How Zionism is the greatest obstacle to Jewish self-determination

Sources like Jewish-Christian Relations, Unpacked, and so forth have been trying to formalize their accusation that anti‐Zionism is antisemitic by claiming that Zionism means Jewish self‐determination. The claim that Zionism equals Jewish self‐determination is ahistorical, and as the Nitter thread above shows, we really have no good reason to believe that it is Jews’ only path to self‐determination. In fact, the very claim is self‐destroying because it tells anticolonial Jews that their conceptions of self‐determination are invalid, and that there can be no alternative to neocolonialism.

We’ll ignore the elephant in the room (‘What about the Palestinians?’) simply for the sake of argument, and instead take a closer look at how this supposed ‘self‐determination’ expresses itself. As socialists, we know all too well that all dictatorships of the bourgeoisie are antidemocratic, including ones that claim not to be, and they primarily serve the rich and powerful at our expense. It would absurd to claim, for example, that there are thousands of houseless Jews on Palestinian land because the Jewish people must have collectively decided that that is how it should be.

That is simply the most obvious way, but we can augment this argument by proving that the neocolony is not (and never has been) democratic even by neoliberalism’s own criteria. Some key points to remember:

• There is no constitution, written or otherwise. This only makes it easier for the rulers to redefine their government at will and it makes them less accountable, since no citizens of the neocolony can argue that the élites were breaking their own rules. The Knesset (neocolonial parliament), which is the legislative branch, regularly passes laws without any significant input from the lower classes. In this respect, the neocolony is comparable to Fascist Italy, which also had an unaccountable parliament.
• There is little to no separation between the legislative and executive branches. This only makes it easier for the élites to pass laws that are unlikely to be in ordinary people’s best interests, and it is the Knesset, not ordinary people, which elects the government’s members, who in turn (almost) always protect the head of state.
• In a heated argument between the now deeply unpopular head of state Benjamin Netanyahu and former head of state Ehud Olmert in 2021, Netanyahu admitted that he’ll use the IDF for his own purposes, which by implication excludes ordinary people, who are powerless to stop him.
• The supreme court is nothing but an extension of the Knesset: the supreme court has to obey the parliament, not ordinary people, and it cannot enact its own laws or cancel them; the head of state can also shut down this supreme court if he finds it necessary.
• The neocolony makes it difficult for ordinary Jewish citizens to publicly express their opposition. For example, there was a little‐known incident on the morning of December 2 when the régime arrested six protesters, and I think that the only reason it didn’t go after the thousands of protesters later that day was simply because there were too many people to arrest. (The fact that thousands of people have to protest at all should already be a clue that there is no democracy, but neoliberals would disagree on that.)

So we see that the neocolony is another plutocracy that cannot possibly hope to represent millions of its citizens, much less Jews across the world. This, in addition to the numerous ways that it harms (mostly lower‐class) Jews, proves that Zionism is not an expression of Jewish self‐determination. Logically, this would only be possible if Jewish people were algophiles who were addicted to the constant thrill of danger, but self‐harm is a phenomenon that few people consider tolerable.

Zionists do not tell Jewish people that they get to define their own destiny. Instead, Zionists tell Jewish people to immigrate to a neocolony as soon as possible, to take land and other resources away from native people, to avoid associating theirselves with them, to obey an antidemocratic régime, and to disparage anybody who disagrees with this vision. That is how Zionism obstructs Jewish self‐determination.