France has summoned United States Ambassador Charles Kushner after he accused the French government of failing to counter the “dramatic rise of antisemitism” in the country.In an open letter addressed to French President Emmanuel Macron, published in The Wall Street Journal on August 24, Kushner wrote, “Public statements haranguing Israel and gestures toward recognition of a Palestinian state embolden extremists, fuel violence, and endanger Jewish life in France.”He also wrote, “In today’s world, anti-Zionism is antisemitism — plain and simple.” This statement by Kushner, who is the father of US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has once again put the spotlight on a much-debated question: does being anti-Zionist inherently amount to being anti-Semitic?Zionism: the political movement for ‘Israel’Zionism was a nationalist political movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. It emerged in the late 19th Century to counter the rising wave of anti-Semitism, that is, hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people, in Europe.‘Zion’ in the Hebrew Bible refers to a hill in Jerusalem, which later became associated with the city and the entire Land of Israel, a Jewish name for an area of the southern Levant (present-day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan).The turning point for Zionism came with the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British pledged support for the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine which had long been ruled by the Ottomans.After World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and by 1917, its former territories had come under the control of Britain and France. Palestine officially became a British Mandate, under the auspices of the League of Nations, in 1920.Story continues below this adThe Balfour Declaration spurred Jewish migration to Palestine, although waves of Jews had settled in the territory since 1881, after anti-Jewish pogroms in Imperial Russia. In the first few years after the declaration, 1,00,000 Jewish immigrants arrived in Palestine, according to a report in the BBC.Zionism received further support after November 29, 1947, when the United Nations adopted Resolution 181(II) that recommended the partition of Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem placed under a special international regime.This ultimately led to the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, and the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their towns and villages (now remembered as the Nakba) by Western-backed Zionist militias.The foundation of Israel, however, did not put an end to the Zionist project. After Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, in which it captured the territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Zionism became about not only supporting the continued existence of the Jewish state but also expanding Jewish sovereignty in the entire biblical land of Israel.Story continues below this adSince then, it has been the driving force behind the establishment of Jewish settlements in Israeli-occupied territories such as the West Bank and East Jerusalem. These settlements violate international law: indeed Israel’s annexation of Palestinian lands has been a fundamental obstacle to the creation of a viable Palestinian state.Due to this changing nature of Zionism, there has been frequent confusion and disagreement over what it actually means. For some, it simply means support for the continued existence of Israel, while for others, it could be interpreted as support for establishing Jewish sovereignty across the Holy Land, between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea.Many shades of anti-ZionismAnti-Zionism, as the term suggests, is opposition to Zionism. It formally arose in the 19th Century, notably, first among Jewish people, and had different strains initially.For instance, Orthodox anti-Zionists opposed Zionism, arguing that a Jewish State could not be created before the appearance of the messiah. Then, there were Reform anti-Zionists who rejected the messianic idea altogether but did not intend to return to a Jewish state at any point.Story continues below this adShaul Magid, a rabbi and visiting professor of Modern Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity School, in an interview, told Jacobin, “One of the things that the Reform anti-Zionists and the Orthodox anti-Zionists share is a belief in the viability of exile, and that being in exile is something that is positive and constructive and necessary for the Jews now. Not being in an exile of persecution, but being in an exile that was more diasporic, where the Jews were able to function in the world and, in a certain sense, serve as a light to the nations.”However, anti-Zionism began to fade away, especially in Europe and the US, once World War II broke out. The Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany systematically murdered some six million Jews across Europe, seemed to prove the Zionist argument for needing a separate Jewish state.Also in Explained | What caused ‘human-made hunger crisis’ in Gaza: UNRWA’s senior official explainsAnti-Zionism took a further back seat with the establishment of Israel in 1948. Benjamin Moser, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, wrote in The Washington Post, “Israel’s spectacular military victories over its apparently much more powerful enemies were a guarantee that the Jews would never again suffer what they had suffered. For many Jews throughout the world — even Jews who had never set foot in Israel — pride in Israel replaced a faith that many of them had lost. After the long night of exile — galut — brilliant dawn had come at last.”But over the years, as Israel itself committed atrocities against Palestinians and increasingly expanded into Palestinian territory, anti-Zionism reemerged as a rejection of Israel’s ethnic nationalism, which prioritises Jewish people and culture over the rights of non-Jewish citizens.Story continues below this adThe movement has gained momentum after Israel began its onslaught on Gaza in response to the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Israel has thus far killed more than 63,000 people and triggered a famine in the besieged Palestinian enclave.On Friday, hundreds of employees of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) signed a letter demanding that the UN leadership declare Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide.Weaponising anti-Semitism to protect IsraelIn recent years, the definition of anti-Semitism has been a subject of bitter debate. That is because there have been efforts to connect anti-Semitism and Israel.A case in point is the 2016 definition provided by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which has been accepted by more than 40 countries. It says, “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”Story continues below this adThe issue is that the alliance also includes in the definition a series of examples of antisemitic behaviour related to Israel. Some of these examples are:denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, for example, by claiming the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour;drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis;Critics have said that these examples conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism and are intended to protect the state of Israel from criticism.Peter Beinart, author of books such as The Crisis of Zionism (2012) and Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning (2025) and a practising Jew, wrote in The Guardian in 2019 that denial of self-determination in itself could not amount to anti-Semitism.“The Kurds don’t have their own state. Neither do the Basques, Catalans, Scots… nor dozens of other peoples who have created nationalist movements to seek self-determination but failed to achieve it… Yet barely anyone suggests that opposing a Kurdish or Catalan state makes you an anti-Kurdish or anti-Catalan bigot,” he wrote.Story continues below this adBeinet also argued that to seek to replace Israel’s ethnic nationalism with civic nationalism was not inherently anti-Semitic. He wrote, “It is widely recognised that states are based on ethnic nationalism… are not the only legitimate way to ensure public order and individual freedom. Sometimes it is better to foster civic nationalism, a nationalism built around borders rather than heritage”.Accusing anti-Zionists of being anti-Semitic also ignores the fact that many who criticise Israel and have protested against its actions in Gaza are also proud and practising Jews themselves. Equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in effect means that Jews can only be “Jews” if they support the state of Israel.Lastly, as one article in Time magazine said, the equivalence actually does little to protect Jews themselves. “On the contrary, the Islamophobia and racism inherent in the weaponisation of antisemitism risks making antisemitism a meaningless charge, and therefore much harder to combat, at a time when genuine examples of it are rising.”