Geography, antisemitism and Zionism

ABSTRACTThis article challenges the representation of Zionism as the globalising hub of worldwide racist and colonial harm to humanity and the neglect of antisemitism as a contemporary form of racism. This article is not a challenge to the consensus understanding of the nation state of Israel as having racist and colonial characteristics; rather, it questions a mode of analysis that exceptionalises Israel’s ills to the point of exceptionally demanding the nation state’s dissolution, while negating Zionism’s origins as a lifeboat amid the Holocaust. In essence, this article seeks an anti-racist imagination that is informed by a holistic and universal comprehension of Zionism vis-à-vis racism, colonialism and nationalism, and that recognises the reality of contemporary anti-Jewish racism, including in the leftist milieux.