A book review by Paul Cudenec, who reads it here

“It is clear that Israel does not represent or speak for all Jews worldwide, nor do the Jewish organizations outside of Israel who claim to represent a unified Jewish voice”. [1]

The big lie that anti-Zionism amounts to anti-semitism is one that has been repeated ad nauseam all over the world in recent years.

So it is very useful to have a new book, written by a Jewish academic, that utterly demolishes that disingenuous claim.

This work is Israel in Palestine: Jewish Rejection of Zionism by Yakov Rabkin, professor of history at the University of Montreal.

It gets off to a powerful start in the Preface penned by Ambassador Chas. W. Freeman, Jr, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense.

He condemns the amorality “in the Israeli militarism that has balkanized the Levant, birthed an ideology of Jewish supremacism, and culminated in shameless repudiation of both the spirit and the laws of Judaism as well as international norms and laws”. [2]

Rabkin himself argues that Zionists have “rejected traditional Jewish values of peace, justice and compassion that have guided Jewish thought for millennia”. [3]

“The Zionist claim on Palestine is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, one that diverges drastically from the teachings of rabbinic Judaism”. [4]

“This ‘Israelism’ – a vicarious identification with the Zionist state, cultivated in many Jewish schools, summer camps, and youth movements – has, in many cases, supplanted traditional Jewish identity, in part because this new identity is less demanding.

“Traditional Jewish identity is rooted in adherence to Torah commandments and encompasses both private and public behaviour and actions.

“Israelism, by contrast, imposes no moral or ritual obligations, while conveying a strong sense of belonging and collective pride”. [5]

Israeli intellectual Boaz Evron (1927-2018) judged that “this moral identification is tantamount to idolatry”, especially since, in his view, “Zionism is, in truth, a negation of Judaism”. [6]

Rabkin says that from a traditional Jewish perspective, “the physical reconstruction of the Holy Land by the godless can lead only to spiritual and material destruction”. [7]

And he quotes Yaakov Zur’s summary of this view: “Zionism is the most terrible enemy that has ever arisen to the Jewish Nation… Zionism kills the nation and then elevates the corpse to the throne”. [8]

Rabkin therefore regards Zionism as “a rupture in Jewish history” [9] which owes its violent nature to the nihilism of Zionists from the Russian Empire who were “experienced with political terror”. [10]

The false conflation of Jews and the Zionist entity “serves largely strategic purposes”, he says. [11]

“It reinforces Zionist ideology, fuels antisemitism by making Jews abroad appear complicit in Israeli policies and may ultimately drive Jews to emigrate to Israel”. [12]

He looks back to a very different kind of society in what is now “Israel” before the arrival of the first Zionist settlers.

“Ottoman Palestine in the mid-19th century was a largely peaceful province, a mosaic of diverse religious, ethnic and linguistic groups”. [13]

And he disputes the very notion that Zionist colonisation amounted to the “return” of an exiled people to their homeland.

In fact, he says, a historical mass expulsion of Jews probably never happened – “it was mostly the Jewish political elite that was exiled”. [14]

The majority of the peasants remained there, producing wealth for the Roman and then Ottoman empires as they had for the Babylonian one.

Rabkin adds: “In 1922, none other than David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), the future founder of the state of Israel, affirmed that Palestinian fellahin (farmers, peasants) were most likely the closest biological descendants of the Jews of the 1st century”. [15]

In the early days of the Jewish “return” to the Holy Land, Zionists did not dominate in the way they do today, he explains.

“Many German Jewish immigrants in Palestine abhorred ethnic nationalism, militarism and espoused liberal, universalist values. They were offended by the Zionists’ nationalist arrogance and the resulting dehumanisation of Arabs”. [16]

“The unilateral proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948 by the Zionist minority, against the will of the local population, including Muslims, Christians, and many Jews, intensified the discrimination, dispossession and deportation of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, leading to endless cycles of violence”. [17]

Academic Judah Magnes (pictured) was threatened by Zionists for his opposition to the new separate state for Jews and, on resigning from the Hebrew University to return to the USA, lamented that Jews throughout the world “are subject to a Zionist totalitarianism that seeks to subjugate everyone to its discipline, and if necessary by force and violence”. [18]

This violence had already been in evidence before the state of Israel was created, says Rabkin.

“Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the rabbinical authorities in Palestine tried to bypass the growing Zionist establishment, seeking independent dialogue and separate agreements with Arab leaders, reflecting a markedly different approach to life in Palestine.

“Yet Zionists branded these Jews as traitors. In 1924, members of a Zionist militia assassinated Jacob de Haan (1881-1924), a Jewish lawyer who was promoting cooperation between the ultraorthodox Jews, mainly anti-Zionist at the time, and Arab notables.

“His aim was to convince the British authorities that the Zionists were no more than a militant minority who represented only themselves, and to persuade London to repeal the Balfour Declaration, which supported the establishment of a ‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine.

“De Haan was shot dead as he was leaving the synagogue after evening prayers”. [19]

Over the last couple of years the world has woken up to the psychopathic nature of Zionism, but in truth this is not at all new.

Vladimir Jabotinsky (pictured), “a Russian writer, admirer of Mussolini and founder of the political movement that produced Benjamin Netanyahu” dismissed the moral conduct towards foreigners advised by the Jewish Bible as “childish humanism”. [20]

And the vindictive and violent Zionist attitude is summed up by the words of poet Yosef Haim Brenner (1881-1921): “Listen, O Israel! Not an eye for an eye. Two eyes for an eye, all their teeth for any humiliation”. [21]

Comments Rabkin: “The spirit of disproportionate revenge he championed lives on in the conduct of Israeli soldiers, most recently in Gaza”. [22]

Describing the violence deployed to create the state of Israel in 1948, he adds: “Some, like the Israeli historian Benny Morris, who has extensively documented this period, regret that the Zionists did not ‘finish the job’ like the white settlers in the United States, Argentina or Australia, who either killed or confined most of the indigenous populations to reservations”. [23]

“In 2014, just before assuming the role of minister of justice, Israeli parliamentarian Ayelet Shaked said about Palestinians in Gaza: ‘They have to die and their homes should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists. They are all our enemies, and their blood should be on our hands. This also applies to the mothers of the dead terrorists'”. [24]

The language and actions of the Zionist state were sickening in their inhumanity well before the acceleration launched in October 2023.

Rabkin writes: “Peaceful demonstrations by Gazans were met with deadly fire from Israeli soldiers stationed across the border fence.

“Gaza was also subjected to regular military incursions, which the Israelis referred to as ‘mowing the grass’, operations that routinely left hundreds of dead and wounded. This metaphor embodies the dehumanisation of Palestinians and the disregard for their lives”. [25]

The blatant hypocrisy of unleashing such terror while labelling your opponents “terrorists” is worsened by other elements of deceit, he explains.

He notes that Hamas was “originally organised with the help of the Israeli security services in the late 1980s as a counterweight to the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)”. [26]

And he looks into the impact of the so-called Hannibal Directive on the Israeli death toll on October 7, 2023.

“Several investigators and survivor testimonies suggest that on the day of the Hamas attack, the Israeli military opened fire on Israelis to prevent them falling into Hamas hands. [27]

“According to reports, Israeli commanders issued orders to prevent kidnappings ‘by any means necessary’. [28]

“Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant later admitted to authorizing the Hannibal Directive in certain areas during the attack”. [29]

He places all this in the context of the nihilistic attitude typical of Zionists from Eastern Europe, according to which even their own people can justifiably be allowed to die in the name of the greater Cause.

Ben-Gurion (pictured) is reputed to have declared in 1938: “If I knew that all Jewish children could be saved by having them relocated to England, but only half by transferring them to Palestine, I would choose the second option, because what is at stake would not only have been the fate of those children but also the historical destiny of the Jewish people”. [30]

Rabkin remarks: “This prioritization of the collective Cause versus individual lives likens Zionism to a modern-day Moloch, seemingly insatiable and demanding more and more human sacrifices to this day”. [31]

While the book is packed full of very useful information and analysis, I do not agree with all of Rabkin’s framing.

For instance, he writes that “the Hamas attack of 2023 offered a pretext to implement the Decisive Plan“, whereas I regard October 7 as less pretext than pre-planned false flag. [32]

Regarding the aftermath, he says: “The massive indiscriminate bombing and deliberate starvation are not only acts of revenge but also a considered strategic action aimed at emptying the Gaza Strip of its inhabitants”. [33]

I would argue that we are in fact looking at a considered strategic action aimed at emptying the Gaza Strip of its inhabitants disguised, and thus supposedly justified, as an act of revenge.

Rabkin writes about the Jews’ role as “the chosen people” and how this “is easily misused to justify ethno-centrism, a sense of superiority, pride and racism”. [34]

He insists that in fact “this concept does not imply any intrinsic superiority, but rather denotes specific moral and ritual responsibilities”. [35]

To back this statement up, he quotes an (unnamed) former Chief Rabbi of Britain as saying “The Jews were chosen by God to be ‘peculiar unto Me’ as the pioneers of religion and morality; that was and is their national purpose”. [36]

To me this is still “ethno-centrism, a sense of superiority” – why should Jewish people think they have the right to impose their own particular way of seeing things on the rest of humankind?

As I have previously discussed, the Judaic religious outlook is directly opposed to any kind of nature-based spirituality and very closely related to the “scientific” and “rational” worldview which accompanied the rise of industrial imperialism. [37]

Rabkin also seeks to disassociate Zionism from Jewishness by insisting on its being a part of “Western” imperialism as a whole. [38]

He even insists: “Citizens of Western countries, who have prided themselves on moral superiority and civilizational values, must reckon with their own responsibility for what Israel is and does.

“By practising apartheid and committing war crimes against civilians for a long time, Israel has become the latest expression of what Europeans and their descendants have done to indigenous populations around the world for centuries”. [39]

I fully agree, of course, on the close connections between Zionism and imperialism, as evidenced by my use of the term “zimperialism”, [40] but the ultimate responsibility implied by Rabkin seems to me to be misplaced when one looks at the financial and commercial forces behind “Western” imperialism and their particular interest in Israel.

The name Rothschild is only mentioned once in the book and that is in a quote from another writer.

Rabkin even attempts to shift the blame for the creation of Zionism on to Christians, arguing: “While the Land of Israel certainly holds a central place in Jewish tradition, it is primarily Christians, beginning in the 17th century, who sought to ‘ingather the Hebrews in the Holy Land’.

“Thus the early form of Zionism, ‘Zionism avant la lettre‘, was not invented by Jews but by evangelical Protestants. Their aim was to hasten the second coming of Christ and convert Jews to Christianity”. [41]

Yes, but who was behind this strange deviation in Christian theology?

I would refer Professor Rabkin to the essay ‘Jews and Judaism in the Hartlib Circle’ by Professor Yosef Kaplan of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, summarised in my essay on the Invisible College in 17th century England. [42]

Similar questions must surely be asked about “the massive support the State of Israel enjoys today in the United States and other countries, where evangelical Protestants number in the hundreds of millions and are a formidable pro-Israel force”. [43]

I feel that Rabkin never quite goes all the way. The bricks of evidence are not held in place by the mortar of an overview that would make sense of the whole thing.

He points us towards important questions only to leave us to fill in the answers ourselves – although perhaps that is a deliberate didactic technique!

I find myself wanting to ask him:

• How it is that while, clearly, Jewish critics of Israel can be “ostracised from mainstream Jewish communities”, people can, in countries not officially controlled by Zionism, be “fired from universities and purged from the media and government agencies”? [44]

• How is it that Israel “feels entitled to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries by demanding the suppression of pro-Palestinian activism” and is allowed to use “sophisticated methods for monitoring and targeting pro-Palestinian students, critical academics and university curricula”? [45]

• Why have “many Western governments stepped up measures to restrict freedom of expression, dismantle encampments and stifle other forms of protest”? [46]

• When he writes that “Zionist supremacy is ensured at all costs, including the suppression of democratic freedoms on the pretext of fighting antisemitism, both in Israel and in Israel-allied nations”, [47] what is really implied by the term “Israel-allied”?

