For more than 20 years after the establishment of the State of Israel, anti-Zionism was a regional phenomenon—a clash between Arab and Jewish national movements in the Middle East. In the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe the Soviets exploited antisemitism for political purposes, but it was rarely part of international debate until after the Six-Day War in 1967. By the end of the 1960s, and since 1975, anti-Zionism became international in scope. It first appeared in the universities in the West where the New Left, in cooperation with the Arab student associations, attacked Israeli policy. [1]
When the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379 on November 10, 1975 and declared “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” it significantly expanded anti-Zionism into the sphere international non-governmental organizations and therefore into the Third World countries. This was done by an alliance of the Arabs and the Soviet Union. They endowed anti-Zionism with legitimacy and official recognition. [2]
After the First World War, the Arabs expected Greater Syria—which included Palestine and Lebanon—to become a vast united and sovereign Arab empire. Instead the French and the British divided the area into what the Arabs considered “irrationally carved out” entities that became the present-day states of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Trans-Jordan (later Jordan), Iraq and Israel. They were outraged that a “non-Arab embryo state in Palestine” had been inserted into an area where they would never be accepted. They claimed that this shattered their dreams of unification and impeded their search for a common identity. [3]
The Fight for “Dignity and Independence”
The fight against a Jewish homeland became an integral part of their struggle “for dignity and independence.” Israel’s existence, they claimed, “implied that not only a part of the Arab patrimony, but also parts of Islam had been stolen. For a Moslem there was no greater shame than for that to happen.” The only way to eliminate this deeply felt affront—this “symbol of everything that had dominated them in the past”—was to rid the area of “imperialist domination.” [4]
Zionists were the official enemy of the Arab national movement, but Arab governments have long been accused of using the Arab Israeli confrontation to divert attention from their own critical domestic social and economic problems. When confronted, they respond that if this were not a real concern, it would not resonate so strongly among the Arab masses. [5]
The late Bernard Lewis, the dean of Middle Eastern scholars, said Arab preoccupation with Israel is the licensed grievance. In countries where people are becoming increasingly angry and frustrated at all the difficulties under which they live—the poverty, unemployment, oppression—having a grievance which they can express freely is an enormous psychological advantage.” [6]
