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Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History
A sweeping and revelatory history of the hidden tradition of Jewish thinkers who opposed Zionism from Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Moser.
In A Jewish History, Benjamin Moser uncovers a suppressed tradition that has shaped Jewish thought for generations. Through a cast of artists, rabbis, poets, lawyers, activists, journalists, and politicians—from Europe and Africa and Asia and Latin America—Moser traces a lineage of Jewish dissenters who confronted Zionism’s moral and political stakes—often at devastating personal cost, including censorship, exile, and death.
Their lives form a sweeping, global narrative that dismantles a powerful that anti-Zionism is synonymous with antisemitism. Spanning continents and centuries, these voices—people from the right and the left, Reform and Orthodox, Ashkenazic and Sephardic, men and women, gay and straight—differ sharply in belief and background, yet converge on a shared warning about the consequences of a nationalist project built on exclusion. What emerges is not only a rediscovered tradition of Jewish moral thought, but a startling reappraisal of Zionism itself.
Moser’s work restores the full scale and depth of Jewish ethical imagination, affirming that Judaism is older and larger than any single political project. Lucid, unsparing, and deeply humane, Anti-Zionism cements Moser’s place as one of our foremost Jewish writers and presents a framework through which this history—and its meanings—will be understood for years to come.
In A Jewish History, Benjamin Moser uncovers a suppressed tradition that has shaped Jewish thought for generations. Through a cast of artists, rabbis, poets, lawyers, activists, journalists, and politicians—from Europe and Africa and Asia and Latin America—Moser traces a lineage of Jewish dissenters who confronted Zionism’s moral and political stakes—often at devastating personal cost, including censorship, exile, and death.
Their lives form a sweeping, global narrative that dismantles a powerful that anti-Zionism is synonymous with antisemitism. Spanning continents and centuries, these voices—people from the right and the left, Reform and Orthodox, Ashkenazic and Sephardic, men and women, gay and straight—differ sharply in belief and background, yet converge on a shared warning about the consequences of a nationalist project built on exclusion. What emerges is not only a rediscovered tradition of Jewish moral thought, but a startling reappraisal of Zionism itself.
Moser’s work restores the full scale and depth of Jewish ethical imagination, affirming that Judaism is older and larger than any single political project. Lucid, unsparing, and deeply humane, Anti-Zionism cements Moser’s place as one of our foremost Jewish writers and presents a framework through which this history—and its meanings—will be understood for years to come.
396 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 22, 2026
About the author
Benjamin Moser
47 books320 followersBenjamin Moser is a writer, editor, critic, and translator who was born in Houston in 1976 and lives in the Netherlands. After attending high school in Texas and France, he graduated from Brown University with a degree in History. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Utrecht.
He worked at Foreign Affairs magazine and Alfred A. Knopf in New York before becoming an editor at the Harvill Press in London. He was the New Books columnist for Harper's Magazine before becoming a Contributing Editor on visual art and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His work has appeared in many publications in the United States and abroad, including Condé Nast Traveler, Newsweek, and The American Scholar.
His first book, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, was published by Oxford University Press (USA), Haus Publishing (UK), Cosac Naify (Brazil), and Civilização (Portugal). Editions are forthcoming in France and Germany. He is the Series Editor of the new retranslations of Clarice Lispector to be published in the United States by New Directions and in the United Kingdom by Penguin Modern Classics.
He worked at Foreign Affairs magazine and Alfred A. Knopf in New York before becoming an editor at the Harvill Press in London. He was the New Books columnist for Harper's Magazine before becoming a Contributing Editor on visual art and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His work has appeared in many publications in the United States and abroad, including Condé Nast Traveler, Newsweek, and The American Scholar.
His first book, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, was published by Oxford University Press (USA), Haus Publishing (UK), Cosac Naify (Brazil), and Civilização (Portugal). Editions are forthcoming in France and Germany. He is the Series Editor of the new retranslations of Clarice Lispector to be published in the United States by New Directions and in the United Kingdom by Penguin Modern Classics.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
Review of advance copy received from Author
This is a complex and emotional read- I highly recommend it even though I have questions about it. 90% of what is in here has been unavailable in one place as far as I know. And much of this information was unknown to me previously, or lived in some unexamined place in my awareness.
As much as I learned - more about the history of Zionism than the history of AntiZionism- the main revelation was how much I STILL, after 17 years of being out front for Palestine, hold on to some Zionist myths (like that Herzl was influenced by the Dreyfus trial to write The Jewish State- something I actually repeated in one of my books- turns out he made this up retrospectively)-
either because I've heard these lies so many times, or I didn't realize that they were locked in my psyche.
I am not going to sum this book up, or summarize its achievements. (The campaign against Hannah Arendt's objection to the Eichmann trial being used to justify Zionism was orchestrated. Of course it was, as someone who has been on the receiving end o Hasbarah, why didn't I realize that?!)
I just want to say, that because it raised more questions for me than it answered, its impact on me was gigantic. Highly recommended if you might still have any fuzzy areas left.
Very interested to see how it is received. I obviously needed this book and I am grateful for it.
As much as I learned - more about the history of Zionism than the history of AntiZionism- the main revelation was how much I STILL, after 17 years of being out front for Palestine, hold on to some Zionist myths (like that Herzl was influenced by the Dreyfus trial to write The Jewish State- something I actually repeated in one of my books- turns out he made this up retrospectively)-
either because I've heard these lies so many times, or I didn't realize that they were locked in my psyche.
I am not going to sum this book up, or summarize its achievements. (The campaign against Hannah Arendt's objection to the Eichmann trial being used to justify Zionism was orchestrated. Of course it was, as someone who has been on the receiving end o Hasbarah, why didn't I realize that?!)
I just want to say, that because it raised more questions for me than it answered, its impact on me was gigantic. Highly recommended if you might still have any fuzzy areas left.
Very interested to see how it is received. I obviously needed this book and I am grateful for it.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Benjamin Moser is very brave to write this book, and, unfortunately, I predict a concerted campaign to destroy his career will begin any day now. His book chronicles the reaction to (mostly) Jewish writers and artists over the last 150 years who have spoken out in opposition to Zionist violence and the apartheid state of Israel. It’s almost inevitable that the same vitriol will explode in reaction to this book (and maybe even my review of it).
Despite what many try to argue, and what has been so successfully ingrained in the psyche of American, German, and many other societies: no, it is not antisemitic to criticize Israel for its state sanctioned violence, apartheid, and genocide, just as it is also not anti-Chinese to criticize the policies of the CCP, nor anti-American to criticize Trump.
I’m sure some will argue this book could have done more to explain why Zionism arose in the 19th century, especially the brutality of Tsar’s pogroms. Perhaps a few pages could have been spent on that at the start to ward off that criticism. But the point of the book is to educate readers about the long history of anti-Zionist leaders (almost all Jews), through chapter-length biographies of those who have had the courage to publicly criticize Israel and work on behalf of Palestinians. The most remarkable of all was probably Felicia Langer. I had never heard of her before this book.