• Why exactly is it that Israel enjoys a “sense of impunity, bred and reinforced by unshakable Western support and complicity”? [48]

• How can it be possible that, even for non-Israeli media, “press coverage of the Palestinians is tightly controlled through various mechanisms and remains extraordinarily effective” and that “the spectre of accusations of antisemitism hangs over journalists, whose careers suffer if their narratives, or even their choice of terminology, deviate from Israel’s official line”? [49]

• Zionist lobbying certainly “secures Israel’s interests in American elections at every level” and amounts to “foreign political interference”, [50] but does this enormous power really stem from the little Middle Eastern state?

• Why is it that Israel and the USA are “joined at the hip” and that “in Germany, support for Israel is elevated to the level of a Raison d’Etat that overrides all other considerations of a legal or moral kind”? [51]

• What kind of influence can ensure that “only a handful of countries have finally severed diplomatic ties with Israel over its war on Gaza”? [52]

• What conclusions can we draw from the fact that, two years on, “Russia, China and much of the Global South have expressed strong disapproval of the scale of destruction and civilian suffering in Gaza, but as of this writing, these governments have taken no concrete steps to halt the violence”? [53]

• Does Rabkin really think that Israel’s impunity is due to its nihilistic “Samson Option” – because “no country in the world is prepared to risk a nuclear attack to liberate the Palestinians”? [54]

• What global projection might lie behind “Israel’s claim to be not merely a state of its citizens, but as a state of the Jewish people worldwide”? [55]

Rabkin does remark that the reasons for such widespread “complicity and, more generally, for the support for Israel by the ruling classes in many countries of the world, certainly deserves deeper investigation”. [56]

That’s something I have been working on for a few years now, in fact!

He notes that “Israel continues to enjoy the backing of many extremely wealthy, and by extension, powerful people”. [57]

And he refers to “Zionist billionaires” [58] who “mobilise impressive funds to suppress criticism of Israel”. [59]

But I do feel he is skirting around the real issue when he says that support for Israel “tends to increase with income and correlates with socio-economic class”. [60]

“This reflects the growing divide between the wealthiest one percent and the rest of society, where elite influence, often exerted directly or indirectly on government decisions, often does not align with the views or the interest of the majority”. [61]

This, Rabkin says, is a “democratic deficit” – “a widening gap between public will and interests of the ruling class”. [62]

I would say that he is in fact describing the dawning realisation that we are all under occupation by ZIM, the zio-satanic imperialist mafia.

It is the sheer horror of Zionist psychopathy that has opened so many eyes to a truth kept hidden for so long.

As Rabkin says: “Israel’s defiant posture on the global stage is now in full display for the world to see. Nothing seems sacred or beyond bounds”. [63]

Zionists are quite visibly guilty of committing what Professor John Mearsheimer described in July 2025 as “one of the greatest crimes of modern history”. [64]

And, of course, its main “weapon of mass distraction, a tool for obstructing efforts to stop the genocide” [65] is always to squeal about anti-semitism, Nazism and the Holocaust.

Says Rabkin: “When Israelis point out that the number of Jews killed by Hamas on October 7 was the highest in a single day since the Holocaust, this macabre comparison reinforces the idea that antisemitism is the sole driver of Palestinian resistance”. [66]

“The weaponization of the collective trauma continues unabated, granting Israel ‘infinite license’. It is therefore predictable that most Israelis portray Hamas, and by extension all Palestinians, as Nazis”. [67]

But the truth of Zionism’s real relationship to Nazism is today becoming clear.

Rabkin writes that “a growing number of Jews are embracing National Judaism, or dati-leumi in Hebrew, a relatively recent form of Judaism rooted in Israel”. [68]

He says this has little to do with traditional Judaism and remarks: “Followers of National Judaism may have more in common with those who idealistically embraced National Socialism in Germany and ended up committing genocide”. [69]

Providing some historical context, he describes the “militaristic” Zionist culture in Palestine in the 1930s, which shocked German Jews fleeing the Nazi regime, who “knew how to recognise fascism”. [70]

And he also tells of the visit of a leading SS official to the Zionist colonies in Palestine shortly after Adolf Hitler came to power – the trip was celebrated by Joseph Goebbels’ Angriff newspaper and a commemorative medal was even issued bearing a Star of David on one side and a Swastika on the other. [71]

This had come about because of close collaboration between Nazis and Zionists in Germany, explains Rabkin.

