Among the oddities of modern political morality, few are stranger than this: the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel, is the one whose very existence is denounced, while its most brutal theocracy, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is treated as a legitimate member of the international community. Antizionism thrives; its analog—call it antikhomeinism—barely registers.

The modern and most successful form of antizionism was not born in the Arab world but in Moscow. After Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, Soviet “Zionologists”—state-sponsored scholars such as Yuri Ivanov, Lev Korneev and Trofim Kichko—launched a vast propaganda campaign to redefine Zionism as racism and imperialism. Through pseudo-academic tracts like Beware: Zionism! and Judaism Without Embellishment, Zionism was recast as a conspiratorial ideology serving Western colonial interests.

This Soviet campaign—carried into the UN by its client states—culminated in the 1975 resolution declaring that “Zionism is a form of racism.” Since then, antizionism has evolved into a global ideology dedicated not merely to criticizing Israel’s policies but to abolishing the state altogether. Its language of “decolonization” and “resistance” flows directly from that Cold War crucible and now........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)