At a Congress in Vienna, Jewish Anti-Zionism Flirts with Holocaust Distortion and Antisemitism

From June 13-15, 2025, Vienna (Austria) will host the Kongress zum jüdischen Anti-Zionismus, presented as the first international gathering of Jewish groups opposed to Zionism. Against the backdrop of a global surge in antisemitism, exacerbated by the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, this congress claims to offer a “critical Jewish space” for anti-Zionist thought. Yet on closer inspection, the initiative reveals profound ideological deviations, a troubling instrumentalization of Holocaust memory, and disturbing overlaps with conspiracist and antisemitic rhetoric. 

Vienna as a Symbol: Memory Reversed

The choice of Vienna is no coincidence: It is the city where political Zionism was born with Theodor Herzl, and the organizers explicitly state that they symbolically aim to deconstruct it. This founding gesture reflects a logic of historical reversal—turning the birthplace of Zionism into a site of its contestation.

More problematically, the congress website references the Mauthausen Oath of May 1945, pronounced by Holocaust survivors at the Nazi concentration camp in Austria, in which they pledged to fight for a world without fascism and war. Invoking this oath in support of radical anti-Zionism distorts its historical meaning. By mobilizing the Mauthausen Oath against Israel, the organizers suggest that the Jewish state represents the very system of oppression the survivors vowed to resist. This comparison, lacking historical accuracy, is a rhetorical maneuver that distorts Holocaust memory for political purposes, erasing the specificity of Nazism and the genocide of European Jews.

The announced presence of Stephen Kapos, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, fits into this memory strategy. While the voices of survivors carry undeniable moral authority, they can also be mobilized for ideological purposes. The case of Paul Rassinier (1906–1967) illustrates this clearly. A former schoolteacher, socialist activist, and non-Jewish resistance fighter deported to Buchenwald, he became, in the 1950s, the founding figure of French Holocaust denial. In “The Lie of Ulysses” (1950), he denied the existence of gas chambers and minimized the extermination of the Jews. His trajectory reminds us that being a victim does not shield one from ideological drift—Rassinier himself descended into overt antisemitism. Using the moral authority of survivors to legitimize historically and ethically dubious comparisons—such as between Gaza and Auschwitz—is a rhetorical manipulation of Holocaust memory for political ends, one that risks erasing its historical specificity.

Beneath the Humanist Veneer: A Rhetoric of Rupture

The organizers claim the congress is a response to Zionism’s instrumentalization of Judaism and seek to present an anti-colonial Jewish voice in solidarity with Palestinians. Many participants are likely driven by genuine concern for victims of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet the discourse suffers from three major pitfalls: a total lack of nuance regarding Hamas’s crimes, a systematic demonization of Israel as an inherently racist state, and a rhetorical use of Jewish identity to legitimize positions rooted in historical distortion and internalized antisemitism.

Roger Waters Sets the Tone

The congress will open with a video message from Roger Waters. The former Pink Floyd bassist has become one of the most controversial media figures regarding discourse on Israel and Jews. In a series of recent statements, including on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” (July 2024) and social media, Waters has made extreme claims: denying or downplaying the crimes of Oct. 7, spreading conspiracy theories about a “Jewish war lobby,” justifying Hamas’s attacks as resistance, and denying sexual violence against Israeli women.

His refusal to acknowledge well-documented facts—such as the rapes committed by Hamas, confirmed by UN investigations and victim testimonies—resembles contemporary denialism. Waters even accused Israel of organizing massacres of its own citizens and rejected all journalistic or institutional evidence. He also denied the historical Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, stating it was irrelevant in light of what he called Israel’s “genocide” of Palestinians. This denial of Jewish history is a hallmark of antisemitic rhetoric, aimed at undermining Jewish self-determination.

Waters’ appearance at the congress is no accident. It exemplifies how media personalities can be powerful vectors for spreading deeply antisemitic and conspiracist ideas under the guise of political activism, ideas widely echoed in the most radical anti-Zionist circles.

Radical Speakers

The congress features figures known for their radical hostility toward Israel and the Jews. Wieland Hoban (Jüdische Stimme) is scheduled to speak. In 2023, he made controversial remarks contrasting Anne Frank’s “whiteness” with the “non-whiteness” of Roma and Sinti—a hyper-intersectional reading that erases the specific historical targeting of Jews. This appeal to competitive memory, historically unfounded, is part of a broader relativist discourse that subtly distorts Holocaust remembrance.

This appeal to competitive memory, historically unfounded, is part of a broader relativist discourse that subtly distorts Holocaust remembrance.