“Kurt Tuchler, a leader of the German Zionist Federation, invited Baron Leopold Elder von Mildenstein, a high-ranking SS officer, to write pro-Zionist articles for the Nazi press.

“The baron, ‘an ardent Zionist’ who had attended Zionist congresses and would later recruit Adolf Eichmann to the Sicherheitsdienst (SD, the Nazi security service) Jewish Desk, agreed on condition he first visit the Zionist colonies in Palestine”. [72]

Jacob Boas writes that Von Mildenstein went on to “assist the expansion of Zionist influence among Germany’s Jews, who, despite the oppressive conditions under which they lived, still showed no great desire to emigrate to Palestine”. [73]

“What had brought them together on this journey to Palestine was their common desire, motivated by radically different objectives, to make Germany ‘free of Jews’, or as the Nazis put it, Judenrein.

“Where the National Socialists had not yet worked out a solution to ‘the Jewish question’, the Zionists, with their ambition to establish a Jewish homeland and their sponsorship of Jewish emigration to Palestine, had an answer”. [74]

This is not actually true. Nazis and Zionists did not have “radically different objectives” but exactly the same ones, because the Nazi regime was a monster created by ZIM itself, as Jim Macgregor and John O’Dowd conclusively demonstrated earlier in 2025. [75]

The objectives of Project Hitler were multiple, but one of the most important ones was to enable the establishment – and German financing – of the state of Israel.

It was all planned in advance, as is chillingly confirmed by the words, quoted by Rabkin, of William Hechler, the Anglican chaplain at the British embassy in Vienna who inspired Theodor Herzl to launch the Zionist movement and introduced him to several European rulers at the turn of the 20th century.

He confided to a Jewish friend near the end of his life in 1931: “Part of European Jewry is to be immolated for the resurrection of your biblical homeland”. [76]

[Audio version]

