Among the myriad images from the Melbourne pro-Palestine protests, there is one in particular that has stuck with me. A young Jewish person, wearing a prayer shawl and rainbow-coloured yarmulke, is being forcibly removed from a protest at Defence Minister Richard Marles’ electorate office in Geelong. They are being dragged out of the foyer by a small battalion of police. They look self-possessed and staunch, clutching a cardboard sign that says “Not in Our Names.”
It is an arresting image, and at the centre of it is the beleaguered and contradictory figure of the anti-Zionist Jew. There is, of course, no inherent contradiction in this phrase “anti-Zionist Jew.” Zionism is a political ideology established in Europe towards the end of the nineteenth century. Jewishness is an ethno-religious identity that stretches back millenia. One can demonstrably exist without the other. Moreover, as Hazem Jamjoum argued in last week’s interview, anti-Zionist politics can proceed from principles that have nothing to do with Jewishness and everything to do with opposing militarised ethno-nationalisms.
And yet the protestors at Marles’ office, and others who register their support for Palestinian liberation as anti-Zionist Jews, are nevertheless deliberately binding their political commitments to their ethno-religious identities. Some, like the person in the image, are emphasising their Jewishness via compelling optics i.e. the prayer shawl and the conspicuous yarmulke. It raises a question: Why approach the struggle for Palestinian liberation from within the rubric of one’s Jewish identity, and not just as a regular, concerned citizen?
Activists and thinkers within the anti-Zionist Jewish community in the US, which is substantial and well-organised, have been trying to answer this question for some time. The most obvious, and most pragmatic, answer holds that Jews have a duty to wield their identities strategically for Palestinian liberation, and that showing up visibly as Jews disproves the notion that criticism of Israel is necessarily anti-semitic. Others insist that Zionism must be rejected due to a violation of Jewish religious principles—whether that be ultra-Orthodox sects who believe that there should be no Jewish state until the Messiah arrives, or Reform communities who organise their religious practice around principles of social justice derived from ancient Jewish ethical teachings. Still others, who draw inspiration from leftist Jewish movements that flourished in Europe before the Holocaust, argue that Zionism undermines the political values that make Jewish life in the diaspora possible. (For me, this is where the most compelling Jewish rejection of Zionism emerges. In particular, I am drawn to the Bundist concept of Doikayt, or “hereness,” a kind of principled diasporism that seeks to make every Jewish community its very own homeland. This stands in opposition to the “thereness” of the Zionist movement, which proposes that Jewish freedom comes only in the form of a modern nation state in the ancestral homeland of Eretz Yisrael.)
Here in Australia, where the Jewish community is far smaller than in the US (they are 7.5 million, we are less than 100,000), the anti-Zionist Jewish movement exists at the fringe—and its contradictions play out more intimately. Many mainstream Jewish institutions have lined up solidly behind the Israeli government’s policies since the 7th of October. To declare oneself an “anti-Zionist Jew” in Melbourne, in a community of just 60,000, is to very visibly step outside the political hegemony. Some may even consider it an act of treason.
I don’t mean to suggest that the Jewish community is a political monolith. If you spend time speaking to people in the community, you will find that reactions towards the anti-Zionist Jewish presence at the protests are varied, and the discomfort is often refracted through the distorting lens of identity crisis. Many are horrified by Netanyahu's regime, settler violence, occupation, and the unfathomable number of innocent Gazan civilians killed by the IDF in the past weeks. Many support the ceasefire, and ache for a resolution that would see Israelis and Palestinians living in harmony with full and equal rights. But they would not consider labelling themselves “anti-Zionist” because it would demand some profound reimagining of their Jewish identity.
