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Anti-Zionist reform Judaism gains momentum

February 22nd, 2020

A conservative historian attributes the increasing popularity of anti-Zionist views in the main left-leaning Jewish organization to ideological and political considerations.

On Neokohn, László Bernát Veszprémy ponders why liberal and modernist Neolog Jews in Hungary are becoming increasingly anti-Zionist. The conservative historian recalls that Hungarian reform Jewish organizations have a long history of anti-Zionism. Before the Holocaust, both Socialist progressives and religious Jews with a strong Hungarian national identity rejected Jewish nationalism, Veszprémy writes. Nowadays, he suggests, Jewish anti-Zionist seems to be reviving within the ranks of the left-leaning Alliance of Hungarian Jewish Faith Communities (MAZSIHISZ) as a reaction to the ideological alliance between the Netanyahu and the Orbán governments. Veszprémy also believes that left-wing anti-Zionist criticism of Israeli nationalism and accusations of apartheid-like oppression of Palestinians, facilitate the incorporation of the formerly harshly anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic Jobbik party into the opposition alliance.

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