As a Jew myself, I’ve been told that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. I’ve finally come to reject that premise, but it’s taken me a long time to understand that anti-Zionism does not mean wishing ill on Israelis. It means opposing Israeli’s apartheid system and state sanctioned genocide of Palestinians.
Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the eARC.
Despite what many try to argue, and what has been so successfully ingrained in the psyche of American, German, and many other societies: no, it is not antisemitic to criticize Israel for its state sanctioned violence, apartheid, and genocide, just as it is also not anti-Chinese to criticize the policies of the CCP, nor anti-American to criticize Trump.
I’m sure some will argue this book could have done more to explain why Zionism arose in the 19th century, especially the brutality of Tsar’s pogroms. Perhaps a few pages could have been spent on that at the start to ward off that criticism. But the point of the book is to educate readers about the long history of anti-Zionist leaders (almost all Jews), through chapter-length biographies of those who have had the courage to publicly criticize Israel and work on behalf of Palestinians. The most remarkable of all was probably Felicia Langer. I had never heard of her before this book.
As a Jew myself, I’ve been told that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. I’ve finally come to reject that premise, but it’s taken me a long time to understand that anti-Zionism does not mean wishing ill on Israelis. It means opposing Israeli’s apartheid system and state sanctioned genocide of Palestinians.
Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the eARC.
Review of advance copy
this author is not someone you want to have as an ideological opponent as their writing is so lyrical and evocative they can really paint a compelling picture. this is indeed a damning portrait of Zionism as one of the past century’s most violent race-based ideologies. The story is told through the lives of Jewish dissidents against Zionism who today as he notes are becoming more numerous
September 25, 2026
My grandparents were the only members of their families to survive the Holocaust. The Judaism I knew for the majority of my life I now recognize as Zionism, a word I didn’t know the meaning of until I began to research the history of Judaism and its near-total capture by Zionism. I was skeptical of everything I learned. It seemed impossible that the world I knew was so disconnected from the reality that created it.
Moser tells the story that I uncovered myself over these last few years and communicates it with a clarity and detail I have not previously encountered. Judaism has a rich, diverse history, much of which was erased during the Holocaust. As painful as it is to recognize, Zionism has continued that erasure. The effects on the Jewish world have been catastrophic and yet pale in comparison to what Palestinians have been subjected to for over a century.
It’s important that people learn history told from outside Zionism. If I could only read one book on the subject, this would be it.
Moser tells the story that I uncovered myself over these last few years and communicates it with a clarity and detail I have not previously encountered. Judaism has a rich, diverse history, much of which was erased during the Holocaust. As painful as it is to recognize, Zionism has continued that erasure. The effects on the Jewish world have been catastrophic and yet pale in comparison to what Palestinians have been subjected to for over a century.
It’s important that people learn history told from outside Zionism. If I could only read one book on the subject, this would be it.
September 25, 2026
Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History by Benjamin Moser offers a sweeping exploration of Jewish thinkers who challenged Zionism across different eras, communities, and political traditions. Through portraits of rabbis, writers, activists, scholars, and other figures, Moser highlights a lesser-known strand of Jewish intellectual and political history.
The book is especially interesting in the way it connects individual lives with larger questions about nationalism, Jewish identity, ethics, and political belonging. Moser presents a strongly argued perspective, and recent reviews have both praised the book's recovery of these overlooked voices and questioned aspects of its historical interpretation.
A thought-provoking book for readers interested in Jewish history, Zionism, political thought, and the different perspectives that have shaped these debates.
The book is especially interesting in the way it connects individual lives with larger questions about nationalism, Jewish identity, ethics, and political belonging. Moser presents a strongly argued perspective, and recent reviews have both praised the book's recovery of these overlooked voices and questioned aspects of its historical interpretation.
A thought-provoking book for readers interested in Jewish history, Zionism, political thought, and the different perspectives that have shaped these debates.
September 22, 2026
Thank you Doubleday for my free ARC. These
Opinions are my own:
Wow. Just…I can’t consume it fast enough. And I find myself sitting with it at intervals, pausing to absorb it. I’m the daughter of an ethnically Jewish, Zionist father, and I freely admit that my mind was already made up (pro-Judaism, anti-Zionist) before opening this book. I am a humanitarian worker by profession and believer in justice and universal human rights what Israel is doing and has done in Palestine is horrific.
Moser writes clearly and engagingly, laying out fact and opinion as a biographer and writer who is also a Jew. I understand this is a much bigger subject with many more dynamics than can be contained in his book, but I found I to do a good job at what it set out to do.
Opinions are my own:
Wow. Just…I can’t consume it fast enough. And I find myself sitting with it at intervals, pausing to absorb it. I’m the daughter of an ethnically Jewish, Zionist father, and I freely admit that my mind was already made up (pro-Judaism, anti-Zionist) before opening this book. I am a humanitarian worker by profession and believer in justice and universal human rights what Israel is doing and has done in Palestine is horrific.
Moser writes clearly and engagingly, laying out fact and opinion as a biographer and writer who is also a Jew. I understand this is a much bigger subject with many more dynamics than can be contained in his book, but I found I to do a good job at what it set out to do.
October 4, 2026
Yes, it’s true that once most Jews were anti-Zionist. Myself, and the party I support, the Socialist Workers Party and the ‘Militant’ newspaper were anti-Zionist. I have not become a Zionist--Jewish nationalist, or an American patriot. I’m an internationalist. I’m not going to call myself an anti-Zionist when the term "Zionist" has primarily become a euphemism for Jew, and it has. It is necessary to identify people by what they’re for, not what they’re against. It is reactionary to blame the working class for what the rulers do. I was against tarring all Germans with the brush of Nazism just as I am against blaming all Israelis, much less all Jews with guilt. The founders of Zionism and Israel were scoundrels, but I find that true of most capitalist politicians, which is why I’m a communist.
Some of the portraits in this book are of people I have huge respect for, some not. I also see Felicia Langer as a heroic figure. Maxime Rodinson's Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? was useful once, but with thousands of over-privileged and over-mis-educated anti-Semites incoherently babbling about settler colonists, not so much.
Moser mentions Einstein, who called himself a Zionist, but wasn't for a Jewish state, He was naive politically, first supporting pacifism, then the US imperialist war. For the SWP's stance, see Socialism on Trial: Testimony at Minneapolis Sedition Trial. Einstein, after the war played a hugely progressive role in explaining the dangers of nuclear weapons, opposing Jim Crow, which was the major source of apartheid, and opposing the anti-communist witch hunt, which was undermining civil liberties in the US. Joe McCarthy was a genuine fascist, see Notebook of an Agitator: From the Wobblies to the Fight against the Korean War and McCarthyism.
