The Green Party is ‘anti-Zionist’. But what is Zionism and how should Christians view the term?

The Green Party of England and Wales has declared itself to be an “anti-Zionist party”. Members at its conference in Brighton backed the policy by 1,022 votes to 813 — a substantial minority opposing it. But what has the party declared itself to be against?

You will not find the word “Zionism” in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. You will, however, find multiple references to Zion. The first is in 2 Samuel 5, where David captures the Jebusite “stronghold of Zion — that is, the City of David”.

Zion subsequently became another name for Jerusalem and, more widely, the land and people of Israel. Psalm 137, probably composed during the Babylonian exile or soon after the return, describes the captives weeping as they “remembered Zion” before promising: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem …”

The New Testament develops the idea further. Jerusalem remains the earthly Zion, but Hebrews describes “Mount Zion” as “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem”. For Christians, Zion could therefore mean Jerusalem, the Church, the Kingdom of God or the eternal city towards which believers journey.

For Jews, however, Zion never became merely a spiritual metaphor. It remained the city of David, the place associated with God’s presence and the focus of a profound yearning for home. That longing survived centuries of dispersion and became embedded in Jewish worship, poetry and identity. Jews prayed facing Jerusalem and proclaimed “Next year in Jerusalem” at the end of the Passover Seder and, in many traditions, at the conclusion of Ne’ilah, the final service of Yom Kippur.

Modern political Zionism emerged from this ancient attachment but was shaped by 19th-century European nationalism and antisemitism. Pogroms across the Russian Empire, particularly between 1881 and 1884, persuaded growing numbers of Jews that assimilation would not guarantee their safety. Theodor Herzl gave the movement an international organisation through the First Zionist Congress in 1897.

If the pogroms helped ignite political Zionism, the Holocaust provided its most terrible fuel. The murder of six million Jews appeared to demonstrate that Europe could not or would not protect its Jewish population. For many survivors, a Jewish homeland was no longer merely an ancient hope or political aspiration but an urgently needed refuge.

That history explains why many Jews use “Zionism” in its simplest sense: the belief that the Jewish people have a right to national self-determination in their ancestral homeland and that Israel has a right to continue existing as a Jewish state.

But that is not the only Zionism.

Types of Zionism

Religious Zionists may regard Jewish sovereignty in the land as part of God’s purposes. Secular Zionists may understand Israel primarily as a refuge from persecution. Labour Zionists established collective communities and sought to build a socialist society, while Revisionist Zionists developed a more assertive nationalism. Liberal Zionists support Israel’s existence alongside an independent Palestinian state; some right-wing Zionists claim Jewish sovereignty over all the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

Christian Zionism is something different again. Some Christians believe the return of Jews to the land and the creation of Israel fulfilled biblical prophecy, sometimes linking Israel to expectations about Christ’s return. Other Christians believe the promises associated with Zion are fulfilled in Christ and the Church rather than in any modern state.

So no single, universally accepted definition of Zionism exists. It describes a family of movements united by Jewish attachment to the land and some form of Jewish national renewal, but deeply divided over borders, religion, democracy, Palestinian rights and the meaning of Jewish statehood.

Two histories

Palestinians inevitably encounter the word differently. They do not experience Zionism principally as a theological hope or a refuge from European antisemitism. They experience its consequences: the loss of homes and land during the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948, continuing displacement, military occupation and the expansion of settlements across the West Bank.

A serious explanation of Zionism must allow both histories to be heard. Israel provided sanctuary and self-determination for a people subjected to centuries of persecution culminating in genocide. Its creation also resulted in dispossession and catastrophe for another people already living in the land.

The Green Party motion sidesteps this tension by supplying its own definition. It says: “Zionism is a political ideology which called for the creation — and, now it exists, the continuity — of an ethnonationalist Jewish State in historic Palestine to the exclusion and/or domination of the non-Jewish population.”

That definition is part of the problem. It does not simply define Zionism as support for Jewish self-determination and then argue that its implementation produced injustice. It builds “exclusion” and “domination” into the word’s meaning. Once Zionism has been defined in that way, declaring it racist and opposing it become inevitable.

But the definition does not encompass everyone who calls themselves a Zionist. A person who supports Israel’s existence, opposes the occupation and settlements and campaigns for a viable Palestinian state would still be a Zionist under the ordinary meaning of the word. So, too, would somebody who believes Jews and Palestinians possess equal and simultaneous rights to security, freedom and self-determination.

Rejecting a Jewish state

The Green Party’s motion goes beyond criticising particular forms of Zionism. It supports “a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, equal rights for all, and the right of return for Palestinians and their descendants”.

Its promise of equal rights is important. The motion does not call for Israeli Jews to be expelled, subjugated or killed. But its proposed Palestinian state would encompass Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. The present State of Israel would cease to exist as a sovereign Jewish state.

The Green Party is therefore not merely opposing Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the occupation or the illegal expansion of settlements. It is rejecting the right of Israeli Jews to exercise national self-determination through a state of their own.

This is why “anti-Zionism” is as disputed as Zionism itself. For some it means opposition to occupation, dispossession and ethnic privilege. For others it means opposition to Israel’s existence. It is not automatically antisemitic to question nationalism, advocate one democratic state or condemn the actions of an Israeli government. But anti-Zionism crosses into antisemitism when Jews alone are denied rights granted to other peoples, Jewish attachment to the land is dismissed as fraudulent or Israelis are treated collectively as guilty.

A Christian response

Christians should approach this argument with humility. Christian teaching and preaching helped to sustain the antisemitism from which political Zionism emerged. Christianity also has a shameful history of claiming Jerusalem for itself: medieval Crusaders slaughtered Jewish and Muslim inhabitants when they captured the city in 1099.

Nor should Christian concern for Jewish safety silence Palestinian voices, including those of Palestinian Christians. A theology which treats Palestinians as obstacles in someone else’s prophetic timetable fails to see them as people made in the image of God.

Jesus approached Jerusalem and wept over it. He looked upon people whom he loved and saw violence and destruction ahead. Christians who pray for the peace of Jerusalem cannot be indifferent either to Jewish fears of annihilation or to Palestinian suffering and dispossession.

Zionism cannot honestly be reduced to racism, colonialism or the policies of Israel’s present Government. Nor can its history excuse occupation, settlement building or injustice against Palestinians.

The Green Party is entitled to oppose a Jewish nation-state and advocate a single Palestinian state in its place. But it should be clear about what it has done. By adopting one highly contested definition of Zionism and declaring itself against everything bearing that name, it has collapsed a complex Jewish history and a diverse political tradition into its most condemnatory interpretation.

Jewish safety and Palestinian freedom are not competing moral goods from which Christians must choose one. Any political vision worthy of Christian support must find room for both.