For instance, when I was discussing the anti-Zionist Jewish position with a Rabbi recently, he mentioned that the phrase troubled him. “I pray three times a day facing Jerusalem, yearning for a return to Zion,” he said. “Do I have to stop doing this now?” Also, because Israel was one of the only countries to accommodate mass Jewish immigration after the Holocaust, most Jewish people in Melbourne have at least some family living there. Many feel that anti-Zionism would constitute an awful abandonment. “It is like cutting off a limb,” is how someone put it to me recently. Finally, there is a fearful world-weariness baked deep into the Melbourne Jewish community, a product of most here being descended from Holocaust survivors. I had a conversation with an older, left-wing Jewish friend who said that he gets the anti-Zionist Jewish perspective, politically and morally, but he thinks there is some naivety to it. “If you come out as anti-Zionist, on one hand you lose your community and potentially family, who feel that you have betrayed them. On the other, there are anti-semites who will never accept you even if you go to every rally, denounce Zionism, and cut off your community,” he said. “Basically, you end up between a schmuck and a hard place.”
This Jewish pessimism may be time-worn and hard-earned, but, actually, so is Jewish anti-Zionism. It didn’t start with Zoomers in rainbow yarmulkes. As long as Zionism has existed, there have been Jews who have opposed it. If anything, the current hegemonic support for Zionism in Melbourne is an exception in Jewish history, where dissent and disagreement is the rule. (There’s a reason why they say “two Jews, three opinions.”)
To discuss the history of Jewish anti-Zionism in this city, I called Max Kaiser. Kaiser is the author of an excellent book on the topic, Jewish Antifascism and the False Promise of Settler Colonialism (2022), which traces the rise and fall of Jewish leftism in the city during the mid-twentieth century. Kaiser has also been active in organising an ongoing Jewish presence at the recent pro-Palestine rallies. We spoke over several evenings about what it means to be an anti-Zionist Jew in Melbourne, and how to maintain this position amidst much pressure. The following interview is a compilation of those conversations, edited for length and clarity.
Tell me a bit about your research into the history of the Jewish left in Melbourne.
For my PhD, I delved into the history of the Jewish Council to Combat Fascism and Anti-Semitism. This was an organisation based in Melbourne that started in the early 1940s, and went through to 1970. The organisation had been written about before, but not in great depth. I looked at a lot of newspapers, magazines, plays, and novels from the time to really immerse myself into the Jewish Council's ideas.
Their most basic idea was that the only way to truly combat anti-semitism is through a broader struggle against fascism. This meant that they stood against colonialism, racism, and war. It also led them to seek alliances with other progressives, like trade unions in the labour movement and the Communist Party.
It seems hard to believe now, but the Council was very popular in the Melbourne Jewish community. To some extent, it had a hegemonic role. It was the official public relations wing of the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies [the main representative body for Victorian Jewry at the time] for a number of years. Any representations to the wider public and to politicians went through them, and so to some extent reflected their politics.
I'd like to talk more about the Jewish Council, but I thought it might be a good idea to start with some definitions. How would you define Zionism?
I would define Zionism in a couple of ways. One is simply as Jewish nationalism, and Jewish nationalism being the central answer to the Jewish problem. [This is a historical phrase, also known as the Jewish Question, which refers to debates about the national and political status of Jews as a minority in European society before World War II.] And then the other way I would define it is the ideology that facilitated Jewish settler-colonialism in Palestine.
And what is anti-Zionism?
It's also got that dual character. So in one sense, it's very much about being in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against the Zionist project. And then, second, from a Jewish perspective, anti-Zionism is also about articulating an alternative vision for Jewish politics—a different vision for how we achieve flourishing Jewish communities worldwide that doesn’t rely on the existence of an exclusivist Jewish state in Palestine.
Would you call yourself an anti-Zionist Jew?
This morning I was telling my dad about doing this interview. And he was like, “what is it about?” I said, “anti-Zionist Jews.” And he was just like, “oh, that doesn't make any sense.” He was just really confused by that label. He's very critical of Israel and what's going on currently. But for a certain generation—a generation where Zionism was all there was—the phrase just doesn't quite make sense. It sounds almost like an oxymoron.
I get the confusion. And to that I'd say: I am anti-Zionist, but only because I'm a leftist and socialist more specifically. In this sense, I share the same politics as the Jewish Council, in that I believe that an exclusivist nationalism is not the answer to anti-semitism. Jews need to join up and be part of the progressive struggles with other people. That is the route to lasting liberation.