Another who called himself a Zionist but wasn't for a Jewish state was the outstanding journalist I.F. Stone. He wrote about the formation of Israel and a few years later about the plight of the Palestinians, see Underground to Palestine: And Other Writing on Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East.
Moser, in cancel-culture style discards Marxism because “[Marx] was born more than two centuries ago, and lived in a world that in many ways is unrecognizable today.” In many ways it is unrecognizable from the world I was born into, a year after Israel was formed, but we are still living under the dictatorship of capital. In fact, an ever-smaller number of billionaires in the US control most of the wealth of the world. And the real wages of working people in this country have been falling; unemployment (the statistics leave out people too discouraged to look for work) is on the rise. Life expectancy too is falling among the working class, and large numbers are still living with their parents even after getting married and can’t afford to have kids. The Democrats are only interested in their right to not have kids, which I support too, although we need to win a majority.
Moser has rejected Marxism without knowing anything about it. I doubt that he has read the definitive Marxist book on the Jews and anti-Semitism, The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation, despite the fact that Maxime Rodinson wrote an introduction to a French edition of it. Moser doesn’t know anything about Lenin, who after Marx was the most important communist. He just takes a wild guess and writes about the “Leninist belief that nationalism was a bourgeois distraction from working-class internationalism.” Has he ever heard the phrase “prison-house of nations” applied to the Russian Empire? Lenin wasn’t the first to use it, but he was the first to attempt to smash it and grant self-determination, especially language rights to all the oppressed nationalities. Moser talks about the death of Stalin but seems to view Stalinism as simply the cult of personality and mass murder, which Khrushchev admitted. Not knowing anything about Lenin, he doesn’t have a clue that Stalin reversed virtually all of Lenin’s policies, including trying to restore Russian as the sole language. This is important in understanding why Putin, a Russian chauvinist invading Ukraine, hates Lenin but has a soft-spot for Stalin. Does he know that Lenin expected the workers of Germany to follow the Russian example--- see The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power: Documents, 1918-1919; Preparing the Founding Congress. Stalin thought you could achieve “socialism in one country,” a utopia, although of course it could and did start in a single rather underdeveloped country. The Russian Revolution cannot be understood without reading History of the Russian Revolution.,
To Trotsky, once in exile (and they had to carry the Red Army founder over the border, since he wouldn’t go willingly) continued to support the Soviet Union, but explained that it had become the rule of a privileged bureaucracy and that as it degenerated further Stalinism represented a Thermidorean counterrevolution. See The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?, The Stalin School of Falsification, The Third International after Lenin. Stalin revived anti-Semitism in his fight against Trotsky's Left Opposition, see The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch.
Not knowing Marxism, Moser has missed gaining an understanding of what fascism is—See The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany and Fascism and Big Business. He doesn’t have a clue that if the policies formulated by Lenin and the Communist International had been in effect, rather than Stalin’s "theory" that the social democrats were worse than Hitler, it is likely that Hitler would have never come to power. But to Moser this is all just petty squabbles.
Much of what Moser writes about the downfall of apartheid is incorrect, because it leaves Cuba out of the picture, and claims the boycott played a central role. But acknowledging that would not help him much with his middle-class audience. See, Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own, and Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire In Africa by Cuban hero Víctor Dreke Cruz, who had the opportunity to collaborate closely with Amílcar Cabral, one of the most outstanding African revolutionaries. He wasn’t Jewish and supported Israel’s right to exist, but I have a lot more respect for Nelson Mandela than the Stalinist Ronnie Kasrils. Yes, he played a role, but he presents a whitewashed version of Spear of the Nation, which Mandela founded. In fact, contrary to what it was formed to be, there was much outright terrorism with many civilian deaths. And there was Joe Slovo (also Jewish) popularizing “kill the Boer, the farmer.” uMkhonto weSizwe had a symbolic value, which is why Mandela wouldn’t dissolve it before the ANC had won real gains. I attended the large anti-apartheid marches in New York, and many, if not most of the chants were for Cuba! But BDS et al has consciously hid all this history of the one revolution since the Russian with world class communist leadership--Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara.
One of the last things Fidel Castro did, which he couldn’t have done as president (because Cuba’s trade with Iran was important), was to give an interview to Atlantic magazine. In 2010, after then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had proclaimed the Holocaust — the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis — was an “unprovable and mythical claim,” Castro invited Atlantic magazine writer Jeffrey Goldberg to come to Cuba and interview him. Castro had huge disagreements with Israel, but told reporter (now editor) Jeffrey Goldberg “I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims,” Castro told Goldberg. “They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything.”
Here is Nelson Mandela in Cuba, on the anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, July 26th, 1991:
“The crushing defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale was a victory for the whole of Africa! The overwhelming defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale provided the possibility for Angola to enjoy peace and consolidate its own sovereignty! The defeat of the racist army allowed the struggling people of Namibia to finally win their independence! The decisive defeat of the apartheid aggressors broke the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressors! The defeat of the apartheid army was an inspiration to the struggling people inside South Africa! Without the defeat of Cuito Cuanavale our organizations would not have been unbanned! Cuito Cuanavale was a milestone in the history of the struggle for southern African liberation! Cuito Cuanavale has been a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid!” --See How Far We Slaves Have Come!: South Africa and Cuba in Today's World.
After that the central part of the struggle was the exceptional leadership of a mass movement of organized workers,
farmers and students by Nelson Mandela, see Nelson Mandela Speaks: Forging a Democratic, Nonracial South Africa. Boycotts helped but were never central.
Yes, at one time apartheid South Africa and Israel had close ties, but Moser doesn't explain that both were strongly backed by US imperialism (see Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism). To understand the middle-class "left" and liberals today let me suggest Are They Rich Because They're Smart? and Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History. For the working class today see The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward.
Contrary to what Ronnie Kasrils said, Hamas are the ones with genocidal intent, backed by the Iranian rulers who are Holocaust deniers and their other proxy forces — Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and others. Hamas traces its origins to ultra-reactionary Arab forces that formed a yearslong alliance with Hitler’s Nazi Party in the 1930s based on a common desire to carry out the “final solution” — the slaughter of Jews worldwide. These forces include Amin al-Husseini, who became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the forerunner of Hamas. They emerged out of the deepening worldwide capitalist crisis and the revolutions and counterrevolutions that would lead to World War II.
I don't support the war in Iran. It has nothing to do with the Jews or Israel. Israel was only involved in trying to wipe out Iran's nuclear fuel. It is a war for oil and to make the rich richer. This is leading to a potential third world war, see New International no. 7: Opening Guns of World War III: Washington's Assault on Iraq. I do support the protestors in Iran who hate Iran's intervention in other countries, and fight for rights for women, for workers and retirees, and for the oppressed nationalities. The largest nationality in the world without a state is the Kurds, not the Palestinians. They are divided between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Question: Why is there no solidarity movement for them? Answer: They're not oppressed by Jews, who for two thousand years have made the best scapegoats for everything.
