(Source. Spotted here. For the context wherein Trump applied the stereotype, see here.)
Remember: words like ‘intifada’, phrases like ‘from the river to the sea’, and even stuffed animals in the form of octopodes are all ways of secretly calling for another Shoah, no matter how many times Palestinians say otherwise. On the other hand, when a Herzlian like Trump applies an infamous stereotype to somebody…
There is not a really clear line between “non-Zionist” and “anti-Zionist” but, with Zionism being a political ideology and Judaism being a religion, a “non-Zionist Jew” could be used to describe a member of the Jewish religion whose Jewish identity and religious belief does not involve any Zionism while an “anti-Zionist Jew” is a Jewish person who takes an affirmative political or ideological stance against Zionism. And of course there would be significant overlap between the two.
So “opposition to Israel” would be antizionist (including non Zionist anti Zionists), but those who solely identify as nonzionist would, to me, fall in the “neither for or against” ethnostate fencesitting.
I think opposition to Israel - as in “Israel should not exist as a “Jewish State”” - is anti-Zionism. I think “fence sitting” could be a bit harsh on non-Zionists if applied to all of them. “Israel has nothing to do with me and I have nothing to do with Israel why are you even asking me about it?” could be an example of a legitimate non-Zionist position that is not fence sitting (especially outside of the US, where your other status as a US tax-payer puts you back squarely in the middle of the issue).
As an illustration, if a person from, say, Honduras said “I don’t understand the Russia/Ukraine thing, it has nothing to do with me, it is on the other side of the world” would you say they are “fence sitting”? Even if their great-great-great-great grandfather was Ukrainian?
I think the point I’m trying to make about non-Zionist Jews is that there is no affirmative obligation for someone to be involved in or have a deep understanding of the politics and ideology of Zionism solely because they are Jewish. In the US, UK, and Palestine, not having a position on that becomes harder to justify, not because of one’s Jewishness but because of one’s participation in the political system that supports Zionism.
Maybe I’m blinded by the western positionality, but dusting your hands and saying “nothing to do with me” re the apartheid state that’s doing the genocide in the name of your religion does seem like fencesitting. Obviously Israel is lying and weaponizing Judaism, but declaring yourself non-Zionist seems to opt out of the argument entirely
I think you’re entitled to think of it this way for westerners. The way I became aware of the distinction at all was because of Judith Butler explaining their position (they consider themself a liberal zionist so obviously take all of it with a grain of salt, never let the enemy define the terms etc etc). You’d probably be right to say that, in the US and Europe, a nonzionist and a zionist are the same person but just at different stages of embarrassment.
The argument (particularly from Haredi non-Zionist Jews) goes along the lines of this:
If the Japanese ruling class decided, one day, to say “actually, we , the Japanese, are the real Jews AND we are compelled to conquer, enslave, and commit genocide on the people of China in the name of Judaism” does that create an affirmative obligation of a religious Jewish person in a religious Jewish community from a long line of religious Jewish parentage in, say, the Iranian Jewish community (which still exists) to affirmatively do something because these people, on the other side of the world with no connection to them whatsoever other than trying to steal their name are “doing it in their name?” Are they “fence sitters” if they say “I don’t know anything about China and the only thing I know about Japan is that it has nothing to do with me or Judaism despite how they hold themselves out to the rest of you?”
This is essentially how religious Jews historically treated Zionism (for nearly 2000 years): “Zionists (particularly Christians), identify these people as the only “real Jews” but I see them as, at best, heretics and more likely Christian converts who have nothing to do with actual Jews in general and me in particular.”
The western positionally you identify is important but I think you are needlessly singling out Jews. Can any citizen of a western country (let’s just say US/UK) dust off their hands and say “nothing to do with me”? When the Zionist project is, at base, western colonialism? Would a Jewish American be morally worse than an evangelical Christian for doing that?
I think what’s getting me hung up on this framing is the idea that someone else, by essentially coopting one’s identity, creates a moral obligation on the victim of that co-opting that is greater than the moral obligation of the rest of the population to stand up against injustice when it should essentially be no different.
In a practical sense, a non-Zionist western Jew, when confronted with the facts and news all around them, is going to ultimately take a more affirmative political position (pro or anti). Just as any westerner should. But that is looking at the issue through the lens of the 2020s where it has infiltrated most of organized Jewish institutions and the local and country governments where they live. Once their synagogues and community centers become centers of Zionism and Zionist worship, they either keep going (implicitly supporting) or stop, so they have to confront the question in their daily life and few can escape to “the way things were” when you could be Jewish and Zionism was one of those political ideologies that was out there, like liberal capitalism versus communism or nationalism versus pluralism, that you could be a part of but it wasn’t a necessary component of ones identity and you don’t have to have an opinion on it.