In June, a Pew study found that across 36 countries, 67 percent of adults have an unfavorable view of Israel. That’s an increase from the previous year, in some places a dramatic one. In a time of great upheaval in Israel, the region, and the wider world, people’s views are changing—on Israel, on its leaders and their supporters, on the legitimacy of Zionism.
There are multiple factors at play here. One is the ugly persistence of antisemitism. No doubt another is outrage at Israel’s ever more hard-line policy toward the Palestinians: the bloody destruction of Gaza, the impunity for settler violence in the West Bank, the fact that Israeli leaders no longer even pay lip service to the goal of a Palestinian state.
But it’s not just people’s views on Zionism that are in flux; it’s also the concept itself. Different people are using the word Zionism to mean very different things.