I wasn't for a Jewish state, but it's not a bad thing that it exists. It isn't apartheid, as Nelson Mandela knew. Israeli Arabs can work in any profession. They don't have to join the IDF, but increasing numbers do. Hamas is for killing anyone who in any way works with Jews. As Trotsky explained, only world socialist revolution will end Jew-hatred for all time. I am also for a Palestinian state. Killing Jews doesn't increase the chances.
Israel’s existence is a result of political developments before, during and after World War II. Stalinist parties headed by Moscow betrayed promising revolutionary situations, in Germany, Spain and elsewhere in Europe. This opened the door to the rise of Hitler and his “Final Solution” for the Jews. Imperialist “democracies” in the U.S., United Kingdom and elsewhere shut their doors to all but a few Jews fleeing from the Holocaust. Where else were they to go? This made the creation of Israel inevitable.
At one point the SWP called for a democratic, secular Palestine. There is almost nobody advocating that today, But, take a long hard look at the whole region, and Israel is actually the closest thing to democracy and secularism that you will find.
Some of the portraits in this book are of people I have huge respect for, some not. I also see Felicia Langer as a heroic figure. Maxime Rodinson's Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? was useful once, but with thousands of over-privileged and over-mis-educated anti-Semites incoherently babbling about settler colonists, not so much.
Moser mentions Einstein, who called himself a Zionist, but wasn't for a Jewish state, He was naive politically, first supporting pacifism, then the US imperialist war. For the SWP's stance, see Socialism on Trial: Testimony at Minneapolis Sedition Trial. Einstein, after the war played a hugely progressive role in explaining the dangers of nuclear weapons, opposing Jim Crow, which was the major source of apartheid, and opposing the anti-communist witch hunt, which was undermining civil liberties in the US. Joe McCarthy was a genuine fascist, see Notebook of an Agitator: From the Wobblies to the Fight against the Korean War and McCarthyism.
Another who called himself a Zionist but wasn't for a Jewish state was the outstanding journalist I.F. Stone. He wrote about the formation of Israel and a few years later about the plight of the Palestinians, see Underground to Palestine: And Other Writing on Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East.
Moser, in cancel-culture style discards Marxism because “[Marx] was born more than two centuries ago, and lived in a world that in many ways is unrecognizable today.” In many ways it is unrecognizable from the world I was born into, a year after Israel was formed, but we are still living under the dictatorship of capital. In fact, an ever-smaller number of billionaires in the US control most of the wealth of the world. And the real wages of working people in this country have been falling; unemployment (the statistics leave out people too discouraged to look for work) is on the rise. Life expectancy too is falling among the working class, and large numbers are still living with their parents even after getting married and can’t afford to have kids. The Democrats are only interested in their right to not have kids, which I support too, although we need to win a majority.
Moser has rejected Marxism without knowing anything about it. I doubt that he has read the definitive Marxist book on the Jews and anti-Semitism, The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation, despite the fact that Maxime Rodinson wrote an introduction to a French edition of it. Moser doesn’t know anything about Lenin, who after Marx was the most important communist. He just takes a wild guess and writes about the “Leninist belief that nationalism was a bourgeois distraction from working-class internationalism.” Has he ever heard the phrase “prison-house of nations” applied to the Russian Empire? Lenin wasn’t the first to use it, but he was the first to attempt to smash it and grant self-determination, especially language rights to all the oppressed nationalities. Moser talks about the death of Stalin but seems to view Stalinism as simply the cult of personality and mass murder, which Khrushchev admitted. Not knowing anything about Lenin, he doesn’t have a clue that Stalin reversed virtually all of Lenin’s policies, including trying to restore Russian as the sole language. This is important in understanding why Putin, a Russian chauvinist invading Ukraine, hates Lenin but has a soft-spot for Stalin. Does he know that Lenin expected the workers of Germany to follow the Russian example--- see The German Revolution and the Debate on Soviet Power: Documents, 1918-1919; Preparing the Founding Congress. Stalin thought you could achieve “socialism in one country,” a utopia, although of course it could and did start in a single rather underdeveloped country. The Russian Revolution cannot be understood without reading History of the Russian Revolution.,
To Trotsky, once in exile (and they had to carry the Red Army founder over the border, since he wouldn’t go willingly) continued to support the Soviet Union, but explained that it had become the rule of a privileged bureaucracy and that as it degenerated further Stalinism represented a Thermidorean counterrevolution. See The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going?, The Stalin School of Falsification, The Third International after Lenin. Stalin revived anti-Semitism in his fight against Trotsky's Left Opposition, see The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch.
Not knowing Marxism, Moser has missed gaining an understanding of what fascism is—See The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany and Fascism and Big Business. He doesn’t have a clue that if the policies formulated by Lenin and the Communist International had been in effect, rather than Stalin’s "theory" that the social democrats were worse than Hitler, it is likely that Hitler would have never come to power. But to Moser this is all just petty squabbles.
Much of what Moser writes about the downfall of apartheid is incorrect, because it leaves Cuba out of the picture, and claims the boycott played a central role. But acknowledging that would not help him much with his middle-class audience. See, Cuba and Angola: Fighting for Africa’s Freedom and Our Own, and Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire In Africa by Cuban hero Víctor Dreke Cruz, who had the opportunity to collaborate closely with Amílcar Cabral, one of the most outstanding African revolutionaries. He wasn’t Jewish and supported Israel’s right to exist, but I have a lot more respect for Nelson Mandela than the Stalinist Ronnie Kasrils. Yes, he played a role, but he presents a whitewashed version of Spear of the Nation, which Mandela founded. In fact, contrary to what it was formed to be, there was much outright terrorism with many civilian deaths. And there was Joe Slovo (also Jewish) popularizing “kill the Boer, the farmer.” uMkhonto weSizwe had a symbolic value, which is why Mandela wouldn’t dissolve it before the ANC had won real gains. I attended the large anti-apartheid marches in New York, and many, if not most of the chants were for Cuba! But BDS et al has consciously hid all this history of the one revolution since the Russian with world class communist leadership--Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara.
One of the last things Fidel Castro did, which he couldn’t have done as president (because Cuba’s trade with Iran was important), was to give an interview to Atlantic magazine. In 2010, after then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had proclaimed the Holocaust — the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis — was an “unprovable and mythical claim,” Castro invited Atlantic magazine writer Jeffrey Goldberg to come to Cuba and interview him. Castro had huge disagreements with Israel, but told reporter (now editor) Jeffrey Goldberg “I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims,” Castro told Goldberg. “They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything.”
Here is Nelson Mandela in Cuba, on the anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, July 26th, 1991:
“The crushing defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale was a victory for the whole of Africa! The overwhelming defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale provided the possibility for Angola to enjoy peace and consolidate its own sovereignty! The defeat of the racist army allowed the struggling people of Namibia to finally win their independence! The decisive defeat of the apartheid aggressors broke the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressors! The defeat of the apartheid army was an inspiration to the struggling people inside South Africa! Without the defeat of Cuito Cuanavale our organizations would not have been unbanned! Cuito Cuanavale was a milestone in the history of the struggle for southern African liberation! Cuito Cuanavale has been a turning point in the struggle to free the continent and our country from the scourge of apartheid!” --See How Far We Slaves Have Come!: South Africa and Cuba in Today's World.
After that the central part of the struggle was the exceptional leadership of a mass movement of organized workers,
farmers and students by Nelson Mandela, see Nelson Mandela Speaks: Forging a Democratic, Nonracial South Africa. Boycotts helped but were never central.
Yes, at one time apartheid South Africa and Israel had close ties, but Moser doesn't explain that both were strongly backed by US imperialism (see Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism). To understand the middle-class "left" and liberals today let me suggest Are They Rich Because They're Smart? and Labor, Nature, and the Evolution of Humanity: The Long View of History. For the working class today see The Low Point of Labor Resistance is Behind Us: The Socialist Workers Party Looks Forward.
Contrary to what Ronnie Kasrils said, Hamas are the ones with genocidal intent, backed by the Iranian rulers who are Holocaust deniers and their other proxy forces — Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and others. Hamas traces its origins to ultra-reactionary Arab forces that formed a yearslong alliance with Hitler’s Nazi Party in the 1930s based on a common desire to carry out the “final solution” — the slaughter of Jews worldwide. These forces include Amin al-Husseini, who became the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921, and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the forerunner of Hamas. They emerged out of the deepening worldwide capitalist crisis and the revolutions and counterrevolutions that would lead to World War II.
I don't support the war in Iran. It has nothing to do with the Jews or Israel. Israel was only involved in trying to wipe out Iran's nuclear fuel. It is a war for oil and to make the rich richer. This is leading to a potential third world war, see New International no. 7: Opening Guns of World War III: Washington's Assault on Iraq. I do support the protestors in Iran who hate Iran's intervention in other countries, and fight for rights for women, for workers and retirees, and for the oppressed nationalities. The largest nationality in the world without a state is the Kurds, not the Palestinians. They are divided between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Question: Why is there no solidarity movement for them? Answer: They're not oppressed by Jews, who for two thousand years have made the best scapegoats for everything.
I wasn't for a Jewish state, but it's not a bad thing that it exists. It isn't apartheid, as Nelson Mandela knew. Israeli Arabs can work in any profession. They don't have to join the IDF, but increasing numbers do. Hamas is for killing anyone who in any way works with Jews. As Trotsky explained, only world socialist revolution will end Jew-hatred for all time. I am also for a Palestinian state. Killing Jews doesn't increase the chances.
Israel’s existence is a result of political developments before, during and after World War II. Stalinist parties headed by Moscow betrayed promising revolutionary situations, in Germany, Spain and elsewhere in Europe. This opened the door to the rise of Hitler and his “Final Solution” for the Jews. Imperialist “democracies” in the U.S., United Kingdom and elsewhere shut their doors to all but a few Jews fleeing from the Holocaust. Where else were they to go? This made the creation of Israel inevitable.
At one point the SWP called for a democratic, secular Palestine. There is almost nobody advocating that today, But, take a long hard look at the whole region, and Israel is actually the closest thing to democracy and secularism that you will find.
Read
July 17, 2026Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History by Benjamin Moser
Grateful to have had the chance to read this early via NetGalley.
When this comes out in September, the reaction will be... interesting.]
A fascinating, fascinating book. Moser outlines this particular history by profiling specific individuals and their experiences within and outside Zionist activism. The time range is significant, extending from the late 19th century until the current day -- as is the nature of each individual's Jewish identity, extending from religiously observant rabbis to those whose Jewish identity is wholly secular. I had only heard of a few of these individuals before this book (Hannah Arendt is probably indisputably Moser's most famous subject).
Moser's writing was occasionally a little hit-or-miss -- sometimes, considering the gravity of the topic and the profile of the figures he was documenting, his writing felt a little colloquial for my taste. But the scope of the writing is really impressive.
Reading history:
Normally I keep this in my private notes section, but I'm moving it. Yay!
Reading history was not added on Goodreads, but was instead kept on a small piece of paper that I lost like five times and kept rediscovering. No physical copy was consulted.
Started April 26th, 2026.
Finished July 13th, 2026.
April 26th, 2026: read introduction via ebook ARC.
April 27th, 2026: read chapter 1 via ebook ARC. (Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamares)
June 14th, 2026: read chapter 2 via ebook ARC. (Edwin Montagu)
June 17th, 2026: read chapter 3 via ebook ARC. (Jacob Israël de Haan)
June 19th, 2026: read chapter 4 via ebook ARC. (Ahmad Sadiq Saad)
June 23rd, 2026: read chapter 5 via ebook ARC. (Hyman Judah Schachtel)
June 25th, 2026: read, like, a couple paragraphs of chapter 6 via ebook ARC. (Avi Shlaim)
June 27th, 2026: restarted chapter 6; read whole chapter 6 via ebook ARC. (Avi Shlaim)
July 4th, 2026: read chapter 7 via ebook ARC. (Hannah Arendt)
July 5th, 2026: read chapter 8 via ebook ARC. (Maxime Rodinson)
July 9th, 2026: read chapter 9 via ebook ARC. (Felicia Langer)
July 11th, 2026: read chapter 10 via ebook ARC. (Helena Salem)
July 13th, 2026: read chapters 11 & 12 + acknowledgments via ebook ARC. (Ronnie Kasrils & Nan Goldin)
Grateful to have had the chance to read this early via NetGalley.
When this comes out in September, the reaction will be... interesting.]
A fascinating, fascinating book. Moser outlines this particular history by profiling specific individuals and their experiences within and outside Zionist activism. The time range is significant, extending from the late 19th century until the current day -- as is the nature of each individual's Jewish identity, extending from religiously observant rabbis to those whose Jewish identity is wholly secular. I had only heard of a few of these individuals before this book (Hannah Arendt is probably indisputably Moser's most famous subject).
Moser's writing was occasionally a little hit-or-miss -- sometimes, considering the gravity of the topic and the profile of the figures he was documenting, his writing felt a little colloquial for my taste. But the scope of the writing is really impressive.
Reading history:
Normally I keep this in my private notes section, but I'm moving it. Yay!
Reading history was not added on Goodreads, but was instead kept on a small piece of paper that I lost like five times and kept rediscovering. No physical copy was consulted.
Started April 26th, 2026.
Finished July 13th, 2026.
April 26th, 2026: read introduction via ebook ARC.