Another speaker, Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, is known for his radical postcolonial reading of the conflict. In recent writings, he frames Israeli policy as a colonial, intrinsically racist and destructive project. His book, “Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic,” was prefaced in French by Youssef Hindi—a notorious antisemite and collaborator of Alain Soral’s far-right network “Egalité & Réconciliation.” This ideological proximity to neo-Nazism illustrates the growing overlap between radical anti-Zionism and unrestrained antisemitism. Pappé has previously compared Gaza to Jewish ghettos—analogies that rely on moral distortion and lack historical grounding.

Another announced speaker is Rima Hassan, a Franco-Palestinian political activist born in Syria and recently elected as a French Member of the European Parliament. She is closely affiliated with racialized decolonial movements in France. Hassan has made radical statements equating Zionism with white supremacy and accusing French Jewish institutions of complicity with an “apartheid regime.” In her public writings and speeches, she adopts a strictly postcolonial framework, denying the national character of the Jewish people and reducing Israel to a European colonial project. Under the guise of solidarity with Palestinians, her discourse fuels the delegitimization of Zionism, often accompanied by growing hostility toward Jewish identity itself—a rhetoric that echoes other voices at the congress in a troubling convergence of radical anti-Zionism, ideological essentialism, and historical distortion. (At the time of writing, it remains unclear whether she will be able to attend the congress, as she was reportedly on board the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and is still in Israel, having refused to sign an exit document required by the Israeli authorities).

Several members of the French associations UJFP (Union Juive Française pour la Paix) and Tzedek are also expected to attend. In Jan. 2024, these groups published a statement titled “Israel–Palestine: We Accuse,” declaring: “The Shoah is used to justify a colonial project. Gaza is no longer a ghetto—it is a death camp.” Such an instrumentalization of the Holocaust to attack Israel constitutes a double distortion: It denies the specificity of the extermination of the Jews and empties the word genocide of its meaning. While claiming to honor memory, these groups exploit it, fueling the kind of historical confusion that enables distortionist rhetoric. Their ideological framework further portrays Jews, especially Israelis, as “white colonials,” Westerners inherently aligned with power—a vision that erases the historical and ethnocultural diversity of the Jewish people, as well as their past and present vulnerability.

An Older Matrix of Deviation: Antizionist Trajectories Toward Antisemitism

Although not officially listed as participants, Shlomo Sand and Gilad Atzmon may attend the congress. Whether or not they appear, their trajectories illustrate a broader phenomenon: Jewish figures who, under the banner of radical anti-Zionism, contribute to the erosion of historical truth and the rehabilitation of antisemitic discourse.

Shlomo Sand, an Israeli historian known for “The Invention of the Jewish People,” denies the national character of the Jewish people and questions the legitimacy of Zionism. Beyond academic settings, he has participated in events at Librairie Résistances in Paris—a venue linked to CAPJPO-EuroPalestine—which has hosted figures such as John Bastardi-Daumont (lawyer of Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson) and Paul-Éric Blanrue (connected to Holocaust denial circles). These associations illustrate how Sand’s discourse circulates within ideological environments where anti-Zionism merges with historical distortion and antisemitic narratives.

Gilad Atzmon, a former Israeli jazz musician, represents an even clearer case of ideological collapse. He renounced his Israeli citizenship and embraced radical activism, openly supporting Robert Faurisson and normalizing Holocaust denial. In Atzmon’s rhetoric, anti-Zionism is a veneer for recycling age-old antisemitic tropes under the guise of humanism.

This pattern is not new. In the 1950s and 60s, Benjamin Freedman, a Jewish convert to Christianity, published Common Sense, a newsletter that became a platform for neo-Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial. Paul Rassinier, already discussed, followed a similar path. These examples reveal how hostility to Zionism has, in some cases, become a vector for antisemitic narratives disguised as political critique.

Conclusion: The Need for Vigilance

The Kongress zum jüdischen Anti-Zionismus claims to offer a Jewish platform for anti-Zionist critique. However, a closer look at its speakers, historical references and discourse reveals a troubling trend: Holocaust memory distortion and normalization of antisemitism. The convergence of radical anti-Zionism with far-right conspiracism, and the exploitation of Holocaust survivors’ memory, highlight the urgent need for vigilance.

It is vital to distinguish between legitimate criticism of state policies and the denial of a state’s right to exist, and to ensure that historical tragedies are not exploited to justify hate speech or denialist ideology.

Stephanie Courouble-Share is a researcher at The London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, London, UK, the Comper Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism at the University of Haifa (Israel). She regularly lectures at the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem. Her PhD from the University of Paris provided a comparative analysis of Holocaust denial across political spectrums and countries. She is the author of two books in French: “Les idées fausses ne meurent jamais. Le négationnisme, histoire d’un réseau international » (Le Bord de l’eau, 2021), and « Le négationnisme : Histoire, concepts et enjeux internationaux » (Eyrolles, 2023).