From author of Sontag Ben Moser comes a deeply researched history of the Jewish anti-Zionists from the nineteenth century to the present.
For over a century, Zionism has often been treated as inseparable from Jewish identity-a natural response to antisemitism, exile, and genocide. But in Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History, Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Moser uncovers a largely erased tradition of Jewish dissent. Spanning nearly two hundred years, this powerful book traces the lives of rabbis, writers, and thinkers across the globe who viewed Zionism not as liberation, but as a dangerous form of nationalism-and a betrayal of Jewish ethical values.
Figures such as Edwin Montagu, who condemned the Balfour Declaration; Jacob Israël de Haan, assassinated for his anti-Zionism; and Nadine Gordimer, who compared Israeli occupation to apartheid, are among many who challenged the dominant narrative. Their resistance often came at great personal cost, yet their warnings and ideals remain strikingly relevant in today's fractured political landscape.
Moser, himself a descendant of Holocaust survivors and a former Zionist, writes with urgency and compassion. He offers not a rejection of Jewish identity, but a reclamation of a different tradition-one rooted in human rights, moral clarity, and fearless dissent. At a moment of rising global tension and growing censorship, Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History opens a long-suppressed conversation that continues to shape the present. "A book of extraordinary moral clarity. With razor-sharp prose. . . Moser reveals the true face of the Zionist movement to colonize Palestine. Taking us from Jerusalem to Rio de Janeiro, Baghdad to Berlin, this master biographer's vivid, insightful, and affectionately drawn portraits illuminate the integrity of the defiant souls who stood in opposition."
-Nathan Thrall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
"At a time when some Zionists seek to restrict freedom of speech by defining anti-Zionism as antisemitism, and some anti-zionists target Jews as if they were all Zionists, Moser's book provides an urgently necessary refutation of such conflations. I hope it will be widely read."
-Peter Singer, author of The Life You Can Save
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. He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017, and his book Sontag: Her Life and Work, won the Pulitzer Prize.
