“Join us for the book release event, in partnership with Jewish Currents, McNally-Jackson, and Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, of Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History by Benjamin Moser, in conversation with activist and writer Jasper Nathaniel. The two will discuss the history of Jewish Anti-Zionism, its current iterations, and what it means to actively involve yourself in this tradition today.”
A sweeping and revelatory history of the hidden tradition of Jewish thinkers who opposed Zionism, from Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Moser.
In Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History, Benjamin Moser uncovers a suppressed tradition that has shaped Jewish thought for generations. Through a cast of artists, rabbis, poets, lawyers, activists, journalists, and politicians – from Europe and Africa and Asia and Latin America – Moser traces a lineage of Jewish dissenters who confronted Zionism’s moral and political stakes – often at devastating personal cost, including censorship, exile, and death.
Their lives form a sweeping, global narrative that dismantles a powerful myth: that anti-Zionism is synonymous with antisemitism. Spanning continents and centuries, these voices – people from the right and the left, Reform and Orthodox, Ashkenazic and Sephardic, men and women, gay and straight – differ sharply in belief and background, yet converge on a shared warning about the consequences of a nationalist project built on exclusion. What emerges is not only a rediscovered tradition of Jewish moral thought, but a startling reappraisal of Zionism itself.
Moser’s work restores the full scale and depth of Jewish ethical imagination, affirming that Judaism is older and larger than any single political project. Lucid, unsparing, and deeply humane, Anti-Zionism cements Moser’s place as one of our foremost Jewish writers and presents a framework through which this history – and its meanings – will be understood for years to come.
Reviews:
“An affirming text for anyone who has gone through the painful process of deconstructing their Zionism … [It] reinforced my sense of pride in my ancestors who fought against the supremacist project in the name of what is right, and what is truly Jewish … Benjamin Moser makes them all proud.”
Hannah Einbinder, Emmy Award winner and Golden Globe nominee for HBO’s Hacks
“With meticulous research, wit, and a searching moral candor, Benjamin Moser takes on decades of propaganda in these portraits of Jewish intellectuals and public figures in the shadow of Zionism’s grand narratives … A lovingly-written historical primer for the free-thinkers of the West today, to whom this book says: You are in good company.”
Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost
“Moser has written such an expansive, moving text. Sensitive, rigorous, and deeply personal.”
Raven Leilani, author of the New York Times bestseller Luster
“Riveting … [Moser] has profoundly changed my understanding of history – the world’s, my people’s, my family’s, and my own.”
Ayelet Waldman, New York Times bestseller and author of A Perfect Hand
“A book of extraordinary moral clarity, with razor-sharp prose.”
Nathan Thrall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
“Urgently necessary … I hope it will be widely read.”
Peter Singer, author of The Life You Can Save
“A rare book that induces a simultaneous expansion of the mind and soul.”
Pankaj Mishra, author of The World After Gaza
“Anti-Zionism … is a kind of literary resurrection, a personal search through lost Jewish choices, following paths long overgrown and figures that history thought best forgotten … The stories … tell of struggle, of deep conviction, of the desire for justice. To give voice to these stories is an act of fidelity to those who suffered at the hands of an emerging national project in a time of trauma.”
Los Angeles Review of Books
“A trenchant history of Jewish opposition to Zionism … Moser explores each [Jewish anti-Zionist] figure’s life with a keen biographer’s eye … These illuminating profiles in courage challenge the myth of Zionism’s unilateral consensus.”
Publishers Weekly
“A principled case against a powerfully entrenched doctrine.”
Kirkus Reviews
“The book’s diverse, impressionistic portraits of individuals….suggest that anti-Zionism has been, and will continue to be, a big tent.”
The Paris Review
“[Anti-Zionism] restores a moral genealogy, the knowledge that Jewish opposition to Zionism was possible.”
+972 Magazine
“This landmark book will jolt many readers out of a fabricated narrative, especially as it reflects an entirely Jewish perspective. It is well researched, rich in fact, and extremely pleasant to read.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Antifragile
About the Author:
Benjamin Moser is the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book of 2009. For his work bringing Clarice Lispector to international prominence, he received Brazil’s first State Prize for Cultural Diplomacy. Sontag: Her Life and Work won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020, and The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters appeared in 2023. He completed the present book at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
“For more than a thousand years, Istanbul has been regarded as a bridge between East and West at the junction of two continents, at the crossroads of the cultures. We wish to make use of this symbol to conduct an open dialogue between the different civilizations of the world.
Harici Media and the new European think tank ‘European Transcontinental Initiative’ (ETI) have launched the East-West Forum (EWF) in Istanbul – a high-level forum of international experts to discuss, analyse and shape this transition.
