SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: Benjamin Moser, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History, challenges mainstream Zionist narratives. He links the movement to empire, racism, and sectarian division,

https://x.com/Paddystinian/status/2119135295224566066

Benjamin Moser, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History, challenges mainstream Zionist narratives. He links the movement to empire, racism, and sectarian division, arguing it was “a terrible idea” from the start and that “Israel is not something with problems. It is a problem.”

He highlights early Zionist attitudes toward Jewish identity, including Herzl’s 1897 “Mauschel” essay (using antisemitic tropes against Jewish anti-Zionists) and Arthur Schnitzler’s line that the only true antisemite he’d met was Theodor Herzl. The book also profiles figures like British Cabinet minister Edwin Montagu, a Jewish opponent of the Balfour Declaration who warned it would fuel antisemitism by implying dual loyalty and serve British imperial interests in Palestine. It examines Jabotinsky’s 1923 “Iron Wall” theory, which argued that voluntary agreement with Palestine’s native population was impossible and that Zionist colonisation could only proceed under the protection of overwhelming military force (“an iron wall which the native population cannot breach”) until Arabs lost hope of resistance.

Raised liberal Zionist, he shifted after visiting the West Bank and researching Jewish anti-Zionist history. #Zionism #JewishHistory #History #Politics #BalfourDeclaration #IronWall