anti-zionists, or just inevitable weariness and the human inclination to move on while Pro Palestinian demos are far from not a thing the amount and intensity of them are noticeably down. I have not read about tent cities on campuses this semester.

Before Pro Zionists feel too relieved the slacking of public demonstrations might be a holding action while getting ready for the biggest wave yet. The very short term provides a number of anniversaries and holidays to do events impossible to downplay.

The obvious one is Monday which is October 7th.

Today and tomorrow is the Jewish New Year.

Sunday is the anniversary of the Yom Kipper War another anniversary on the Western calendar when Israel's overconfidence bit them in the ass.

October 11th is Yom Kipper itself the holiest day on the Jewish calendar.

October 25th the first anniversary of "the flood" on the Jewish calendar and also the Jewish Holiday of Simchat Torah the holiday people at the Nova festival were celebrating.

Outside of October 7th I do not expect much on those other dates because I don't expect Gentiles in general to know about events in the Jewish calendar. I can't totally downplay those other dates because I can't dismiss obsessed antisemites knowing about and celebrating by acting on those days.

By the end of the month, we should know if the anti-zionist movement has peaked or has past a peak.

An argument can be made that a ceasefire will temper interest or another event(the election is the first thing that comes to mind) will deflect interest and move antizionism to the fringes.

OTOH antizionism is different than other past events that sparked movements that withered. The Vietnam War ended as anti-war activists predicted it would, the murder of George Floyd was dealt with legally. While attention might be elsewhere as long as Israel as a Jewish state exists antizionists will have reasons for anger.

OP's Request:
This thread is not about the morality of Israel's existence and the war itself. That is dealt with in many other threads. I request that replies to this thread stay within the realm of the short, medium, and long term future of the anti-zionist movement in the "Western world".

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 03 Oct 2024, 8:30 am, edited 2 times in total.

I would expect that the fairweather AZ folks will move on once the situation dies down, but probably not before that.

Essentially that puts the ball in Israel's court. If they keep behaving in ways that draw negative attention, that will keep anti-zionists and anti-zionism energized. If they're able to let other things start to occupy people's minds then those people will likely get distracted by whatever's the next thing to care about.

This begs the question of how many of the anti-zionist protesters are fair-weather friends.

If there for the last year have been fair-weather for anti-zionists anywhere in the Western world it must have been very locally. Anywhere I have looked the sky's been filled with dark clouds raining down slurs about "anti-semitism" on them.

Unfortunately I worry it's a larger percentage than I'd like, although I anticipate a lot of the antisemitic ones are part of that. I don't think people with that primary underlying motive are all that attached to the Palestinian cause, so much as seeing a chance to vent Jew-hatred among people who might be distracted by other priorities and not give it the amount of pushback it deserves.

Those people often want to discuss the Apollo affair, or the USS Liberty attack and then use that as a gateway towards see, it's not just Israel, it's duh Jews while ignoring that some Jews having divided loyalties, or primary loyalty to Israel doesn't mean all or most do.

I see those people as particularly harmful to any attempts to rein in Israel and ultimately beneficial towards the cause of excusing Israeli violence because they help justify the notion that Jews can't be safe anywhere and need an aggressive and probably expanding state to secure their well-being, while also potentially alienating Jewish anti-Zionist voices, effectively silencing them.

Not to suggest that every single person I'm describing as fair-weather is motivated by antisemitism. Sometimes people just have limited bandwidth for emotional investment. They'll find a new priority and this one might lay dormant for awhile.

I don't think anti-Zionism has peaked. If anything, I think we are seeing, rather, the slow and irreversible decline of Zionism.

I can't speak for other countries, but in America the younger generations are even more anti-Zionist than my own. I still remember when I was younger how in virtually any American media outlet there was overt pro-Israel, anti-Muslim bias, especially after 9/11. Nowadays the mainstream outlets still lean toward Israel, but it is nowhere near as one-sided as it once was. The education system has also slowly turned against Israel. Whereas in my day I had to wait until college to see widespread criticism of Israel (before that, the teachers were never the ones being critical), nowadays you see far more of that at high schools or even earlier.