The British scholar Jaqueline Rose, a vocal critic of Zionism, has written about certain formations of historical Zionism—like Martin Buber's religious Zionism or Ahad Ha'am's cultural Zionism—that she sees as having some value. “If Zionism can produce voices such as these, this is evidence of a fermentation of rare value,” she said. Are there any strains of Zionist history that still interest you, or is it a matter of baby out with the bathwater?
I think for an academic or historian, Zionism as a concept offers a really rich intellectual and political history. I wouldn't just say that the whole thing is all racist garbage, or that we could ever make a clean break with it entirely. There were certainly left-wing versions and spiritual versions or religious versions that were part of the Zionist conversation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But to be honest, in 2023, no one is talking about spiritual Zionism anymore. Politically, it isn’t relevant. Now it's really just about settler-colonialism.
How did you arrive at your anti-Zionist politics?
I didn't grow up in a home where Zionism was considered to be an important part of being Jewish. My dad went to Habonim, the socialist-Zionist youth movement, and that was definitely important to him. But it wasn't something that he passed on.
I started to think about anti-Zionism at university. I read a lot of post-colonial literature, and joined activist movements that were anti-racist and anti-colonial. Through exposure to these ideas I became more critical of Israel. Even then, I don't know if I would have called myself an anti-Zionist at that stage.
After uni, I worked as a community organiser at the Australian Jewish Democratic Society. This was a bit over a decade ago. This organisation was in some ways a continuation of the Jewish Council. It was certainly not uniformly anti-Zionist. It was a mixed bag. There were people there who strongly supported a two-state solution, and were very sympathetic to liberal Zionism. But then there were others who were more left, and more anti-Zionist. I felt more affinity with their politics, and through these relationships, I started to formulate my own position more actively. It actually pushed me to start looking for historical instances of anti-Zionism in the Australian Jewish community, which is part of what led me to start my research into the Jewish Council.
What was the Jewish Council's attitude towards Zionism?
I don't think you could ever have called them anti-Zionist, though I wouldn't label them as straightforward Zionists, either. The Jewish Council was very influenced by the Communist Party. They fairly closely followed the line of the Soviet Union in relation to Zionism. And that basically meant, up until around 1945, they were very strongly critical of the Zionist project. But then when Partition happened, and war broke out, they reversed their position.
They weren’t supporting Zionism as an ideological project, but they were backing Israel in the war. Again, this was in line with the Soviet Union, who were funnelling arms to Israel—munitions that were very decisive in the country's victory. Somehow, Israel's success was framed as a blow against the British and a blow against the Americans. It was also strategic. The Soviets thought that Israel would somehow end up in their camp. The Jewish Council followed this and ended up participating in pro-Israel rallies. One of the Jewish Council's magazines that I look at in my research shows Israeli soldiers hugging after victory. So they were down for the project, but only insofar as it was seen, in those very early days, as part of a broader anti-imperialist battle.
But in the decade after independence, I think they [the Jewish Council] kind of realised that Israeli politicians were positioning themselves as US allies. They weren't happy about this. By then, though, support for Israel had just become so mainstream and accepted in the Jewish community. And there were also these nascent relationships with Israeli left-wing parties. So the Jewish Council just kind of fell in line with the pro-Israel consensus.
So, if you didn't find the anti-Zionist ideology that you were seeking in the Jewish Council, were there other sources of anti-Zionist movements in Melbourne?
One unusual source of Australian anti-Zionism existed in the 1930s. It was basically like, well, Jews should have a primary loyalty to Australia and therefore the British Empire. Zionism was seen as unnecessary or, worse, at odds with the interests of the British Empire. This was the majority community position—a kind of assimilationist, imperial anti-Zionist position.
But historically, the most significant anti-Zionist movement in the Jewish world was The Bund. This was a mass socialist, Jewish political movement that was very active in Russia and Poland. They opposed Zionism on the basis of their secular, socialist politics, and were very powerful, spreading their ideas in Yiddish-speaking networks around the world.
Of course, the Holocaust came and most of The Bund were murdered. The survivors of the movement, who still held onto their beliefs, spread all over the world, with one of the most successful branches set up here in Melbourne. When they arrived, though, they had become, for valid reasons, very anti-Communist. The Soviet Union had persecuted their leaders and repressed them in Europe, so when they set up here, they were alienated from the Jewish Council, the Communist Party, and basically any fellow traveller leftist organisations. This meant that The Bund ended up aligning with the kind of conservative parts of the ALP. They ceased to be a radical institution and their anti-Zionism was diluted. By the mid-’50s, they made an accommodation where they recognised that Israel was, you know, a valid state. Flash forward to today and The Bund is not really openly challenging Zionist politics in the Jewish community.
Not many people in the community are. Why do you think that is, given that the community was once left-leaning?
This was one of the key questions of my thesis: how did the Jewish community in Melbourne become mostly conservative? Often people claim that it’s because there is a high proportion of Holocaust survivors here. I don't think this is the reason at all. There are ways to deploy Holocaust memory that are not conservative, that seek to draw universalist lessons from the genocide—not just the unquestionable need for Jewish exclusivist nationalism.
The answer is more complicated and historical. As I explore in my book, support for the Jewish Council was possible in Melbourne before the 1950s because supporting the Soviet Union was still acceptable. When the Cold War kicked into gear, the tide turned very quickly. There was a kind of McCarthy-like crackdown on Communism here, and suddenly supporting the Soviet Union in any way was not acceptable in the Australian community. This trickled down into the Jewish community, too, which meant that many suddenly wanted to distance themselves from Communism and the Jewish Council.
The second thing is that Israel, also in the early 1950s, accepted reparations from West Germany, which basically centred their place as allies of US imperialism. Some of this money would be distributed to diaspora communities, too, so there was a real material benefit in strengthening ties with Israel and America.
The community split, and it was quite dramatic. The Zionists became affiliated with the ALP, and kept moving right-ward. The Jewish Council was derided for being “bogus Jews” and Communists. And this trend has more or less just continued.
Tell me about some of the activism you have been engaged in over the past month or so.
The main thing that we've been doing is having a Jew bloc at the pro-Palestine protests. We're trying to get more people down via social media and email. A couple of weeks ago we also had a special "Jews speak out against the genocide in Gaza" event in Parliament Gardens. It was meant for Jewish people specifically, but there were Aboriginal speakers, Jewish speakers, and Palestinian speakers. About 300 people came down, mostly Jewish. It was actually the first Jewish protest in solidarity with Palestine of that size ever in Melbourne. It was really powerful.
And what’s your experience been like organising in pro-Palestinian spaces? Have you felt welcomed?
At the Sunday rallies, we always get a shout-out. People are always taking photos and saying how much it means. Because, as you know, this gets painted as an ethnic or religious conflict, so people are worried that if they're being critical of Israel, they're being anti-semitic. Our presence, even if it's small, shows that this isn't necessarily the case.
But there is also something kind of disturbing about the amount of attention we get. The other day, I was catching the train with my sign that says, “Jews in solidarity with Palestine.” A random woman who was on her way to the rally too just came up and said, “thank you so much for what you're doing. It must be difficult what you're doing.” Part of me is like, that's really nice. But it's also a little bit awkward. For me it's not really that difficult. And on top of that I find it troubling that our presence at these rallies is so rare that we stick out so much.
Is the movement growing here?
Yes. At the rally we held in Parliament Gardens, I think most Jewish people there had never been to a pro-Palestine rally before. So it was really about opening up a space within the Jewish community. People hung around afterwards to chat, and ended up seeing other Jewish people that they never knew shared the same political feelings.
There's also Instagram. There's this whole new generation of Jewish people getting their media here, hearing alternative versions of history, finding like-minded people. The other interesting thing is that basically all of the Jewish leftist anti-Zionists are queer. I'm not, for the record. But a significant proportion of the others are. I think it's because for many, when they deviate from the course of conservative Jewish life, they begin to feel alienated and question lots of other things.
For most Jewish people, it is difficult to avoid Zionism growing up in Melbourne. Even if you politically dissociate with it, it is likely that you will have Zionist family or friends, or worship at a synagogue that has a prayer for the State of Israel. Does becoming anti-Zionist demand a disavowal of community, or even family?
I would say that anti-Zionism shouldn't come from a place of identity, primarily, but should be driven by political commitments. It should come from what your vision is for a better world. It is possible to disagree about this without disavowing.
I also know that for some people, political disagreement isn't possible within a family context. I didn't go to a Jewish school and most of my Jewish friends are from the Jewish left, so it's something I haven't faced myself. But I have friends who are in WhatsApp groups where friends or family are posting horrific stuff. Some get to the point where they're just like, “I don't know if I can engage anymore.” I think we even have mutual friends who have made that decision, and said, “like, well, you know, that this is what I believe. This is who I want to be in solidarity with. This is where my political commitments lie. And if you can't accept that, I'm going to have to make the difficult choice of not engaging anymore.”
It is not a nice thing for people to have to go through, to have those horrible breakups with friends and family. It is tough, but I guess what I'm hoping is that as more Jews become vocally critical of Israel, it will be seen increasingly as a valid political space for people to step into. Once we reach a certain critical mass, this has to be a valid political opinion that is respected, even if others disagree with it.
What type of political solution does this anti-Zionist position advocate for in relation to Israel/ Palestine?
It is anti-colonial. So the end of settler-colonialism in Palestine, which basically means some form of one-state solution where everyone—Arabs and Jews—have equal rights and freedom in between the river and the sea.
What role might political violence play in achieving this desired outcome?
I don't think that killing civilians is something that can be ever be condoned. At the same time, it's one of those things where I'm like, political violence is so far outside of my lived experience, and I'm not not going to tell Palestinians how they should be resisting.
I saw an interesting movie the other day. It's called Revenge: Our Dad the Nazi Killer. It's about these Jewish partisan brothers who killed a lot of Nazis in Europe and then afterwards moved to Melbourne. And then there are rumours and circumstantial evidence that they kept hunting down Nazis and their collaborators in Australia, and if not killing them, intimidating them and threatening them. I had complicated feelings while I watched it. On one hand, it was kind of scary. But then on the other hand, if your entire family was murdered by these people, and the police are not doing anything about it, and there's no justice in sight... I don't know. I'm not normally a vigilante fan, but I'm kind of like... I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't have a moral absolutist stance about violence.
How do you respond to the idea that anti-Zionism is anti-semitism?
By getting out into the streets. If we show up it's harder to sustain the myth. I look to the US Jewish community. They are now having these extremely large and visible protests organised by Jews. When you have thousands and thousands of Jews together being critical of Israel, the idea that this is in principle anti-semitic becomes hard to push.
Of course, at the fringes there are those who go to protests and say anti-semitic things. But when there's 100,000 people hitting the street, there's always going to be a few people amongst them saying anti-semitic things. That's a problem with anti-semitism in society more generally, it's not a problem with the Palestinian solidarity movement and the leaders of the movement. At all the protests they really consistently say that this is not a place for anti-semitism. And they do call it out if they see anything. They try to stop it not just because it's wrong, but because it's detrimental for the movement.
Does an Australian Jew have greater responsibility to be vocally critical of Israel, or to be anti-Zionist, than an Australian non-Jew?
It's a hard one, but I think yes. Because the Jewish community establishments are so old-fashioned, voices of dissent are extremely important. Small Jewish gatherings in support of Palestinian liberation here can have an outsized impact. I have seen this myself. I mean, having 300 people at a protest is normally pretty shit. But the one we held in Parliament Gardens was really powerful and symbolically very important.
I hear what you're saying, but I also think that insisting on a special Jewish responsibility for Israel's actions kind of reifies the links between Jewishness and the State of Israel, which has been the hope of the Zionist project all along.
I think you're completely right, and I feel uncomfortable with it. It's like, isn't this the ultimate victory of Zionism—that every Jew's politics is reduced to how they relate to Zionism? But then I remember that this isn't the left's fault. The reality we live in has been created by people like Netanyahu conflating these identities, and then community leaders falling for it. Jewish identity has actually been really hollowed out by Zionism. We have come to a place where lots of Jews don't have much else to grasp onto. It makes me angry and sad. But I think that we have a responsibility to fight this. It's scary. It's unfortunate. But it's just the way it is.