Anti-Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims

Last week, social media was ablaze with news that Israel had struck the European Hospital in Gaza. A single interpretation of this event prevailed: Israel, in an act of genocidal sadism, had targeted the hospital for no reason other than to terrorize innocent civilians as they sought medical care.

The IDF told a different story, saying that the target of the strike was none other than Mohammed Sinwar, the brother of the late Yahya Sinwar and the current head of Hamas, but people were skeptical of this claim. As one BBC reporter stated, “The IDF has failed to provide any evidence whatsoever that Sinwar was at the hospital.”

The reason the IDF “failed” to provide this evidence, however, was that they were still verifying it. Unlike Hamas, which makes wild pronouncements about fatalities after every Israeli strike and then quietly corrects the record months later, the IDF tries to confirm information before publishing it. It would take an entire week before the IDF was able to announce that Sinwar had indeed been killed in the strike. Furthermore, new documentation showed that the strike had not hit the hospital building itself, but rather the area outside the building in the hospital compound. 

But by then, the damage was done. Israel had been maligned as a villainous hospital-bomber and what should have been the headline — that Hamas’ top military commander was hiding out in a bunker under a hospital — went largely unreported. 

According to international law, protected zones lose their protected status when used for military purposes. If Hamas uses a hospital for a bunker, or an ambulance for a military transport, or a humanitarian zone to hide hostages — all of which it has done — it can no longer expect such areas to be immune from attack. 

This abuse of protected zones is a key element of Hamas’ strategy, and it is an incredibly effective way to provoke outrage against Israel. We have seen these war crimes for 18 months now, but sometimes I’m still capable of being shocked — and Sinwar’s hospital hideout shocked me.

Consider what you know about Gaza right now. Regardless of what one feels about Israel’s continued war, it’s a fact that the people of Gaza are facing incredible hardships and live in a constant state of fear and uncertainty. Amidst this humanitarian crisis, their leader — the one supposedly championing their cause — nestles under one of their last functioning hospitals, transforming it into a target for a strike. 

I was also shocked in 2024 when I learned that Mohammed Deif, then Hamas’ number two man, was killed in a strike in what had been designated as a humanitarian zone. Then, as now, the story was reported as if Israel was mercilessly raining down fire on innocent civilians for the sport of it. In reality, it wasn’t Israel that had violated the humanitarian zone, but Deif, who clearly saw the civilians around him as cheap and expendable. 

Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said famously argued that Zionism must be evaluated from the standpoint of its victims, not its beneficiaries. We need not be afraid of such a proposition. Zionism can withstand critique and it can also withstand an honest examination of its shortcomings and missteps, even the crimes that have been committed in its name.

But at the very least, Zionism has beneficiaries. Whatever else Zionism has wrought in the world, it has created a thriving and productive society where people of every race and religion enjoy the benefits of freedom and citizenship. It has welcomed and settled refugees from all over the world. It has created technologies and products that have benefited all of humanity. And it has protected its people from the constant onslaughts, invasions and massacres of its neighbors — with the security failure of Oct. 7 being a notable exception. 

Does anti-Zionism also have beneficiaries? Only a few billionaires in Qatar and a handful of anti-Israel TikTok influencers can claim this title. 

But what happens when we evaluate anti-Zionism from the standpoint of its victims? Here we embark on a tour of human misery almost without end. It begins in 1948, when the Palestinians, aided by the Arab League, rejected coexistence in favor of a “war of extermination” against Israel, leading to the Palestinian refugee crisis. 

It continues with decades of failed wars, shortsighted strategies and rejected offers of statehood. 

As Jews, we are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as the victims of anti-Zionism. We think primarily of the massacres, the kidnappings, the wars and the terrorist attacks. But the people who have suffered the most from anti-Zionism are the Palestinians themselves. 

Look to Gaza — a wasteland of rubble that could have been a thriving society by the sea had its leaders’ venomous hatred of Israel not led them to hollow out its cities with tunnels, build bunkers under hospitals and schools, hide top military brass in humanitarian zones and sacrifice their own people on the altar of their holy war against Israel’s existence.  

Sinwar’s subterranean hospital bunker should make one thing very clear. One can be an anti-Zionist or one can care about the well-being and the future of Palestinians in the Gaza strip, but not both.

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem.