Are There Any Jews Today Who Oppose the Idea of the State of Israel?

It is stressed in Sefat Emet: “Israel’s unity induces great salvations and removes all the slanderers.” But when the slanderers are our own Jewish people, it contradicts the call to unity stressed by our sages as our “life insurance” as a people. “When there are love, unity, and friendship between each other in Israel, no calamity can come upon them,” says Maor VaShemesh.

The principle by which Jews can overcome any adversity is also stated in the Midrash: “Clearly, if a person takes a bundle of reeds, can he break them at once? But if taken one at a time, even an infant can break them. Thus, you find that Israel are not redeemed until they are all one bundle” (Midrash Tanhuma, Nitzavim, Volume 1).

But instead of being a bundle, our current state as Jewish people is closer to that of a shattered vessel. Antisemitic Jewish activism is echoed across the media in the world and social media in particular. Progressive blogs and communities are led by Jews to produce and reproduce anti-Zionist discourse that questions Israel’s right to exist.

For example, Mondoweiss, funded by Jewish journalists Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz, is a self-declared anti-Zionist blog where Israel is frequently portrayed as a bloodthirsty regime and which is frequently equated to Nazi Germany. Weiss refers to Zionism as an ideology of “apartheid and ethnic cleansing,” and he enthusiastically supported Hezbollah—whose goal is the destruction of Israel—when it competed in Lebanon's parliamentary election in 2009.

And it is precisely Israel’s security that matters the least to the bashers of the Jewish state. Richard Silverstein has built a career writing against Israel in his own blog and in multiple media outlets, including Al-Jazeera. He proudly considers himself a “whistleblower” who is “devoted to exposing the excesses of the Israeli national security state.” His blog Tikkun Olam (correction of the world) has published sensitive classified information which, according to Israeli authorities, had the potential to cause "grave damage to state security," considering the chances that the highly classified documents may end up in enemy hands.

Peter Beinart, an American liberal columnist, journalist, political commentator, and editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, considers the existence of a Jewish state a racist endeavor linked to “Jewish supremacy” and asserts that it, therefore, should be rejected and fought. Those ideas are clearly exposed through all possible means, including promotional clips such as the one titled “Peter Beinart: Why I no longer believe in a Jewish state.”

His book The Crisis of Zionism caused even liberal media such as The New York Times, which, as a common practice, whips Israel, to raise its eyebrows. The NYT’s article “A Missionary Impulse” highlights Beinart’s “Manichaean simplicities” when addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it summarizes Beinart’s ideological approach “to save the country by labeling many of its leaders racist, denouncing many of its American supporters as Holocaust-obsessed enablers, and advocating a boycott of people and products from beyond Israel’s 1967 eastern border.”

The most outspoken opposition to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which more than 40 countries and organizations ratified, and which states that certain expressions are considered antisemitic if they include “the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity,” and “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” emerged specifically from Jews. Far-left Jewish groups, among them Peace Now, Habonim Dror North America, Hashomer Hatzair World Movement, Jewish Labor Committee, J Street, IfNotNow, New Israel Fund, Partners for Progressive Israel, Reconstructing Judaism, and T’ruah, all claimed that the definition contradicts safeguarded core values such as freedom of speech.

When it comes to defining antisemitism, anti-Zionist Jewish organizations have even claimed that supporting Israel is an anti-Jewish interest. In 2023, IfNotNow activists disrupted a speech by a Republican presidential candidate who considers himself pro-Israel. The activists climbed onto the stage where the candidate was speaking and held up a banner comparing his love of Israel to the hatred of Jews. In a tweet, they later called him an “antisemite whose actions and policies both support Israeli apartheid and put Jews in danger.”

Anti-Zionist Jews also rejected pro-Israel resolutions passed by German authorities in 2023. The German government banned the annual Al-Quds Day demonstration in Berlin, held almost every year since 1966 after the event was deemed antisemitic due to hate speech such as demonstrators' shouts of "Death to Israel" and "Death to the Jews." Iran established Al-Quds [the Arabic name for Jerusalem] Day’s commemoration in 1979, calling for Israel's destruction. Nancy Faeser, Federal Minister of the Interior and Community said , "We do not tolerate hatred towards Jews. In Germany in particular, we have a special duty and responsibility to decisively combat antisemitism."

But about a hundred Jewish and Israeli Berliners disagreed. After the ban, the group published an opinion piece calling the measure "discriminatory against the Palestinian minority in Germany and a worrying precedent that will inevitably affect other marginalized communities." The publication added , "This is why we see the support of the Central Council of Jews in Germany for the ban as a mistake that does not represent the diversity of Jewish opinion in Berlin," and called on authorities to freely allow future demonstrations against Israel and the Jewish people.

In response to the letter, Israeli Ambassador to Germany Ron Prosor tweeted , "Apparently these so-called ‘intellectuals’ are troubled by the ban on protests calling for the destruction of Israel. Do you know where calling for the destruction of Israel is allowed? - in Iran. Maybe they would be more comfortable there."

While researching for my book, Jewish Self-Hatred: The Enemy Within - An Overview of Jewish Antisemitism , I found an overwhelming number of examples of Jewish activism against Jews and Israel. Hence, the cases presented here are only the tip of the iceberg and have been selected based only on representing some angles in which they demonstrate Jewish self-hatred.

As long as we are spewing hatred of each other and make no peace among ourselves, no peace will be possible with anyone. In the 1950s, Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) wrote that a “return such as today’s,” namely without unity, “does not impress the nations whatsoever, and we must fear lest they will sell Israel’s independence for their needs.”

Evidently, he was right. Today, no country or people will fight for the existence of the Jewish state. As Baal HaSulam warns in a paper he published under the title The Nation ,

"If we miss the opportunity and do not rise as one, with the great efforts required at a time of danger, to guarantee our staying in the land, then the facts before us pose a great threat to us since matters are developing favorably for our enemies, who seek to destroy us from the face of the Earth. It is also clear that the enormous effort that the rugged road ahead requires of us mandates unity that is as solid and as hard as steel, from all parts of the nation, without exception. If we do not come out with united ranks toward the mighty forces that are standing on our way to harm us, we will find that our hope is doomed in advance."

As our sages have stressed tirelessly, our redemption, salvation, and even survival depend only on our unity. “The prime defense against calamity is love and unity. When there are love, unity, and friendship between each other in Israel, no calamity can come over them. … [If] there is bonding among them, and no separation of hearts, they have peace and quiet … and all the curses and suffering are removed by that [unity].”

These words of wisdom that the author of Maor VaShemesh [Light and Sun] wrote centuries ago are as true today, if not more so.

Based on the book “Jewish Self-Hatred: The Enemy Within - An Overview of Jewish Antisemitism” by Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.