April 27th, 2026: read chapter 1 via ebook ARC. (Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamares)
June 14th, 2026: read chapter 2 via ebook ARC. (Edwin Montagu)
June 17th, 2026: read chapter 3 via ebook ARC. (Jacob Israël de Haan)
June 19th, 2026: read chapter 4 via ebook ARC. (Ahmad Sadiq Saad)
June 23rd, 2026: read chapter 5 via ebook ARC. (Hyman Judah Schachtel)
June 25th, 2026: read, like, a couple paragraphs of chapter 6 via ebook ARC. (Avi Shlaim)
June 27th, 2026: restarted chapter 6; read whole chapter 6 via ebook ARC. (Avi Shlaim)
July 4th, 2026: read chapter 7 via ebook ARC. (Hannah Arendt)
July 5th, 2026: read chapter 8 via ebook ARC. (Maxime Rodinson)
July 9th, 2026: read chapter 9 via ebook ARC. (Felicia Langer)
July 11th, 2026: read chapter 10 via ebook ARC. (Helena Salem)
July 13th, 2026: read chapters 11 & 12 + acknowledgments via ebook ARC. (Ronnie Kasrils & Nan Goldin)
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
(Doubleday did me an incredible solid sending me this book five months before publication. While I understand the implicit motivation for doing so, I’m also not beholden to what we industry types call ‘circle-jerkery.’ No big whoops. No whoop at all, in fact. Whoopless.)
First, I am going to dispel any suspension: Benjamin Moser’s Anti-Zionism is an incredible read, and there is also no way that Benjamin Moser is going to escape the raft of shit reactionaries hail down based on his title alone. To which, and I say this to the actual and royal Moser, fuck ‘em. Too many thin shelled exomorphs posing as humans nowadays anyway; a corpus populi primed to instantly launch into histrionic, performative simulacra of agony and ecstatic empathy that I, existential survivalist, carry the sacred cruciform of my middle finger readied to greet. Because let’s face facts—no one can truly care about EVERYTHING all the time. I understand the guilt complex inflicted upon the woebegone soul to feel terrible about themselves if they should fail to ascend the nearest telephone pole and start hammering palms to pine, but I also see the guilt industry preying upon these well-meaning empaths. Whether on the Yae or Nay or, like me, Too Uninformed on Hyperspecifics to Augur Future Findings, one cannot read Anti-Zionism as a non-political act by the racquetball logic that dictates reading Anti-Zionism IS a political act. Why? Because so much of the battlefronts now being assailed are psychic—parasitic morality ‘news,’ shaped remarkably like a chyron—that all informations intentionally ingested are, by default, psycho-militaristic; and that even includes us well-rounded and mature motherfuckers. It’s true.
Moser does what Moser is known for: he extricates a narrative history, one composed with wit and verve, from an impossibly complex history. At no point does he claim absolute authority, neither does he tend to linger too long in one epoch to the detriment of others. One COULD say that Anti-Zionism, as a title, is intentionally jarring, all the better to nab the eye and its attached consumer. In fact, I just said that. The term ‘confirmation bias’ will surely be batted around like a shuttlecock, too, so I readied my racquet for replying musical puns with a lineup of skronk’s finest (welcome Laura Logic).
From my familiarity with academic writing forms and best practices, I suspect that the LCD will bitch and moan of selectivity on Moser’s part; lack of footnoting; frankly wild fucking events relayed with no attributed source material; &c. This same familiarity impels me to encourage the reader balking at this to do some of their own heavy lifting. Moser is not posing as Gibbon or Vollmann, and he has written a narrative history of Judaism’s incompatibility with Zionism. For the source material, that is, and long has been, at the eager ends of your own fingertips. Database away; stare at scatterplots of Diasporic dilution; seek out what compels you. Otherwise, trust Moser; he’s earned it.
I recognize this sounds pedantic, but you have to go into this process as neutral as possible. Being (oh, I just love having to make this none-more-bullshit distinction) a ‘cradle Catholic’ (fuck you, neo-cons), whatever skin I have in this game is theoretical, viz. by the dumb luck of random chance and geography. I do know the Bible, Torah, and Qur’an, and I find each to be near perfect examples of fantastical fiction. And, yes, that is the luxuriated loucheness of a middle-aged cracker from the California coast. The point, and Moser’s larger thesis? Zionism is not congruent to Judaism, a fact as plain as the day as long. Ergot, Israel, as a nation-state of consolidated power, is not a cognate for a Jewish proposition born out of the traditional, sixteen-exiled-centuries of statelessness which holds that the ‘state’ of the Jew is, get this, ‘statelessness!’ This commonly held interpretation, which is to say the orthodox, traditional, non-revisionist take, is that God emancipated the Jews through their expulsion, forevermore freeing them from the yoke of being terrible kings and/or tyrant queens. This conceptualization defines ‘freedom’ as the perpetual suspension of responsibility from the playing at God which nationhood grants its elite few. From my seat, it’s a pretty healthy worldview, a sort of theological ‘Fuck Art, Let’s Dance’ spirit that’s always imbued the wonderful spirit of Judaism that I know first-hand. The ‘there’s no Hell/there ain’t shit/life is the gift’ scaffolding. This is reductive, but my Jewish friends have always held to a ‘there’s no afterlife, let’s get another keg and a schemozzle of psychedelics’ tonight.
To boil it down, clarify like the butter I see clarified on TV’s I walk past and wonder why anyone would watch someone do something they themselves could do a room or two away; here, without any bullshit armor or ‘apology stuffed animal arm’ extended; now, as far as I can substantiate given Moser and the stereo-optic lenses of my own eyes; is, as the kids all say, the facts.
JEW IS TO ZIONIST
AS
‘VOTER’ IS TO MAGA
That’s it, folks. Following Moser’s framing, it’s zealotry used as a smokescreen to reclaim power, enjoin the global order of hierarchical statehood; amassing enormous power using Judaism as a signal flare to hoodwink the fucking British (thanks again, chaps) into the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent 110 years of the repercussions. Modern Zionism, the very same you hear screamed about from the same phone you read the stupid shit I’ve written, is the creation of Theodore Herzl, a ‘utopianist’ quack author that used the vehicle of science fiction to extemporize and theorize what a hypothetical Jewish nation-state would require, and what its national essence must be. This is his story, as well as the guy that took his musings and ran with it; the next dude (always a dude) in Parliament with a complex and fuckdumb brain. It’s his story just as much as his peers, generally rabbis, that angrily shouted down ‘this cannot be done in our name;’ and the UN’s genocide committee becoming really fucking familiar with then-new Israel committing atrocities against the Palestinians within one year of being granted statehood. It’s all them bastards, right up to this one, me, talking to you; me telling you that, like it or not, to test these waters one must drink the ocean/there are no half-measures here. To remind you that to offer your two cents on Israel is to enter a complicity far more fucked and interwoven than any rational, single person could possibly hold equal and true simultaneously, and the necessity for just that. And my imploring that Zionism is not tantamount to but a euphemism for nationalism. And I say, “fuck that noise.” I defer to the military’s most respected NCO, the stalwart Capt. D.V.V. Beefheart, and carve on our common wall, “None of my women have tears in their eyes.”
