‘A hidden tradition’: Benjamin Moser wants you to know Jewish anti-Zionism is not new
Benjamin Moser, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has released a new book that challenges the dominant narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict by tracing a hidden tradition of Jewish anti-Zionism.
Moser’s work profiles a dozen Jews who actively opposed Zionism, from the late 19th century to the present.
The book includes figures like Aaron Samuel Tamares, a Polish rabbi who began inveighing against Jewish nationalism in the late 19th century.
It also features Edwin Montagu, the British diplomat who sought to derail the 1917 Balfour Declaration, and Israeli historian Avi Shlaim.
A personal reckoning
Moser, who was raised on the Zionist narrative, says he now embraces the view that Israel is a settler-colonial project.
He describes his own work as a form of self-purification, exposing himself to a counter-narrative to avoid moral complicity.
“I didn’t understand the settler-colonialist element – that a group of foreigners sponsored by imperialist powers with bayonets had come into this country that was 95% to 97% non-Jewish and just said: ‘Everybody, fuck off.’”
The book’s most striking anecdote comes from Felicia Langer, who in 1987 inhaled a tissue exposed to a chemical agent used on prisoners at Neve Tirza women’s prison.
Langer hoped the act would help identify the toxin, but it only made her ill, serving as a haunting analogy for Moser’s own risky historical inquiry.
A blunt polemic
Moser’s book is not a purely objective history; it is also an impassioned act of soul-searching and a blunt polemic.
He cheerfully embraced a critic’s assessment that his work is overly simplistic, declaring: “I do think it’s black and white!”
The book seeks to dismantle the Zionist “fairytale,” but its mix of rigorous history and moral fervor sometimes sacrifices objectivity.
Moser presents a controversial view of the conflict, one that contrasts sharply with the consensus view of early Zionist immigrants as unarmed refugees fleeing pogroms.
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