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Israel keeps Jews safe.
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In brief: Israel presents Zionism as the "solution" to Jewish safety.
Israel presents Zionism as the "solution" to Jewish safety. In reality, it is an ideology and project of settler colonialism whose existence depends on the elimination of another people. It is one of the world's most militarized states, maintaining occupation, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine, repeatedly attacking countries across the region and exporting repressive military and surveillance technologies worldwide. Zionism has instrumentalized the history of European antisemitism to justify a permanent state of militarization and colonial aggression.
If a state must occupy, besiege, and commit genocide to keep one people safe, it is admitting that its existence cannot be sustained without the permanent domination of another people. That is not security. It is settler colonialism.
Modern antisemitism, culminating in the Holocaust, emerged in Europe. At the same time, Jewish communities lived across Palestine and the broader region as integral parts of their societies, sharing common languages, cultures, and histories. It was Zionism that recast Jewish identity as a homogenized national identity, weaponized that identity for colonial ends, and projected the hostility generated by colonization onto the colonized.
Anti-Zionist Jewish organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace reject the claim that Zionism protects Jews or addresses antisemitism. They assert that Zionism destroyed centuries of Jewish coexistence in Palestine and across the Arab world, imposed racial hierarchies that continue to discriminate against many Jews of color in Israel, and fostered a politics of fear that teaches Jews their safety depends on militarism and the domination of Palestinians. True Jewish safety, they argue, comes through justice, equality, and freedom, not settler colonialism.
Israel routinely conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, portraying criticism of its atrocities as a threat to "Jewish safety." This instrumentalizes Jewish identity to suppress opposition to its actions, evade accountability, and prolong its settler-colonial project.
No claim to security can justify colonizing, occupying, or committing genocide against another people. Safety built on domination is neither lawful nor moral.