https://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/07/no_author/anti-zionism-was-pioneered-by-jews/

By Brian McGlinchey
Stark Realities
July 8, 2026

Is it intrinsically antisemitic to call for a new political order between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — where the State of Israel currently reigns over 7.5 million Jews and 7.5 million Palestinian Muslims and Christians? By declaring anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism, that’s what Israel’s defenders want you to believe.

However, opposition to Zionism — the political philosophy focused on the establishment and maintenance of a separate nation-state for Jews — was itself pioneered by Jews a half-century before Israel’s founding. Going back to Zionism’s rise to prominence in the late 1800s, Jews have always been among this political ideology’s most ardent opponents. Revisiting early Jewish anti-Zionists’ arguments underscores just how absurd it is to equate opposition to an ethno-religious, nationalist political philosophy with bigotry.

While there were some earlier iterations, modern Zionism blossomed in 1897 with the publishing of The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat). In that political pamphlet, the Hungarian, Jewish journalist and lawyer Theodor Herzl argued that, after struggling in vain to assimilate in countries around the world, Jews should form their own nation-state to escape antisemitism.

Though modern Zionists’ definition of their movement emphasizes the Jewish homeland being located in the Levant, taking over territory in world Jewry’s purported “ancestral homeland” wasn’t always an essential dimension of the Zionist movement. In The Jewish State, Herzl nominated both Palestine and Argentina. “Argentina is one of the most fertile countries in the world, extends over a vast area, has a sparse population and a mild climate,” he wrote. “The Argentine Republic would derive considerable profit from the cession of a portion of its territory to us.” In 1903, Zionists considered a British government proposal to carve out thousands of square miles of territory in East Africa.

A year after publishing his history-altering pamphlet, Herzl organized the First Zionist Congress. Some 200 delegates from 17 countries convened in Basel, Switzerland, adopted a set of guiding principles, and created the World Zionist Organization to bring Herzl’s vision to life.

Significantly, Basel wasn’t Herzl’s first pick for the conference’s location. He wanted to host it in Munich or Vienna, but Jewish leaders in these and other cities across Europe wanted nothing to do with Zionism. The Executive Committee of the Union of Rabbis of Germany said the event would undermine Jews’ efforts to assimilate in German society, and mark them as members of a separate nation. They also objected on religious grounds, arguing that a Jewish state should be the result of God’s action and the eventual coming of the messiah.

In the run-up to the momentous Zionist congress, Vienna’s chief rabbi published a lengthy refutation of The Jewish State. “Judaism’s historical mission is not to support the centrifugal nationalist passions or fantasies of peoples, and even less to indulge in them itself, but rather to abolish the individualism of nations and work toward the union of all humanity into a single family,” wrote Rabbi Moritz Güdemann in a work titled National Judaism (Nationaljudenthum). “A Judaism armed with cannons and bayonets would reverse the roles of David and Goliath and be a parody of itself.”