The Anti-Zionist Idea: History, Theory, & Politics (Fred Moten and Samera Esmeir)

Quick Overview

The anti-Zionist idea, as explored by Fred Moten and Samera Esmeir, reveals that dominant cosmological thinking, particularly atomism, is inseparable from political brutality, and that Israel functions as a settler-colonial project of obliteration and a modern state with indefinite temporality, rather than solely a nation-state. True anti-Zionism involves a "breach" of this permanence and a practice of "sharing practices in anti-colonial differing," moving beyond liberal frameworks of national liberation.

Key Points: Fred Moten asserts that the dominant cosmological thinking, which views the universe as constantly moving individual atoms, is "inseparable from the forms of political brutality that we find ourselves submitted to." Moten expresses his "moral discomfort" with the term "anti-Zionism," stating it feels wrong because it "violates a sense of subjectivity that I haven't wanted to know that I have and don't want to have that form is liberalism." He proposes that "the subject reaction"—the justifiable but impossible claim to a denied subjectivity—can be called Zionism, and that anti-Zionism should be understood as "sharing practices in anti-colonial differing." Samera Esmeir highlights that the narration of concrete details by survivors in Gaza "checks on and resists the totalization of the disaster," revealing a "destructible life in struggle in excess of genocide and its remainders." Esmeir argues that Israel is not only a nation-state but a "modern state that assumes that its own temporality to be indefinite," making it "permanent" and ceaselessly protecting itself through violence. She states that "Israel and Zionism are obliteration if we give them a right to exist we're giving the right to exist to obliteration," describing it as a "ceaseless Impossible Project that aims to wipe out a place." Esmeir advocates for an "anti-Zionism of breach" that confronts Israel as a project of obliteration and a modern state, emphasizing that resistance must breach the state's permanence and indefinite temporality.