And to whatever Hell Dante on premium LSD could have mustered, I banish:
MAGA
&
National Zionism
(and, to forestall idiot boys, Islamic State/Hezbollah/etcetera-ite radicalized mountebanks)—
Any and all actors killing and dying for a God disgusted by your telemetry, industries of death, and screamings across the sky.
You can’t have me. Nor you, reader (if you’ve read this far), unless you surrender to their infernal, blackhole/cathode transmissions, and forget that you are alive
now
only
and
it’s
haymaking & hi-fives.
X Solidarity
First, I am going to dispel any suspension: Benjamin Moser’s Anti-Zionism is an incredible read, and there is also no way that Benjamin Moser is going to escape the raft of shit reactionaries hail down based on his title alone. To which, and I say this to the actual and royal Moser, fuck ‘em. Too many thin shelled exomorphs posing as humans nowadays anyway; a corpus populi primed to instantly launch into histrionic, performative simulacra of agony and ecstatic empathy that I, existential survivalist, carry the sacred cruciform of my middle finger readied to greet. Because let’s face facts—no one can truly care about EVERYTHING all the time. I understand the guilt complex inflicted upon the woebegone soul to feel terrible about themselves if they should fail to ascend the nearest telephone pole and start hammering palms to pine, but I also see the guilt industry preying upon these well-meaning empaths. Whether on the Yae or Nay or, like me, Too Uninformed on Hyperspecifics to Augur Future Findings, one cannot read Anti-Zionism as a non-political act by the racquetball logic that dictates reading Anti-Zionism IS a political act. Why? Because so much of the battlefronts now being assailed are psychic—parasitic morality ‘news,’ shaped remarkably like a chyron—that all informations intentionally ingested are, by default, psycho-militaristic; and that even includes us well-rounded and mature motherfuckers. It’s true.
Moser does what Moser is known for: he extricates a narrative history, one composed with wit and verve, from an impossibly complex history. At no point does he claim absolute authority, neither does he tend to linger too long in one epoch to the detriment of others. One COULD say that Anti-Zionism, as a title, is intentionally jarring, all the better to nab the eye and its attached consumer. In fact, I just said that. The term ‘confirmation bias’ will surely be batted around like a shuttlecock, too, so I readied my racquet for replying musical puns with a lineup of skronk’s finest (welcome Laura Logic).
From my familiarity with academic writing forms and best practices, I suspect that the LCD will bitch and moan of selectivity on Moser’s part; lack of footnoting; frankly wild fucking events relayed with no attributed source material; &c. This same familiarity impels me to encourage the reader balking at this to do some of their own heavy lifting. Moser is not posing as Gibbon or Vollmann, and he has written a narrative history of Judaism’s incompatibility with Zionism. For the source material, that is, and long has been, at the eager ends of your own fingertips. Database away; stare at scatterplots of Diasporic dilution; seek out what compels you. Otherwise, trust Moser; he’s earned it.
I recognize this sounds pedantic, but you have to go into this process as neutral as possible. Being (oh, I just love having to make this none-more-bullshit distinction) a ‘cradle Catholic’ (fuck you, neo-cons), whatever skin I have in this game is theoretical, viz. by the dumb luck of random chance and geography. I do know the Bible, Torah, and Qur’an, and I find each to be near perfect examples of fantastical fiction. And, yes, that is the luxuriated loucheness of a middle-aged cracker from the California coast. The point, and Moser’s larger thesis? Zionism is not congruent to Judaism, a fact as plain as the day as long. Ergot, Israel, as a nation-state of consolidated power, is not a cognate for a Jewish proposition born out of the traditional, sixteen-exiled-centuries of statelessness which holds that the ‘state’ of the Jew is, get this, ‘statelessness!’ This commonly held interpretation, which is to say the orthodox, traditional, non-revisionist take, is that God emancipated the Jews through their expulsion, forevermore freeing them from the yoke of being terrible kings and/or tyrant queens. This conceptualization defines ‘freedom’ as the perpetual suspension of responsibility from the playing at God which nationhood grants its elite few. From my seat, it’s a pretty healthy worldview, a sort of theological ‘Fuck Art, Let’s Dance’ spirit that’s always imbued the wonderful spirit of Judaism that I know first-hand. The ‘there’s no Hell/there ain’t shit/life is the gift’ scaffolding. This is reductive, but my Jewish friends have always held to a ‘there’s no afterlife, let’s get another keg and a schemozzle of psychedelics’ tonight.
To boil it down, clarify like the butter I see clarified on TV’s I walk past and wonder why anyone would watch someone do something they themselves could do a room or two away; here, without any bullshit armor or ‘apology stuffed animal arm’ extended; now, as far as I can substantiate given Moser and the stereo-optic lenses of my own eyes; is, as the kids all say, the facts.
JEW IS TO ZIONIST
AS
‘VOTER’ IS TO MAGA
That’s it, folks. Following Moser’s framing, it’s zealotry used as a smokescreen to reclaim power, enjoin the global order of hierarchical statehood; amassing enormous power using Judaism as a signal flare to hoodwink the fucking British (thanks again, chaps) into the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent 110 years of the repercussions. Modern Zionism, the very same you hear screamed about from the same phone you read the stupid shit I’ve written, is the creation of Theodore Herzl, a ‘utopianist’ quack author that used the vehicle of science fiction to extemporize and theorize what a hypothetical Jewish nation-state would require, and what its national essence must be. This is his story, as well as the guy that took his musings and ran with it; the next dude (always a dude) in Parliament with a complex and fuckdumb brain. It’s his story just as much as his peers, generally rabbis, that angrily shouted down ‘this cannot be done in our name;’ and the UN’s genocide committee becoming really fucking familiar with then-new Israel committing atrocities against the Palestinians within one year of being granted statehood. It’s all them bastards, right up to this one, me, talking to you; me telling you that, like it or not, to test these waters one must drink the ocean/there are no half-measures here. To remind you that to offer your two cents on Israel is to enter a complicity far more fucked and interwoven than any rational, single person could possibly hold equal and true simultaneously, and the necessity for just that. And my imploring that Zionism is not tantamount to but a euphemism for nationalism. And I say, “fuck that noise.” I defer to the military’s most respected NCO, the stalwart Capt. D.V.V. Beefheart, and carve on our common wall, “None of my women have tears in their eyes.”
And to whatever Hell Dante on premium LSD could have mustered, I banish:
MAGA
&
National Zionism
(and, to forestall idiot boys, Islamic State/Hezbollah/etcetera-ite radicalized mountebanks)—
Any and all actors killing and dying for a God disgusted by your telemetry, industries of death, and screamings across the sky.
You can’t have me. Nor you, reader (if you’ve read this far), unless you surrender to their infernal, blackhole/cathode transmissions, and forget that you are alive
now
only
and
it’s
haymaking & hi-fives.
