Benjamin Moser traces 12 Jewish critics of Zionism in new history
Twelve Jewish lives anchor Benjamin Moser's new history of opposition to Zionism.
The Guardian published its review of Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History on 19 October 2026, under the subtitle "the deep roots of a contemporary movement" The Guardian. The book holds 12 portraits of Jewish figures who opposed Zionism, the movement formed in the late 19th century. Its author is the Pulitzer-winning biographer of Susan Sontag.
The publisher describes the book as a history of Jewish thinkers who opposed Zionism Penguin Random House. The New York Times reviewed it earlier, on 22 September 2026 The New York Times. That review describes Moser as charting a tradition of Jewish opposition to Zionism and recounting his own belated conversion.
The span is wide. The first character study is of Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamares. The final account is of photographer Nan Goldin. Between them sit philosophers, writers, activists and politicians.
Jacob Israël de Haan is among them. He was murdered in 1924 by Avraham Tehomi, a 21-year-old member of the Haganah paramilitary organisation. Hannah Arendt is also profiled. After fleeing Germany in 1933, she worked in Paris for Youth Aliyah, a network supporting refugee children immigrating to Palestine.
Arendt later broke with mainstream Zionist policy. The book places that break in the context of the Biltmore Conference in 1942, which gathered about 600 delegates from Zionist organisations in New York. South African politician Ronnie Kasrils is another of the 12 subjects.
Goldin closes the sequence. She spoke out as the assault on Gaza began in 2023 following the October 7th attacks. That places the most recent portrait in the present century. The earliest reaches back to rabbinical debate.
What holds the structure together is chronology. Each life belongs to a different moment. Together they trace more than 100 years of argument from inside Jewish life.
