Debunking the myth that anti-Zionism is antisemitic

Article in the Guardian by Peter Beinart

It's quite some time ago that I fell upon this 2019 article which explains in detail why anti-Zionism does not equal antisemitism. What I found most enlightening was the chapter about antisemitic Zionists, of which I'm here quoting the paragraphs about Arthur Balfour:

In the real world, anti-Zionism and antisemitism don’t always go together. It is easy to find antisemitism among people who, far from opposing Zionism, enthusiastically embrace it.
Before Israel’s creation, some of the world leaders who most ardently promoted Jewish statehood did so because they did not want Jews in their own countries. Before declaring, as foreign secretary in 1917, that Britain “view[s] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”, Arthur Balfour supported the 1905 Aliens Act, which restricted Jewish immigration to the United Kingdom.
And two years after his famous declaration, Balfour said Zionism would “mitigate the age-long miseries created for western civilisation by the presence in its midst of a Body [the Jews] which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb”.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/07/debunking-myth-that-anti-zionism-is-antisemitic

#zionism #antisemitism #anti-zionism #israel #palestine #arthurbalfour #guardian