[1] Yakov Rabkin, Israel in Palestine: Jewish Rejection of Zionism (Atlanta: Aspect Editions, 2025), pp. 73. All subsequent page references are to this work, unless otherwise stated.
[2] Chas. W. Freeman, Jr, Preface, p. iii.
[3] p. 97.
[4] p. 6.
[5] p. 60.
[6] Boaz Evron, quoted in Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Peuple. Terre. Etat. (Paris: Plon, 1995), p. 133, cit. p. 60.
[7] p. 7.
[8] Yaakov Zur, ‘German Jewish Orthodoxy’s Attitude toward Zionism’ in Shmuel Almog, Jehuda Reinharz and Anita Shapira, eds, Zionism and Religion (Hanover: Brandeis University Press and University Press of New England, 1998), p. 111, cit. p. 7.
[9] p. 11.
[10] p. 34.
[11] p. 85.
[12] pp. 85-86.
[13] p. 1.
[14] p. 2.
[15] Shlomo Sand, Comment le peuple juif fut inventé (Paris: Fayard, 2008), pp. 260-62, cit. p. 2.
[16] p. 17.
[17] p. 19.
[18] Judah Leon Magnes quoted in Jack Ross, Rabbi Outcast: Elmer Berger and American Jewish Anti-Zionism (Washington: Potomac Books, 2011), p. 81, cit. p. 19.
[19] pp. 33-34.
[20] Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism: The Intellectual Origins of the Jewish State (New York: Basic Books, 1981), p. 164, cit. pp. 20-21.
[21] Yosef Hayim Brenner, Hu Amar La (London: J. Narditsky, 1919), p. 7, cit. p. 42.
[22] p. 42.
[23] p. 45. See Benny Morris, ‘On Ethnic Cleansing’, New Left Review, March/April 2024.
[24] ‘Mothers of all Palestinians should also be killed,’ says Israeli politician’, Daily Sabah, July 14 2014, cit. p. 48.
[25] p. 52.
[26] p. 58.
[27] Yaniv Kubovich, ‘IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking Soldiers Captive’, Haaretz, July 7 2024, cit. p. 87.
[28] ‘IDF officers invoked defunct ‘Hannibal Protocol’ during Oct. 7 fighting – report’, The Times of Israel, July 7 2024, cit. pp. 87-88
[29] ‘Ex-Israel Army Chief Admits Using Hannibal Directive Against Own Soldiers’, NDTV World, February 9 2025, cit. p. 88.
[30] Dina Porat, ‘Une question d’historiographie: L’attitude de Ben-Gurion à l’égard des juifs d’Europe à l’époque du génocide’ in Florence Heymann and Michel Abitbol, eds, L’historiographie israélienne aujourd’hui (Paris: CNRS éditions, 1998), p. 120, cit. p. 89.
[31] p. 91.
[32] pp. 55-56.
[33] p. 59.
[34] p. 4.
[35] Ibid.
[36] ‘Jews as the Chosen People’. The Spiritual Life, cit. p. 4.
[37] Paul Cudenec, Our Sacred World (2025), https://winteroak.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/our-sacred-worldonline.pdf
[38] p. 82.
[39] p. 97.
[40] Paul Cudenec, ‘The military mechanism of zimperial occupation’, https://winteroak.org.uk/2025/12/01/the-military-mechanism-of-zimperial-occupation/
[41] p. 11.
[42] Yosef Kaplan, ‘Jews and Judaism in the Hartlib Circle’, Studia Rosenthaliana, 2006, pp. 186-215. https://pluto.huji.ac.il/~kaplany/hartlib.pdf
Paul Cudenec, ‘The Invisible College and the plan for our enslavement’, https://winteroak.org.uk/2025/08/11/the-invisible-college-and-the-plan-for-our-enslavement/
[43] pp. 11-12.
[44] p. 19.
[45] p. 50. See Anna Betts, ‘Pro-Israel group says it has “deportation list” and has sent “thousands of names to Trump officials”‘, The Guardian, March 14 2025.
[46] p. 70.
[47] p. 20.
[48] p. 49.
[49] p. 58. See Daniel Boguslaw, ‘CNN Runs Gaza Coverage Past Jerusalem Team Operating Under Shadow of IDF Censor’, The Intercept, January 4 2024.
[50] p. 50.
[51] p. 66. See John Mearsheimer, ‘The Israel lobby is as powerful as ever’, The New Statesman, February 10 2024, archive.is/2iYMg and William Noah Glucroft, ‘Germany’s unique relationship with Israel’, Deutsche Welle, October 15 2024.
[52] p. 66.
[53] pp. 66-67.
[54] p. 83.
[55] p. 50. See ‘Basic-Law: Israel – the Nation State of the Jewish People’. Knesset website.
[56] p. 66.
[57] p. 87.
[58] p. 81.
[59] pp. 70-71. See ‘Billionaires are teaming up for pro-Israel, anti-Hamas media drive: Report, Al Jazeera, November 12 2023.
[60] p. 71.
[61] Ibid.
[62] Ibid.
[63] p. 92.
[64] ‘Prof John Mearsheimer: Can Israel Save Itself?’, Judge Napolitano – Judging Freedom, July 31 2025, cit. p. 93.
[65] p. 70.
[66] p. 57.
[67] p. 36. See Omer Barrow, ‘Infinite License’, The New York Review of Books, April 24, 2025.
[68] p. 22.
[69] pp. 22-23.
[70] p. 15.
[71] p. 16. See Jacob Boas, ‘A Nazi travels to Palestine’, History Today, vol 30, no 1, 1980, pp. 33-39.
[72] p. 16.
[73] Boas, cit. p. 17.
[74] Boas, cit. p. 16.
[75] Dr Jim Macgregor & Dr John O’Dowd, Two World Wars and Hitler: Who Was Responsible? Anglo-American Money, Foreign Agents and Geopolitics (Walterville, Oregon: Tine Day, 2025). See Paul Cudenec, ‘Adolf Hitler and the zio-imperialist mafia’, https://winteroak.org.uk/2025/05/08/adolf-hitler-and-the-zio-imperialist-mafia/
[76] Claude Duvernoy, Le prince et le prophète (Vannes: Keren Israël, 1996), p. 193, cit. p. 89.