X Solidarity
October 5, 2026
Cataloguing a rich history of Jewish anti-Zionism through the ages, Benjamin Moser’s new book “Anti-Zionism” is a landmark piece that fills a glaring gap in the literature about pro-Palestinian politics and history. He features a dozen different Jewish anti-Zionists, ranging from a Hasidic rabbi in the late 19th century to a British government official during the British mandate to journalists and activists and artists. His subjects are diverse and largely unfamiliar to the modern American audience—voices who have been lost to history or erased from the narrative.
In his moving introduction to the book, Moser describes Zionism as “a native language.” He writes. “What anti-Zionists have in common is not that we have passed a purity test. It is a willingness to try to unlearn that native language.” This book aims to recontextualize Jewish anti-Zionism not as an aberration or a fringe belief held only by those who “aren’t real Jews,” but by Jews of all backgrounds at every moment since Zionism’s beginnings and up to this day. Moser wants the reader to know that “during every period of Zionism’s history, Jews had risked their livelihoods and lives in order to insist that Zionism was not speaking in our name.”
This book is at times devastating, affirming, dry, and inspiring. It’s meticulously researched yet retains a fierce point of view. It is already controversial, because of course it is. But it’s also something I’ve never read elsewhere, something that so many people, Jews and otherwise, can turn to as a source of strength in the righteousness of the fight for Palestinian liberation. It’s an incomplete text written in the midst of the worst catastrophe Palestinians have faced since the Nakba. And it powerfully insists on the Palestinian people at its core. I’m so glad I got to read this book.
“What would have changed if I had known about the people in this book? What would have changed for me if, instead of being erased from history, such heroes had been honored as the moral aristocracy of the Jewish people?”
“I would have learned that to oppose Zionism did not mean amputating a part of myself. It meant placing myself in an alternative tradition—a hidden tradition […] of people who, though long dismissed and despised, were ultimately proven right.”
Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday for a free aARC in exchange for an honest review.
In his moving introduction to the book, Moser describes Zionism as “a native language.” He writes. “What anti-Zionists have in common is not that we have passed a purity test. It is a willingness to try to unlearn that native language.” This book aims to recontextualize Jewish anti-Zionism not as an aberration or a fringe belief held only by those who “aren’t real Jews,” but by Jews of all backgrounds at every moment since Zionism’s beginnings and up to this day. Moser wants the reader to know that “during every period of Zionism’s history, Jews had risked their livelihoods and lives in order to insist that Zionism was not speaking in our name.”
This book is at times devastating, affirming, dry, and inspiring. It’s meticulously researched yet retains a fierce point of view. It is already controversial, because of course it is. But it’s also something I’ve never read elsewhere, something that so many people, Jews and otherwise, can turn to as a source of strength in the righteousness of the fight for Palestinian liberation. It’s an incomplete text written in the midst of the worst catastrophe Palestinians have faced since the Nakba. And it powerfully insists on the Palestinian people at its core. I’m so glad I got to read this book.
“What would have changed if I had known about the people in this book? What would have changed for me if, instead of being erased from history, such heroes had been honored as the moral aristocracy of the Jewish people?”
“I would have learned that to oppose Zionism did not mean amputating a part of myself. It meant placing myself in an alternative tradition—a hidden tradition […] of people who, though long dismissed and despised, were ultimately proven right.”
Thank you to NetGalley and Doubleday for a free aARC in exchange for an honest review.
Read
September 19, 2026The Dutch translation is already available since 2026 0908 from De Arbeiderspers.
https://www.singeluitgeverijen.nl/de-...
Dit is een heel persoonlijk en aangrijpend boek. Voor deze verrijking van mijn bestaan dank ik de schrijver.
Wat stijl en gedrevenheid betreft doet het me denken aan https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... The Age of Surveillance Capitalism : The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power / Shoshana Zuboff.
In 2022 las en maakte ik een reactie op https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4... Rise and kill first / Ronen Bergman . https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6... ook in het Nederlands beschikbaar. Moser geeft dat handelen het erbij horend perspectief (dat mij indertijd volledig ontging).
Moser zet het onderbelichte judaisme (binnen het jodendom) (onverenigbaar met zionisme) op het toneel. Een twaalftal levensbeschrijvingen geeft een samenhangend overzicht van deze ongekende gruwel.
Dit lijkt mij een boek dat noodzakelijke helderheid geeft in een totaal uit balans verkerende wereld.
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL44272...
Wat mij betreft: de grootst mogelijke aanrader.
https://www.singeluitgeverijen.nl/de-...
Dit is een heel persoonlijk en aangrijpend boek. Voor deze verrijking van mijn bestaan dank ik de schrijver.
Wat stijl en gedrevenheid betreft doet het me denken aan https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... The Age of Surveillance Capitalism : The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power / Shoshana Zuboff.
In 2022 las en maakte ik een reactie op https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4... Rise and kill first / Ronen Bergman . https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6... ook in het Nederlands beschikbaar. Moser geeft dat handelen het erbij horend perspectief (dat mij indertijd volledig ontging).
Moser zet het onderbelichte judaisme (binnen het jodendom) (onverenigbaar met zionisme) op het toneel. Een twaalftal levensbeschrijvingen geeft een samenhangend overzicht van deze ongekende gruwel.
Dit lijkt mij een boek dat noodzakelijke helderheid geeft in een totaal uit balans verkerende wereld.
https://openlibrary.org/works/OL44272...
Wat mij betreft: de grootst mogelijke aanrader.
September 30, 2026
This is not a quick or easy read, in part because of the topic-history Benjamin Moser tackles here but also at times due to his writing style, which can take a reader down rabbit holes. But what an amazing journey he will take you on! This is a brilliant, important, perceptive, deeply thought about and at times very moving account in which Moser questions/challenges/rethinks much of what he had been told/believed/assumed about his faith from childhood on. That said, you don't need to be Jewish or a Zionist or anything other than a fellow human being with your own past story and an open mind to appreciate what he delivers in this book.
September 26, 2026
Dit boek is een absoluut meesterwerk, die Pulitzer Prize is terecht. Het is zeer goed gedocumenteerd, encyclopedisch zelfs, zonder ooit uit het ritme te geraken. Tegelijkertijd is het ook erg emotioneel - zoveel lijden laat littekens na op de ziel van auteur en lezer. Eigenlijk zou dit verplichte lectuur moeten zijn.
September 27, 2026
For anyone brave enough to refuse to look away, Moser has given us an evocative, comprehensive, heartbreaking, and necessary read. He confronts uncomfortable truths with clarity and courage. The truths that (hopefully) will not be buried beneath book bans, smear campaigns, and attempts to silence difficult conversations.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Reviewing for Library Journal. My Goodreads rating is not related to my professional review.
Read
September 17, 2026Saw author event listed in LA Times 9/17/26
September 25, 2026
Eye-opening
Mouth-dropping
But Tough read at times, not always easily accessible
Mouth-dropping
But Tough read at times, not always easily accessible
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews