On Herzl, Corbyn and Europe’s complicity

There was no lack of historical references. The “first Jewish anti-Zionist congress” took place from 13 to 15 June 2025 in the city where in 1896 the Viennese journalist Theodor Herzl had published his work “The Jewish State”, thus giving the Zionist movement its founding document. Among others, the conference was initiated by Vienna-based Jew Dalia Sarig, the action group “Judeobolschewiener:innen” and “Palästina Solidarität Österreich”, and it was supported by a large number of Jewish activists and intellectuals from all over the world. It was not only the names of the international participants that were impressive, but also the number of visitors on all three days of the congress, with several hundred attending each of the simultaneously translated discussions.

Bund versus Zionism

In the statements of the first panel discussion, which was dedicated to historical anti-Zionism among Jews, the name of Herzl, the Vienna square named after him was recently transformed into “Gaza Square” by activists, often was mentioned. Yakov Rabkin from Montreal University reminded the audience that Herzl had to choose Basle instead of Munich as the venue for the first Zionist Congress in 1897: “The resistance to Zionism came from three main sources: one religious, one social and finally one political. So why did it take place in Basel and not in Munich? Because German Jewish organisations protested against holding the Zionist Congress in Germany. They didn’t want to join the Zionist movement because the Zionists’ message was very similar to that of the anti-Semites, who said: ‘You don’t belong here, you belong somewhere else, that is, Palestine’.” In the same year as the Basel Congress the “General Jewish Labour Bund” was founded. The British historian Donny Gluckstein added: “The Bund hated Zionism. For it was everything the Bund didn’t stand for.”
  This view was shared by Ronnie Barkan, participant of the conference and Israeli activist of the group “Boycott from Within”, who said in a pre-announcement of the event in Vienna: “Anti-Zionism is as old as political Zionism. [...] While the Bund became a large movement in several Eastern European countries, Zionism represented less than 1 per cent of the Jewish population in Europe. [...] Without Hitler, Zionism would most likely have remained a small and insignificant Jewish colony in Palestine.”

Internal European,
not internal Jewish debate

In line with this analysis, the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, who teaches in the UK, formulated his interpretation of the three-day meeting: This “historical event” was not an “internal Jewish debate”, but rather the congress should be understood as the beginning of an “internal European” discussion. Pappé: “European history, European racism towards Jews and Europe’s complicity in the invention of the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine cannot be separated from one another.” Furthermore, as a task for the participants, he said in his introductory speech: “As Jews in Europe, we have the task of explaining to our political elites and the mainstream media that they are accomplices in the origins of the project that led to the genocide in Gaza.”
  Pappé was one of the best-known speakers at the Vienna Congress, which also featured a video greeting from Roger Waters (Pink Floyd) and Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories of Palestine, who joined via the internet. Participants from German-speaking countries included Iris Hefets, a psychoanalyst who emigrated from Israel and was arrested in Berlin for protesting against Israeli policies.

On anti-semitism

German translator Wieland Hoban, chairman of the Jewish Voice for Just Peace, spoke on the second day in the debate on the “instrumentalisation of anti-Semitism”. Next to him was Stephen Kapos, who had travelled from London and received the most intense applause of all the participants. Born in Budapest in 1937, he was saved from imminent deportation to a concentration camp as a child with false papers, while the Nazis murdered 15 of his family members. Because he had laid flowers in Trafalgar Square in January this year for the Palestinians killed, the British police summoned him for questioning. Kapos spoke about the anti-Semitic atrocities of his childhood, which also victimised one of his school friends, before going on to talk about the campaign against his party colleague Jeremy Corbyn. Just as against Corbyn, the term antisemitism is also being perverted in the current situation: “Antisemitism has become the weapon of choice in the suppression of criticism of the genocide in Gaza.”
  He added, that in a similar way, Israel was abusing the commemoration of the extermination of the Jews: “I would just like to mention one small thing: I saw a session of the United Nations on television in which the Israeli representative made a speech and very theatrically pinned on a yellow badge. I found that absolutely disgusting, as someone who had to wear a yellow badge himself at the age of seven. And I think that was an example of the complete misuse of memory and of symbolism.”
  The debate “From Pride to Denial: Arab Jews” shed light on a less prominent topic. It was characterised by its speakers including 81-year-old Reuven Abergel, founder of the Israeli “Black Panthers” in the 1970s, who once defended themselves against marginalisation as immigrants from North Africa, and the young art curator Camille Levy Sarfati from Tunisia, who spoke about the “right of return” of Jews to Arab countries.

If they still are living

Based on the “Vienna Jewish anti-Zionist declaration” from December 2024, the congress was a clear signal of the inner-Jewish opposition to Zionism – as part of the global solidarity movement with Palestine – both in terms of the range of topics and the international, prominent participation. llan Pappé endeavoured to be optimistic in his speech to the congress participants: He was convinced that the change in history was “already happening” and that a regime based on racism, apartheid and dispossession would ultimately collapse. He added, however, that the question was not whether it would happen, but when, and that the “when” was “crucial” for the Palestinians on the ground who were still living and suffering. •

(Translation Current Concerns)