Zionism
I feel I have to say something any time I mention Zionism, given the constant abuse of the IHRA definition of Antisemitism and other material as Zionist propaganda. I thought I should make a post that I can reference for clarity on the context of how I am using that term.
The conflation of Judaism, Zionism, and the specific policies of any modern (1948+) Government of Israel is extremely dangerous to Jewish peoples (plural - it is not a monolythic ethnicity and/or religion)!
“Two groups conflate Zionism and Judaism. Zionists, who want to legitimize Zionism by pretending it is Judaism; and antisemites, who want to de-legitimize Judaism by pretending it is Zionism.” - Yaakov Shapiro, an anti-Zionist Orthodox rabbi.
It is the Anglosphere (UK+CANZUS= England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United States) and Christian Zionists (there are more Evangelical Christians within the USA than there are Jewish people globally) that helped create and continue to protect (from accountability that would apply to a regular UN member state) the Government of Israel. This started with the British Empire’s Balfour Declaration of 1917, which included American Empire support, and has continued to this day.
These groups are not supporting the Government of Israel for pro-Jewish reasons.
To this day we see people claiming that it is the Government of Israel that is influencing USA, Canadian, and other Anglosphere foreign policy (and the policy of other Western European governments). This sounds dangerously close to the antisemitic claim that “Jews” are controlling the world, when in fact Jewish people are still under constant threat by Christians (Supersucessionism) and other groups (some of the same groups that support Zionism for anti-Jewish reasons).
The policy of Canada towards refugees from the Shoah was “None Is Too Many”, and is consistent with Christian Zionism. Canada’s blind support for Zionism and the Government of Israel is not a reversal of policies surrounding the Shoah.
The fact that 80% of the global population of Jewish people are in two Zionist countries (USA and Israel) makes Jewish people less safe today than they have ever been.
See also:
End Times Antisemitism Christian Zionism, Christian Nationalism, and the Threat to Democracy
The dispiriting truth about why many evangelical Christians support Israel
For Christian Zionists, what happens to the Jews and Palestinians is, to put it very mildly, collateral damage
Nineteen Twenty Three
For context on how the violent colonial nature of the Zionist project was always known, and how Christian colonialism of what some call North American was understood as the model, should read the Iron Wall essay written in 1923 by Ze’ev Jabotinsky.
Note that this violent (and in my reading of that document clearly racist) colonial project was imagined before WW2 or the Shoah. Zionism, actively supported by Christians Empires and inspired by Christian colonialism, has always made Jewish people less safe.
1923 was also a critical year in the fight for the recognition of the inherent Rights of Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations.
In 1923 Deskaheh, Chief of the Iroquois League, representing the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, leaves Canada to go on a mission to Geneva (Switzerland). He hopes to attend the League of Nations (now the United Nations) in order to have it recognize the sovereignty of the Iroquois: “The constituent members of the State of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, that is to say, the Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, the Seneca and the Tuscarora, now are, and have been for many centuries, organised and self-governing peoples, respectively, within domains of their own, and united in the oldest League of Nations, the League of the Iroquois...”.
There are many interesting articles to check out by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
"Jews have not been part of colonial projects in the same way that colonizing nations have.
But we have been, often, part of them. It's all both/and.
Often, Jews have been simultaneously settlers and refugees.
But those two things do not cancel each other out."
"The State of Israel wouldn't have existed if it hadn't been convenient for Various World Powers, based on their own agendas, for reasons that had nothing to do with Jewish welfare. We can name that, yes?
Just as we can name, as realists, that the U.S.' sending of weapons to Israel isn't about care and concern for Jews, but rather its own strategic interests."
https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/colonialism/
The two not cancelling each other out is something I've been trying to discuss with fellow settlers of Scottish and Irish descent, or others of European descent whose ancestors came here fleeing man-made (empire-made) famines, etc. They believe they have no responsibilities, and point only to those of British origins (if they believe any ongoing responsibility exists at all).
"To understand how we got here, let's go back to the Protestant Reformation."
https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/heifer/
Please note the Chriatian Zionist propagandist language used by the current Prime Minister of Canada, Catholic Mark Carney.
https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2025/10/08/prime-minister-carney-concludes-visit-washington-dc
"The leaders observed two years since Hamas’ brutal attack on October 7, 2023 – the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. "
October 7, 2023 was not an attack on the Jewish people, but a retaliation against an occupation, colonialism, and genocidal policies of a government.
This deliberate conflation of the actions of the Government of Israel, Zionism and Judaism should be understood as a form of antisemitism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sBKXacCN5E