Early Jewish anti-Zionism , the only Jew then in a senior British government position, stating his opposition to the pro-Zionist
Balfour Declaration, which he described as "antisemitic in result" of the
General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland wrote in 1938 that "the Zionists regard themselves as second class citizens in Poland. Their aim is to be first class citizens in Palestine and make the Arabs second class citizens," and that "Zionism, in point of fact, has always been a Siamese twin of antisemitism."
In Europe From the beginning, there was resistance to Zionism and
Theodor Herzl's call for the establishment of a Jewish state in
Palestine. Opposition came from diverse sources: many
Orthodox rabbis held that a Jewish state before the
messiah was against divine will; assimilationist Jewish liberals feared Zionism threatened efforts at integration and citizenship in European states; and various
left-wing Jewish movements, such as the
Bund and
Autonomists, promoted alternative forms of Jewish identity. In Western Europe, established Jewish communities often preferred loyalty to their nation-states over Jewish particularism. Some Reform rabbis removed references to
Zion from liturgy, while others criticized Zionism as unrealistic. By contrast,
the Mizrachi movement represented religious Zionist support, though more traditionalist groups like
Agudat Yisrael opposed cooperation with secular Zionists. In the Soviet Union, the
Yevsektsiya curtailed Zionist activity as part of its campaign against "Jewish bourgeois nationalism".
Outside Europe lawyer, journalist, and poet
Jacob Israël de Haan became active against Zionism after having migrated to Palestine. In 1924,
Haganah member
Avraham Tehomi assassinated de Haan in Jerusalem on the orders of leader
Yitzhak Ben-Zvi before de Haan was due to go to London to advocate against Zionism. In regions outside Europe and North America, Zionism was often met with disinterest and regarded as a foreign ideology.
In Morocco, for example, it was introduced by Europeans in port cities and met with skepticism by the local
Sephardic populations, who regarded it as irreligious and not concerned with their interests. It was later actively promoted by envoys from the Zionist fundraising organizations
Jewish National Fund and
Keren Hayesod. ''
L'Union Marocaine, a francophone Jewish newspaper, spoke for the associated with the Alliance Israélite Universelle, who saw Zionism as an obstacle to assimilation with the Europeans, and challenged L'Avenir Illustré'', which published Zionist propaganda. Rural Moroccan Jews lived in relative isolation in their villages and were not very involved with Zionism until the
Jewish Agency and
Mossad LeAliya actively recruited them for migration by in the 1950s and 60s. There was no significant
migration of Moroccan Jews to Palestine before the
1948 war and the
establishment of the State of Israel. According to
Joel Beinin, "because most Egyptian Jews were relatively secure and comfortable during the 1930s, few saw the point of risking their position by ostentatious support for Zionism", and those who did express support for Zionism rarely migrated to Palestine themselves.
Early non-Jewish anti-Zionism firmly maintained his anti-Zionist position to secure Palestine until the
Young Turk revolution who in 1899 wrote a letter to Theodor Herzl arguing against Zionism. "... in the name of God," he wrote, "let Palestine be left alone." Theodor Herzl approached the
Sultan of the Ottoman Empire Abdul Hamid II for a charter to colonize
Ottoman Palestine, offering twenty million pounds to consolidate the
public debt of the
Ottoman economy. In June 1896, through Zionist diplomatic agent Philip de Newlinski in Istanbul, he met with the Sultan, who declined the offer, saying that the land belonged to his people, who had defended it with their lives, and that he would not sell even a foot of it. In May 1901, Herzl requested another meeting with the Sultan, facilitated by the Sultan's mediator
Ármin Vámbéry, and Herzl learnt that the Sultan wanted to reclaim control of the
Ottoman Public Debt Administration, which was administered by European powers. As a result, Herzl aimed to free the Sultan from European financiers by consolidating Ottoman debt through a Jewish syndicate. Since the Ottomans were interested in separating financial matters from the colonization proposal, in contrast with Herzl's demands, this led to unsuccessful negotiations. In February 1902, discussions began regarding Jewish migration to the Ottoman Empire, but the
Ottoman Foreign Ministry excluded Palestine by offering territories such as
Mesopotamia. Herzl declined the offer, insisting on the significance of Palestine for any agreement ending the talks. Arabs began paying attention to Zionism in the
Late Ottoman period. In 1899, compelled by a "holy duty of conscience",
Yousef al-Khalidi,
mayor of Jerusalem and a member of the
Ottoman Parliament, wrote a letter to
Zadok Kahn, the
chief rabbi of France to voice his concerns that Zionism, which he called a "natural, beautiful and just" idea, would jeopardize the friendly associations among Muslims, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire. He wrote: "Who can deny the rights of the Jews to Palestine? My God, historically it is your country!" But Khalidi suggested that "geographically, [it had] no hope of realisation"; since Palestine was already inhabited, the Zionists should find another place for the implementation of their political goals: "in the name of God", he wrote, "let Palestine be left alone." According to
Rashid Khalidi, Alexander Scholch and
Dominique Perrin, Yousef Khalidi was prescient in predicting that, regardless of Jewish historic rights, given the geopolitical context, Zionism could stir an awakening of Arab nationalism uniting Christians and Muslims. Kahn showed the letter to Theodor Herzl, who on 19 March 1899 replied to Khalidi in French, arguing that both the Ottoman Empire and the non-Jewish population of Palestine would benefit from Jewish immigration. As to Khalidi's concerns about the non-Jewish majority population of Palestine, Herzl replied rhetorically: "who would think of sending them away?" Rashid Khalidi notes that this was penned four years after Herzl had confided to his diary the idea of spiriting the Arab population away to make way for Jews. The
