Let me borrow from the earlier posts to remind you that this is post #3 in an exploration of the various ways people currently use the words Zionism and Zionist. Two years ago, I checked with around 200 people and discovered around eight definitions. This is a perfectly normal number of definitions for a single word. In big dictionaries many words have six to eight definitions. This made them easy to work with. These definitions of Zionism fell into three groups. To understand where someone was coming from culturally or politically, all I had to do two years ago was find which group of definitions they used. Technically, those groups establish diacultural traits on the subject: who shares what with whom shows who knows whom and lives in similar worlds.
Right now, there are a lot more definitions than eight. Language is an ever-changing glory (as is diaculture), and when things come into the public gaze and when there are groups actively trying to erase standard definitions and add new ones, shifts will happen quite quickly. When those changes happen in many countries and in many different cultural and political groups, those changes create a really fuzzy world that’s difficult to navigate.
There is just one more post after this, although if it’s very long, it may be in more than one part. In that post, I will introduce some of the current definitions of Zionism as I saw the word used … until the moment I was blocked by so many bigots that I lost access to their language. Tomorrow’s post will be a snapshot of the use of the word from about December 2025 to the end of January 2026. Establishing a snapshot of key terms is one of the approaches to culture that I use as an historian. When I need to analyse a text (medieval or modern or something else entirely) I often make a private snapshot of the use of key words and phases. This gives me a grounding for understanding the views that are being expressed. It also helps me understand the path language takes after that snapshot. Thank my historian self, then, for leading you astray, and not my novelist self.
I borrowed from my own work, because two books urgently need editing and a short story must be written and there is an essay for Patreon and… I have insufficient time to write this post from the beginning.
1. Jewish definitions
There are two general classes of straightforward Jewish definitions of Zionism. I’ve included the religious Christian view here because it didn’t come up in my query and it should have. It really deserves its own sub-heading with several categories, but I didn’t have any descriptions of it back then, so I will just note how it fits into a Jewish definition. I’ve left out the Naturei Karta and other extreme variants, because I’m not convinced that one can call it Zionism when there is no nation contemplated unless we’re in Messianic times. Both the Christian and the fundamentalist Jewish are therefore unsatisfactory – I’m sorry.
a) Herzl’s Zionism – an historical artefact, that died in 1948 with the advent of Israel. This was the least common definition of those from my original query. It was mentioned by only two people of the almost two hundred who gave me their thoughts. Those two people explained that now Israel is in existence, there is no need for Zionism. Herzl’s aim was achieved, end of story. The proper use of this definition, one of them clarified, is in histories.
b) support for Israel as a country. This is the most common use of the word and expresses simple support or complex of the existence of Israel as a modern country, and most of those who said “I am Zionist” as part of their definition of Zionism add the proviso that they reserved the right to criticise the actions of the Israeli government and to express their concern about problematic Israeli individuals or groups. I asked for examples. Those people considered problematic were often connected to Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir, or to the West Bank settlers. Most of those who expressed this view to me were American, Canadian, British, Australian or Israeli, and they represented a wide range of Jewish practice and culture. They all link back to Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael. How anyone uses the definitions (because there is variance in their use) depends very much on the relationship between Am, Eretz, and Medinat in their mind. It’s not a definition so much as the expression of a relationship that shows how modern Israel (Medinat Yisrael) fits in with the religious expressions that relate to the land (Eretz Yisrael) and, of course, the Jewish people (Am Yisrael). It’s open to almost infinite variation because we like talking things through rather than dictating belief. It’s also open to an enormous amount of variation because of the complexity of Jewish culture. Even a snapshot of one moment in a Jewish explanation will reflect variants that come from rabbis spoken to, books read, opinions of family and friends and so forth. This is why most of the cute non-Jewish diagrams showing what Zionism is or may be do not actually reflect a great deal of how Jews describe it. The simple words mask a wonderfully fruitful discourse.
The Christian use of it also varies according to the nature of their religious belief. Whether it’s passionate loyalty to a country, belief that the country has the right to exist, or belief that the end of days requires it to exist…it all comes down to Israel existing.
