Oppose Zionism and the State of Israel

Zionism is racist. It demands political, legal and economic power for Jews and European people and cultures over indigenous people and cultures. Zionism is not just racist but anti-Semitic. It endorses the sexist European anti-Semitic imagery of the effeminate and weak "diaspora Jew" and counters it with a violent and militarist "new Jew," one who is a perpetrator rather than a victim of racialized violence.

Zionism thus seeks to make Jews white through the adopting of white racism against Palestinian people. Despite Israel's need to integrate Mizrahis in order to maintain a Jewish majority, this racism is also seen in the marginalization and economic exploitation of the socially deprived Mizrahi population. This racialized violence also includes the exploitation of migrant workers.

Zionists disseminate the myth that Israel is a democracy. In truth, Israel has established and enforces internal policies and practices that discriminate against Jews of Mizrahi descent and exclude and restrict Palestinian people. Moreover, Israel, in collaboration with the United States, undermines any Arab movements for social change and liberation.

Zionism perpetuates Jewish exceptionalism. In defense of its crimes, Zionism tells a version of Jewish history that is disconnected from the history and experiences of other people. It promotes the narrative that the Nazi holocaust is exceptional in human history -- despite it being one of many holocausts from Native Americans North and South to Armenia and Rwanda. It sets Jews apart from the victims and survivors of other genocides instead of uniting us with them.

Through a shared Islamophobia and desire for control of the Middle East and broader West Asia, Israel makes common cause with Christian fundamentalists and others who call for Jewish destruction. Together they call for the persecution of Muslims. This shared promotion of Islamophobia serves to demonize resistance to Western economic and military domination. It continues a long history of Zionist collusion with repressive and violent regimes, from Nazi Germany to the South African Apartheid regime to reactionary dictatorships across Latin America.

Zionism claims that Jewish safety depends on a militarized Jewish state. But Israel does not make Jews safe. Its violence guarantees instability and fear for those within its sphere of influence and endangers the safety of all people, including Jews, far beyond its borders. Zionism colluded willingly in creating the conditions that led to violence against Jews in Arab countries. The loathing aroused by Israeli violence and military domination toward Jews living in Israel and elsewhere is used to justify further Zionist violence.

We pledge to: Reject the colonial legacy and on-going colonial expansion

The moment when the Zionist movement decided to build a Jewish State in Palestine, it became a movement of conquest. Like the imperial conquest and genocidal ideologies of the Americas or Africa, Zionism depends on the segregation of people and the confiscation of land that produces ethnic cleansing and depends on unrelenting military violence.

Zionists worked hand in hand with the British colonial administration against the indigenous people of the region and their legitimate hopes for liberty and self-determination. The Zionist imagining of Palestine as "empty" and desolate justified the destruction of Palestinian life in the same way that such racism justified the extermination of Native Americans, the Atlantic slave trade, and many other atrocities.

From the ever expanding settlements to the Apartheid Wall, Israel's commitment to colonial domination leaves its mark in environmental damage and the destruction of the physical landscape of Palestine. The failure of these policies to end Palestinian resistance propels Israel toward ever increasing violence and policies that, when followed to their fullest extent, end in genocide. In Gaza, the Israeli state withholds access to food, water, electricity, humanitarian aid, and medical supplies as a weapon that targets the foundations of human life.

Israel, once a vehicle for the British and French assault on Arab unity and independence, is now a junior partner in the US-allied strategy for world military, economic and political control, specifically for domination of the strategic Middle-East/Southwest Asia region. The danger of nuclear war through a US/Israeli attack on Iran reminds us that Israel is an atomic bomb that should be urgently dismantled for the sake of saving the lives of all its current and potential victims.

We pledge to: Challenge Zionist organizations

Beyond shaping the creation of Israel, Zionism determined its international policy of military dominance and antagonism toward its neighbours, and established a sophisticated global network of organizations, political lobbies, public relation firms, campus clubs, and schools to sustain and perpetuate Zionist ideas in Jewish communities and the general public.
Billions of US dollars flow annually to Israel to sustain the occupation and Israel's sophisticated and brutal army. The war machine they fund is a leader in the global arms industry, which drains resources craved by a world in desperate need of water, food, health care, housing and education. Europe, Canada and the United Nations, meanwhile, prop up the infrastructure of occupation under the guise of humanitarian aid to Palestinian people. Together, the US and its allies cooperate in deepening the domination of the region and suppressing popular movements. 

Charter of the International Jewish anti-Zionist Network