Maronite Christian Naguib Azoury, in his 1905
The Awakening of the Arab Nation, warned that the "Jewish people" were engaged in a concerted drive to establish a country in the area they believed was their homeland. Subsequently, the
Palestinian Christian-owned and highly influential newspaper
Falastin was founded in 1911 in the then Arab-majority city of
Jaffa and soon became the area's fiercest and most consistent critic of Zionism. It helped shape
Palestinian identity and
nationalism. newspaper suggests Zionist insincerity is protected by British complicity, with Zionism as a crocodile under the protection of a British officer telling Palestinian Arabs: "don't be afraid!!! I will swallow you peacefully...". Palestinian and broader Arab anti-Zionism took a decisive turn, and became a serious force, with the November 1917 publication of the
Balfour Declaration – which arguably emerged from an antisemitic milieu – in the face of strenuous resistance from two anti-Zionists,
Lord Curzon and
Edwin Montagu, then the (Jewish)
Secretary of State for India. Other than assuring civil equality for all future Palestinians regardless of creed, it promised diaspora Jews territorial rights to Palestine, where, according to the 1914 Ottoman census of its citizens, 83% were Muslim, 11.2% Christian, and 5% Jewish. The majority Muslim and Christian population constituting 94% of the citizenry only had their "religious rights" recognized. Given that Arab notables were almost unanimous in repudiating Zionism, and incidents such as the
Surafend massacre (perpetrated by
Australian and
New Zealand troops serving alongside the British) stirred deep resentment against Britain throughout the area, the British soon came to the conclusion, which they confided to the Americans during the
King–Crane Commission, that the provisions for Zionism could only be implemented by military force. To this end, the
British Army calculated that a garrison of at least 50,000 troops would be required to implement the Zionist project on Palestinian soil. According to
Henry Laurens, uneasiness among British troops stationed in the region over the task of ostensibly supporting Zionism, something that clashed with their customary paternalistic treatment of colonial populations, accounted for much of the anti-Zionist sentiment that UK military personnel based in Palestine expressed.
Anti-Zionist reactions to the Balfour Declaration American approval of the
Balfour Declaration came about through the secret mediation of the antisemitic anti-Zionist
Colonel House with President
Woodrow Wilson, bypassing Secretary of State
Robert Lansing. Wilson's recognition alarmed many American Jewish leaders who viewed the U.S. as their "new Zion." At the
Paris Peace Conference, 299 rabbis voiced opposition to the notion of a Jewish Palestine, and Lansing thought that Zionism contradicted Wilson's
principle of self-determination. This moment helped establish an anti-Zionist tradition in
the US State Department. Once the
Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA) began to implement the Declaration, both sides had reason to accuse the authorities of bias. Several contemporary sources credit the notion that English administrators were sympathetic to Arabs and diffident about Jews. One Zionist complaint was that several of the British Mandatory administration's higher functionaries tolerated anti-Zionist and even antisemitic policies. Orthodox Jewish anti-Zionist figures such as
Jacob Israël de Haan told the Mandate authorities that Zionists did not represent the entire Jewish community. The British press was often critical: the
Northcliffe Press was openly anti-Zionist,
Lord Beaverbrook opposed the Mandate, and complaints were made about the heavy burden of governing land with competing national interests. British anti-Zionism and antisemitism was also tinged with
anti-Bolshevism, as Jews were accused of having played a major role in the
Russian Revolution. Palestinians sought to discredit Zionism by associating it with communist infiltration, which the British took seriously. The 1920
Palin Commission investigation into the
anti-Zionist riots at Nebi Musa found that there was a widespread perception among Arabs, reflected among British residents and officials, that Zionists are "arrogant, insolent and provocative"., March 1920, during the
Occupied Enemy Territory Administration. The crowd of Muslim and Christian Palestinians are shown outside
Damascus Gate,
Old City of Jerusalem.The Marxist wing of the Zionist movement,
Poale Zion, fractured in the 1920s when some members came to believe that Zionism would be discriminatory to Palestine's Arab majority. Some factions of Poale Zion gravitated toward communism. In 1924, the Comintern recognized the
Palestine Communist Party (PCP), which retained some Zionist traces, and Palestinian Arabs joined the party. The
General Jewish Labor Union of Eastern Europe promoted
doykayt (hereness), and dismissed Zionism as "separatist, chauvinist, clerical and conservative". The
Communist Party USA (CPUSA) called Zionism "a colonial project". Many Jewish communal organizations in Germany and Italy advanced assimilationist anti-Zionism, emphasizing loyalty to their states.
Religious anti-Zionism Some leaders within
Orthodox Judaism outside of the United States expressed opposition to
political Zionism because the Zionist movement espoused nationalism in a secular fashion and used "Zion", "Jerusalem", "Land of Israel", "redemption", and "ingathering of exiles" as literal rather than sacred terms, endeavoring to achieve them in this world. According to Menachem Keren-Kratz, the situation in the
United States differed, with "most
Reform rabbis and
laypeople repudiat[ing]" Zionism while most of the Orthodox supported it. Elaborating on the work of
David N. Myers, Jewish historian
Jonathan Judaken wrote in 2013 that "numerous Jewish traditions have insisted that preservation of what is most precious about Judaism and Jewishness 'demands' a principled anti-Zionism or post-Zionism." This tradition dwindled in the
aftermath of the Holocaust and the
establishment of the State of Israel, but Judaken saw it as still alive in religious groups such as
Neturei Karta and among many intellectuals of Jewish background in Israel and the diaspora, such as
George Steiner,
Tony Judt, and
Baruch Kimmerling. ==Anti-Zionism after World War II and the creation of Israel==