2. Russian-origin definitions
The second group of definitions has a fairly straightforward origin. Russia prior to 1917 dealt with its Jews a bit differently to, say Germany. It had extraordinary tough conscription for Jewish boys (my ancestor, Abraham Polack was one) and it also derived from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which itself plagiarised works that were about entirely different subjects. The Protocols have not been out of print since 1903, as far as I know, and wherever this set of definitions of Zionism is used, it harks back to the Protocols.
The Russian Empire fell, but their rather nasty explanation of Zionism didn’t.
Soviet Russia used the base the Russian Empire gave. It claimed it didn’t hate Jews, just Zionists and any Jew who saw Am Yisrael or anything related. So many Jews lost their religion and their culture and links to family elsewhere in the world… but were permitted to live.
In this set of definitions, Zionism was linked to Western Imperialism, just as now, it’s linked to Colonialism. This has been called ‘sanitised antisemitism’ – a lot of the hate in Australia right now is yet another version of sanitised antisemitism. Good Jews/Bad Jews, purity statements that mean you’re OK – these are two traits of sanitised antisemitism.
Even two years ago, this group of definitions of Zionism it was a set. Most people thought they were saying the same thing, but, really, they agreed on the bigoted heart of the definitions and not on the definitions themselves. In each of these definitions, Zionists are many, many different things, all of which define Jews as ‘other.’ Most of them are used when people want to share hate for Jews without being seen as antisemites. This brings the use of ‘Zionist’ into play: it’s often used as a deniable replacement for ‘Jew.’ This manifests as “I am not a bigot. I was talking about Zionists, not Jews.”
How you tell the difference is to look at the rest of the speech/essay. If there are no links to Israel and heaps of links to personal actions or to antisemitic tropes, the person is using ‘Zionist’ but talking about Jews.)
While the fervour and the almost religious belief in the accuracy of these definitions are consistent, the actual qualities applied to Zionists varied in 2024, they began from the literature of hate and then found their own paths for expressing that hate.
In 2025 many of its users do not share their understanding of qualities and explain the word quite vaguely. I’ve even been told “You already know what I’m talking about” when I ask for clarification. Jews are supposed to be marvellously intuitive, I suspect, and also, the person using the word has not considered how to explain it. This explains the passion behind the word ‘Zionism.’ It has the force of emotion without the qualifications of nuance.
Many users, when they talk about matters Jewish and about matters Israeli, follow the classic form of antisemitism. Many don’t. The mix of evil qualities possessed by Zionists changes from person to person. Again, this is passion without clarity. The variants on this usually link with the Russian historical definitions of Zionism. The original of these was the one derived from anti-Jewish propaganda.
3. Pure hate
‘Zionism’ according to these people is a word imbued with passion and truth and almost a religious fervour. That fervour contains no love. It is flooded with hate and distrust. Zionists are liars and want to own the world. Zionists are propaganda experts and manipulative and violent.
This group has two categories.
a) It took me a while to realise that, in 2024, when I asked for definitions of Zionism, a number of people gave me a description of an evil individual compiled from their own fears and fears folded into stereotyping and hate. They looked in a mirror and saw hate and said, “These people who are not like me are the cause of that hate because they personally embody the qualities I hate.” These individuals will then apply that definition to anyone Jew who does not follow a route that will demonstrate that they are one of the rare Good Jews. This route often entails expressing active hate for all things Israeli and distrust of Jews in general.
b) Zionism as an evil cult, practising the most evil thing of the moment. Genocide and paedophilia are used a lot right now, for instance. I also encounter worshipping Satan and drinking the blood of children. (By ‘encounter,’ I mean that I have been accused of all these things.) This is irrational hate transformed into the darkest fantasy the person can imagine.
Some of those doing the imagining do a simple translation between their invention and Judaism. Those accusing claim to have read about Judaism and to know it better than me, but when I tell them to take their evidence of me as a murderer to the police or ask for a definition of Zionism that explains what they’re telling me, they mostly disappear like snow in summer. Just one person in 2024/5 asked me why I was asking and I linked him to Jewish history sites and… I’ve not seen him hate since. Some of it, then, is lack of education about Judaism, or education only from antisemites.
The big lesson I learned from exploring these views of Zionism, is that we can’t actually converse until we’re certain we’re on the same page, but that’s another story.
Next up, I’ll talk about current views. That has to wait until Monday, I’m afraid, because I have over 450 pages to edit and the more I can do this weekend, the easier next week will be.