We want to offer those political thinkers and actors, who represent wisdom in a time of delusion and reason in a time of brinkmanship, a platform for the exchange of critical analysis, hopes and ideas. In doing so, we aim to create an opportunity to jointly develop alternative proposals for a reconfiguration of the global systems that would move beyond the prevailing doxa of a unipolar neoliberal order. Especially we want to prevent the establishment of new bloc confrontation between ‘the West’, the BRICS-countries and the Global South.
The East-West Forum will take place in Istanbul on 26 September 2026. We expect to welcome more than twenty distinguished speakers from over fifteen countries, representing a broad geography ranging from the United States and the Middle East to Asia and Europe.
To attend the East-West Forum, please register online via our website: east-west-forum.com”
En lång rad av de många talarna är sådana som figurerat frekvent här på min sida genom åren.
“The unipolar world order that emerged after the end of the Cold War has come to an end, and the world is now seeking a redesign of the global system.
The quest for a multipolar world and a balanced world system is accompanied by multiple paradigm shifts: resources shortage, climate stress, overpopulation, trade wars, global rearmament, the AI revolution, the rise of regional wars, the break-down of the UN-system, to just name a few.
The G7/ G20 world tries to find ‘classical’ answers to all of that. Progress is attached to technology only, power assigned exclusively to states and capitalism remains unquestioned.
The East-West Forum (EWF) wants to search for heterodox answers, find new solutions, develop alternative societal & political concepts and think differently. It wants to become, over time, the leading platform for innovative ideas for the global system, thinking the unthinkable and discussing the impossible. We think of citizens and humanity, of soul and history, of traditions and the future. We believe in an economy that serves man and respects nature. We value cultural heritage and the roots of history.
The EWF wants to design a realistic utopia for the world in the 21ˢᵗ century, lifting it outside of the paradigms of the 20ᵗʰ century: Join us in putting everything we know on the table! Help us in designing the peaceful & just world of tomorrow! Dare to leave the thought system…
The EWF brings together distinguished experts, intellectuals, and thought leaders. Istanbul, a city that has long symbolized the bridge between East and West, offers a unique vantage to contribute to a constructive reimagining of relations between the Western countries, the BRICS countries and the Global South. EWF is committed to advancing critical dialogue on an inclusive and sustainable international security architecture, one that complements existing structures while encouraging a broader, more balanced framework for international cooperation. In the long term, the EWF envisions a Europe beyond the EU that is more self-confident, strategically autonomous, and capable of assuming a mediating role within a multipolar world.
The EWF aspires to position itself as a forward-looking counterpart to traditional security conferences typically held in European capitals and sticking to a ‘Western-centric framework’ of interpretation of the world. The initiators of EWF draw inspiration from the oldest known map of Europe, dating to 1534, which looks toward the Orient while standing firmly on Eurasian ground, an emblem of the perspective the Forum seeks to revive and reinterpret for the present era.”
Thomas Fazi informerar om en ny tänktank, European Transcontinental Initiative, grundad av bl.a. Ulrike Guérot, och bjuder in till dess första konferens, East-West Forum:
“We are delighted to invite you to the first Europe-BRICS conference – the East-West Forum (EWF) – which will take place in Istanbul on September 26, organised by the newly founded think tank European Transcontinental Initiative and the Turkish media platform Harici (@haricinews).
The think tank was founded this year by the famous German political scientist Ulrike Guérot (@ulrikeguerot) and the German Philosopher Hauke Ritz together with a team of experts and actors form different spheres, representing crucial expressions of European society thinking Europe beyond the EU. We already serve as the outward face of a different, new Europe – one that upholds its foundational values of diplomacy. We work constructively and operationally in the real world, already acting as a point of contact for non-European partners regarding a new Europe that exists beyond the EU within a multipolar world.
We see Europe as pivotal in the transition to multipolarity, which will only be complete once it reaches Europe; otherwise, we risk merely having a divided world. Thus we plan to dedicate the first EWF to the theme of ‘Designing the 21st century: navigating the multi paradigm shift in the global system and the crucial role of old civilizations’. We strive to co-create a new and more just and balanced multipolar world order peacefully.
On the conference’s website you can find the mission statement and programme: https://east-west-forum.com. I will be speaking on a panel on ‘Europe Beyond the EU and its Philosophical Foundation – Atlanticism, Eurasia and Strategic Autonomy’.
Should our inaugural conference prove successful, it could serve as the starting point for an annual conference series – one that we hope will offer an alternative to the neoliberal, transatlantic agenda of the traditional conferences held in Davos and Munich.
“In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with Swedish author Göran Rosenberg. They discuss messianism in Jewish history, the continuity from 1950s Tel Aviv to the settler movement Gush Emunim to the manifestation of the settlement movement today. They also look at questions of collective rights, framed in terms of ‘peoplehood,’ versus individual rights.”
