Article By Chris Kuehl
t would be hard to find a more radioactive term today than “Zionist.” At its core, it simply affirms the Jewish people’s right to live in their ancestral homeland. Yet this single word is fracturing families, churches, political parties, and entire media ecosystems.
The standard disclaimer is, “I don’t hate Jews, I just believe the nation of Israel shouldn’t exist”. This sounds reasonable at first. After all, no earthly government is above criticism or critique. But does this verbal sleight-of-hand hold up to scrutiny? It would be hard to understand how it does.
Israel stands alone as the only country on earth whose right to exist is routinely denied by people who claim to only oppose its policies. Many people frequently disagree with America, but this sentiment is never followed by the absolution of the nation. You never hear, “I don’t hate the Iranians, just their right to self-determination,” or the same statement applied to the Russians, French, or Brazilians. This selective standard exposes the deeper issue.
Anti-Zionism now courses through both political sides, leaving the church uncomfortably caught in the crossfire. On the left, criticism arrives wrapped in the understandable humanitarian concern around Palestinian suffering, yet the question of Israel’s precise responsibility remains fiercely contested. It does not matter that Israel can safeguard and give equal rights to its two million Arab citizens, it will still be accused of apartheid. It does not matter that the majority of Israel’s wars have all been defensive, they will still be accused of being the aggressor. It does not matter that Israel accepted the UN’s establishment of a Palestinian nation in 1947, and that it was the Arab nations that refused, and still refuse, to accept Israel’s existence.
On the right, the focus has shifted to American foreign aid to Israel, with growing accusations that the U.S. and its leaders are mere puppets being dragged around by the ear via the “Jewish lobby” or AIPAC. Are we really supposed to believe that an American nation that refused to acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel for forty-five years, refused to bomb Syria in 2007 (at the request of Israel), refused to acknowledge Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and signed a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 is somehow a mere puppet of Israel? Who could possibly believe such a thing?
If we set aside simplistic answers to complex realities, why is there an obsessive fixation on a tiny nation of nine million people, two million of which are Arabs? In theory, one can hate a nation’s policies without hating its people, but in practice the distinction appears to collapse upon contact with reality.
And does the foreign aid discussion justify such a singular focus on Israel? US foreign aid to all nations combined is far less than 1% of the entire US GDP. One would think that the frequency in which the issue is brought up would certainly lead us to a larger number than this. And why is it that only Israel is in the crosshairs of this conversation? There should be healthy and rigorous debate about how America spends its money, but does this foreign aid number truly justify how frequently Israel is put on trial?
Israel alone is forced to endlessly justify its right to exist, a demand imposed on no other country. Consider the irony: 33 nations voted in the UN to establish Israel in 1947. By comparison, only 56 men, all of which were here in America, signed America’s Declaration of Independence. If international approval is what establishes legitimacy, Israel arguably has a stronger claim than the United States.
Among roughly 195 nations worldwide, only Israel faces the near constant probing and hyper-fixation on its behavior. Most countries (two-thirds by my count) trace their origins to messy wars, conquests, and arbitrary post-conflict divisions — the exact pattern of Israel’s founding.
In other words, there is nothing distinct about Israel’s origin story, outside of its improbability of happening in the first place.
What is distinct is the impossible standard that is applied to Israel alone. When attacked by its neighbors, Israel is expected to not only to win but then to surrender the very territory gained in wars it did not initiate. The UN and human rights bodies have passed more resolutions condemning Israel than against all other countries combined. This includes regimes guilty of documented genocides and atrocities in Sudan, Yemen, Iran, and North Korea. These are the most despicable nations on the planet, but Israel has the honorary distinction of being worse than all of these nations combined.
All of this criticism is safely smuggled in through the deeply in vogue anti-Zionism which keeps its peddlers and promoters safe from the much deeper accusation. But the story doesn’t end with the unceasing accusations against Israel as a national project.
We now see this special distinction that is uniquely saved for the Jewish nation rearing its ugly head towards Jewish people everywhere. The ancient hatred against the Jew is like a train that always arrives on time. And this current wave of cultural hatred against the Jews takes the form of Jewish global conspiracy, American Jewish influence, and fixation on the foreign aid of a single nation. And of course, the critics like to blame Israel’s national policies for this rising tide of antisemitism globally. But a quick glance at the historical record reveals a stubborn truth: Jews have been hated just as fiercely when they had no country as when they do.
This is the reckoning before us: modern anti-Zionism increasingly serves as a socially acceptable cover for the same old fixation. Only now it has been redirected from individual Jews onto the one and only Jewish nation. But we can be sure that if the Jewish nation ceases to exist, this spiritually-fueled hatred would find its way back to its historical home – the Jewish people.
The question is whether we in the Church will recognize the smoke-and-mirrors for what it is.
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