For Peace, End the Anti-Zionism Lie

For many, for the first time in decades, peace in the Middle East feels possible.

The Trump-brokered 20-point framework—now accepted by Hamas under U.S. and Israeli pressure—offers a ceasefire, the release of hostages, and a new political reality in Gaza.

But its success won’t depend only on diplomacy or reconstruction. It will depend on whether the web of lies that has fueled this conflict for generations—the lie that recasts Zionism as the world’s great evil—can finally be dismantled.

If that lie remains, the “peace” now in sight will be little more than a pause between wars.

The Oldest Trick in the Autocrat’s Book

From Caracas to Moscow, Havana to Tehran, dictators and demagogues have long invoked a familiar villain: Zionism. Their fixation has never truly been about Israel or Jews—it has always been about power and fear.

In the modern autocrat’s playbook, anti-Zionism isn’t an ideology but a tactic: a way to unify factions, redirect rage, and disguise failure under the pretense of “solidarity.” It works for the same reason antisemitism has for centuries—it makes hate sound righteous.

For generations, antisemitism served as a pressure valve for rulers. When societies were buckling under corruption or defeat, Jews were blamed—accused of being both powerless and omnipotent. The genius of the lie was its flexibility: it explained everything, demanded no proof, and absolved those in power.

After the Holocaust, open antisemitism became taboo in much of the world. But the instinct to offload guilt onto a Jewish abstraction survived. It simply changed names. The new vessel was Zionism.

Moscow’s Manipulation

This transformation was engineered.

In the 1960s and 70s, the Soviet Union helped to repackage classical antisemitism into a political ideology disguised as “anti-Zionism.” Seeking to weaken both the West and the young democratic State of Israel—a refuge for Jews fleeing oppression—Moscow turned old conspiracy myths into Cold War propaganda.

Through KGB-backed disinformation, Zionism was portrayed as an imperialist cabal, a tool of American domination, even a moral twin of Nazism. Soviet agents and their allies exported this poison through the Non-Aligned Movement and sympathetic media across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

That campaign gave autocrats everywhere a gift: permission to revive antisemitic myths under the halo of “justice.” The vocabulary changed; the function did not.

Projection for Power

Projection is the lifeblood of authoritarianism. Dictators need binaries—pure and corrupt, oppressed and oppressor—to preserve control. The easiest way to sustain that illusion is to invent a villain.

In Latin America, where corruption and inflation hollow many economies, “Zionism” is invoked as shorthand for foreign manipulation—a scapegoat for homegrown decay. In parts of Africa, strongmen rail against “Zionist imperialism” to pose as anti-colonial heroes while silencing dissent.

Autocrats in Russia and China, though often pragmatic with Israel, use similar propaganda about “Zionist infiltration” and “Western plots.” Across the Arab world, anti-Zionism has become ritual—a moral performance that excuses tyranny. Under the banner of “resistance,” regimes justify oppression and failure.

The Present Moment — and the Challenge of Truth

Now, at a moment of fragile hope, these old lies face their first real test in decades.

The ceasefire and Trump’s 20-point peace plan could finally end Hamas’s rule in Gaza and begin a new chapter for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs alike. But peace will endure only if the ideological machinery that fueled the violence for decades is dismantled.

The ceasefire and Trump’s 20-point peace plan could finally end Hamas’s rule in Gaza and begin a new chapter for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs alike. But peace will endure only if the ideological machinery that fueled the violence for decades is dismantled.

From Tehran to Ramallah, generations have been taught that “Zionism”—and by extension, Jews—are the source of their misery. This Soviet-aided myth, fused with radical Islamist dogma, has created a worldview where hatred feels moral and peace feels like betrayal—as seen among demonstrators who once demanded a “ceasefire” but now chant for Israel’s destruction.

If that mindset survives, no peace will. The greatest obstacle to the region’s future is not the absence of negotiation but the persistence of a narrative that paints Jewish self-determination as original sin.

If “Zionism” remains a scapegoat, reconciliation will remain out of reach.

The Mirror They Fear

When tyrants rail against Zionism, what they see in Israel is not oppression but a reflection of what they most fear.

Israel’s story is not one of conquest, but of return.
Not of tyranny, but of freedom.
Not of empire, but of endurance.

It is the only nation in the Middle East where dissent thrives and power changes hands by election, not by coup or decree—and that is precisely what despots hate.

Dictators project their own corruption onto the Jewish state because Israel’s existence exposes everything they are not: accountable, creative, self-critical, vibrantly free.

They don’t seek to shatter the mirror of Zionism—they seek to stain it. By defaming the belief that Jews, like all peoples, have the right to self-determination, they preserve their power while keeping their people shackled to hate and ignorance.

What Comes Next

With Hamas forced to relinquish power and the hostages finally coming home, the next test begins: whether Palestinian society—and the Arab world more broadly—will confront the indoctrination that turned antisemitism into virtue.

If peace is to last, Palestinian leaders must replace a dominant culture of hate with the ethic of coexistence. They must teach that Jews are not interlopers from the “river to the sea,” but an indigenous people whose return fulfilled history, not theft and who aren’t going anywhere.

Only when that truth is spoken—not whispered—can peace take root.

This moment, tenuous but historic, is the best chance in decades for a Middle East free from Hamas’s tyranny and the ideological poison from Hamas’s ideological predecessors that sustained rejection of Jewish sovereignty long before Hamas existed.

Whether it endures depends less on ceasefires than on courage—the courage to end the lies that have murdered peace for generations.

Because peace built on truth is difficult—but it’s the kind that lasts.

Micha Danzig served in the Israeli Army and is a former police officer with the NYPD. He is currently an attorney and is very active with numerous Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, including Stand With Us and the FIDF, and is a national board member of Herut North America.