Protests will certainly die down once this current conflict dies down, but the damage has been done to Israel's image. I, and many, many others my age, will continue for years to come to teach the younger generation that Israel should not exist (I know we wanted to stay away from that topic, so I'll leave it at that). The older generation which was far more likely to support Israel unconditionally no longer hold the social and cultural clout they once did. They are losing influence or dying off. Movements like BDS will find more traction and less opposition as the Zionist establishment in media, government, and business erodes. The younger generations are far more mindful of international opinion. Far fewer young Americans believe they should always support America and its allies out of nationalist obedience.

It's depressing as hell, even to me, the anti-Zionist, but sympathy for Israel will likely diminish over time as the Holocaust slowly leaves living memory. Holocaust survivors and the invocation of the Holocaust have been extremely valuable propaganda tools for Israel. Even for those who continue to recognize the magnitude and gravity of the Holocaust, I feel like more and more of them will, like me, start to find it distasteful that Israel would weaponize such a catastrophe in order to justify the atrocities they commit in the present day.

If anything, I think we have passed peak-Zionism. The historical social and political factors that led to the widespread acceptance of Zionism in the American mainstream are not nearly as strong as they were even just a couple of decades ago.

I agree with this notion on a longer time scale.

I decided to avoid the long term in my OP and to keep it short term because of the immediacy of the first anniversary is on my mind but that doesn’t mean I intended that others should not discuss long term. I do have some general thoughts about long term that I have posted elsewhere. I am thinking of starting a separate thread on the future of zionism in the western world in a few days but the future of zionism maybe so intertwined that is a silly idea. I will let this thread continue to percolate a few days before putting my thoughts about the long term in this thread or a future of zionism in the western world.

I am sure Nebuchadnezzar and Caesar thought the same thing several millenia ago. Yet here we are.

Hmm. Have you ruled out the possibility that the actual amount and intensity of pro-Palestinian demonstrations has NOT diminished, but perhaps it may just seem that way because now they are seen by the news media as old hat and no longer newsworthy, at least by comparison to, say, the upcoming election?

I don't know for a fact that the amount and intensity of pro-Palestinian demonstrations has NOT diminished, but I think this is a question worth asking. It is certainly NOT true that the mass media cover everything that happens.

According to the Australian police, the intensity and regularity of protests in major Australian cities has not diminished since they started on Oct 8 2023. On Oct 8 last year many people were filmed celebrating and launching fireworks near mosques.

I meant diminished not in the last year but in the last few months.

The mass media might have moved on but I would not think the Israeli and American Jewish media that I look at would move on.

Is there any possibility that the pro-Israel media might have decided, recently, to adopt a "starve them of attention" strategy toward most pro-Palestinian protests? Or perhaps decided to focus only on instances of blatant anti-Jewish bigotry among anti-Zionist protesters, so they can more easily pretend that the more principled protesters don't exist?

I suspect that anti-Zionist protest groups may have gotten better at staying on-message and weeding out the anti-Jewish bigots, or at least weeding out the most blatant bigots, thus providing less fodder for the "anti-Zionism equals anti-semitism" crowd.

I also suspect that pro-Israel media might feel especially threatened by -- and might prefer to downplay, when possible -- (1) anti-Zionist Jews, in particular, and (2) any reminder at all of the horrors of what Israel has been perpetrating in Gaza.

Of course the above are only suspicions of mine, not things I actually know.

I do know someone who has been involved in protests against the war in Gaza. I will ask them about their impressions of the current state of the movement.

Indeed. Everybody thinks they can just commit enough atrocities and ethnic cleansing and eventually the followers of the God of Abraham (well, the ones they dont like) will just roll over and give up. The Crusader States of the Middle Ages failed, and so too will the modern Crusader State of Israel.
The desire for freedom will outlast the desire to uphold the oppressive apartheid state. In that sense, anti-Zionism is anti-colonialism, and anti-colonialism is eternal. Zionism is just nationalism, and nationalism is self-destroying. Nationalism is dependent on cynical, short-term alliances. Israel takes every ally it has for granted. Why shouldn't it? It's a spoiled little child who has never had to play by the same rules as the other kids. Zionists act like Israel is the only way for Jews to not be dependent on the goodwill of gentiles, as if Israel is not hopelessly dependent on goyish funding and equipment.

Zionism as a movement has only been around since the 19th century. But the glue that has held judaism together since they were thrown out by the Romans has always been the belief that Jews will one day return to their holy land.
You gotta hand it to the jews. I can't think of a single community that lived among hostile, barbaric and xenophobic tribes since pre-Roman times that have kept their scriptures, rituals and language intact despite active attempts to eradicate their communities.