Zionism Is What It Does

By Caitlin Johnstone – Aug 21, 2025

Zionism means exactly what we see before us today. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. Apartheid. Nonstop violence and abuse. That’s what Zionism means. And anti-Zionism means opposing these things.

Israel apologists always attack anti-Zionists by saying “Zionism just means self-determination for Jews! If you hate Zionism then you hate Jews!”

No, that’s not what Zionism means. Zionism means exactly what we see before us today. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. Apartheid. Nonstop violence and abuse. That’s what Zionism means. And anti-Zionism means opposing these things.

There is simply no argument to the contrary. This is indisputably what Zionism looks like. There is no other alternate reality iteration of Zionism you can point to where genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and nonstop violence and abuse are not happening. This is the only way Zionism looks. The Zionist experiment has been run, and these are the results.

Trying to argue that Zionism doesn’t mean genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and nonstop violence and abuse is exactly the same as trying to argue that Nazism doesn’t mean all the things that happened when the Nazism experiment was run. Nazism means all the things that happened under Nazism. You can’t legitimately tell me “No, actually, Nazism just means a safe and prosperous homeland for the German people.” We’ve seen what Nazism looks like, and we’ve seen what Zionism looks like. To argue otherwise is to argue with reality.

It’s just so obnoxious how Israel supporters are like “Zionism means these nice things and nice words, so if you’re against Zionism you’re against the nice things and nice words!” No, asshole, that’s not how it works. You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own reality.

Israel is what it does. Zionism is what it does. You can’t separate them from their actions. The debate about the true nature of these things has been settled by the reality of what is happening.

It doesn’t matter if you believe Israel just wants to live in peace. It doesn’t matter if you believe Zionism is just the idea that Jews deserve self-determination. Reality says you’re wrong. Reality says Israel and Zionism mean nonstop violence and abuse. Reality says Israel and Zionism necessarily entail genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Because that’s the reality on the ground.

Them’s the facts. If you disagree with them, you are objectively wrong.

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I saw a clip of ABC host Patricia Karvelas raking Netanyahu policy advisor Ophir Falk over the coals for his denialism of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, and the thought occurred to me that Israel really has lost the normies. All the mainstream western empire loyalists who dutifully toe the imperial line under normal circumstances are dropping away, one by one.

Patricia Karvelas roasts Netanyahu policy advisor Ophir Falk after he refuses to admit starvation in Gaza & that Israel is not letting journos in.
OF “there’s plenty of journalists”
PK “Nope, there’s not plenty”
“You constantly contest facts, why not let journalists come in…?💥 pic.twitter.com/WbPj0UADL3
— stranger (@strangerous10) August 20, 2025

The fact that Israel has managed to alienate western liberals is so funny, because they’d be Israel’s biggest cheerleaders if they were given the tiniest bit of justification for that position.

So much about Israel fits in perfectly with western liberal mythology. A US-aligned capitalist democracy run by a plucky religious minority who survived horrific persecution, which embraces secular progressive values and reinforces the dominant western narratives about the wonderful things the US-led order has been able to accomplish since its triumphant glorious victory in the second world war. All Israel had to do was give them something, anything, and they’d still think Israel is the greatest thing in the world. They just needed an excuse — even a very meager one.

But Israel couldn’t even give them that. Genocide, racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and expansionism were just too important to its driving ideology. The Zionist project simply could not continue without going mask-off at some point, so now they’ve lost all the mainstream moderate liberals and pretty much everyone besides the “killing Muslims is good” far right extremists and the “we have to support Israel because God commands it” Christian Zionists.

Eventually all the contradictions had to come out into the light.

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The Israeli press are pushing the narrative that if people in Gaza are suffering so bad they should leave, which is precisely the narrative I said we’d soon be hearing from Israel in facilitation of its longstanding ethnic cleansing agenda.

Last month I wrote the following in an article titled “They’re Starving Civilians To Steal A Palestinian Territory, And They’re Lying About It”:

“Western governments are beginning to speak out against the mass atrocity in Gaza, far too little and far too late. We can expect Israel and the United States to respond to this outcry by saying that Palestinians need to be evacuated out of Gaza as quickly as possible in order to rescue them from this deliberately manufactured humanitarian crisis. We can expect them to denounce anyone who opposes this ethnic cleansing operation as evil monsters who want to starve the poor Palestinians.”

The Jerusalem Post has just published an opinion piece titled “Gaza humanitarian crisis should expedite Trump’s relocation plan,” subtitled “Now that there is public awareness of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, it should be leveraged to garner support for Trump’s Gaza relocation proposal.”

The article’s author, Gol Kalev, complains that “the Gazans” are being “denied the basic human right to flee a war” by the mean, nasty Europeans who just want to accuse Israel of war crimes and atrocities.

Zionism: Inherently Racist, Violent, and Expansionist

“They are needed under the rubble in Gaza — not just by Hamas, who uses them as human shields, but also by Europe and its proxies, who use them as pawns in their age-old opposition to the Jewish state, and as a proxy assault on America,” Kalev writes, arguing that public frustration “should not be directed at Israel, but at those standing in the way of Trump’s relocation plan, including European leaders.”

“Now that there is public awareness of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, it should be leveraged to garner support for Trump’s Gaza relocation proposal — which could lead to safety and prosperity for Gazans, and peace for the entire region,” writes Kalev. “The public message must be clear: Let the Gazans be free — let them flee.”

Just as I said they would do, they’re disguising a naked ethnic cleansing operation as humanitarianism and denouncing anyone who wants to provide Palestinians with a massive relief effort in their historic homeland as an uncaring monster. We can expect to see more of this messaging going forward.

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Anyone who tells you they support Israel for religious reasons is telling you to stop trying to reason with them. They’re saying their position is not based on facts, evidence, logic or morality, but their blind faith in a collection of made up stories. So there’s nothing you could possibly say to them that would change their mind or convince them that they are wrong.

Trying to debate or reason with such a person would be the same as trying to convince someone that there is no God. It’s an entirely unfalsifiable position about which no argument can be made using facts and evidence.

Someone like Mike Huckabee is never telling the truth or saying what he really thinks is going on when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, he’s just making whatever mouth noises he needs to make to help fulfill a Biblical prophecy and secure his eternal reward. Such people have no place in the conversation. They should be completely excluded from the debate, because they are not actually participating in it. They’re just lying and manipulating for reasons that have nothing to do with truth or morality.

(Caitlin Johnstone)