Countering Antizionism

Anti-Zionism is often presented today as a new political position, a reaction to the policies of one government. For the nearly one million Jews of the Middle East and North Africa and their descendants, it is nothing new. Our families lived it.

In the twentieth century, governments across the Arab world wrote anti-Zionism into law. In Iraq, a 1948 amendment to the penal code made the propagation of Zionism a crime punishable by seven years in prison. In Egypt in 1956, an official proclamation read aloud in mosques declared that “all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state,” and a new nationality law allowed citizenship to be stripped from anyone classified as a “Zionist,” a term the law never defined. In Libya, a 1962 royal decree revoked the nationality of anyone who had any contact with Zionism.

In practice, “Zionist” became a legal label that could be attached to any Jew. It was used to justify arrests, dismissals, frozen bank accounts, confiscated homes and businesses, and finally the expulsion and flight of entire communities that had lived in the region for more than 2,500 years.

“Zionist” was the word used to turn Jewish neighbors into enemies of the state. We cannot stay silent as that same language is normalized again.

Where we stand

Why JIMENA speaks up

Criticism of any government’s policies is part of open debate. Anti-Zionism is something different. When the target shifts from a government’s actions to the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, it becomes a standard applied to Jews alone, and Jews are asked to renounce part of who we are in order to belong. Our communities know that pattern. In the Arab world, Jews were asked to prove they were not Zionists to keep their citizenship, their jobs and their property.

For most Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, Zionism is not an ideology imported from Europe. It is the expression of a connection to the Land of Israel that our families carried through centuries of life in the region, and it is the reason hundreds of thousands of refugees had a home to go to when they were forced out. Today, their descendants make up a large share of Israel’s Jewish population.

That is why JIMENA works to make sure this history is known: in classrooms, on campuses, in the media, and in public policy. When anti-Zionism shapes what students are taught, how communities are defined, or who is welcome in public life, we respond with the historical record and the lived experience of our families.

Read and listen

JIMENA on anti-Zionism

Our families were told that being Zionist made them enemies of the countries they were born in. We will keep telling that story until it is part of how the world understands anti-Zionism.

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Press and speaking inquiries: Sarah Levin, Executive Director, JIMENA · sarahlevin@jimena.org