Adam Louis-Klein: The Left-Wing Case Against Antizionism

From The Atlantic: There's nothing ethical about hating pro-Israel Jews

The Left-Wing Case Against Antizionism

Adam Louis-Klein

The Atlantic, June 18, 2026. Read the full essay here.

In September 1948, a prosperous Jewish businessman in Iraq was publicly hanged in front of a cheering crowd of 12,000. The following day, close-up images of Shafiq Ades’s broken body ran on the front page of Iraqi newspapers in a triumphant and gruesome spectacle that celebrated the punishment of a “Zionist traitor.” Iraq was losing the war that would create the state of Israel, a humiliation that challenged fantasies of Arab unity and conquest. A military tribunal accused Ades of selling arms to Israel, and he was convicted within days. The state determined that the execution would take place outside his own mansion in a public act of humiliation. Regardless of whether it was true that Ades was a Zionist, his murder was an act of anti-Zionist violence—driven by a violent hatred of Israel and anyone associated with it.

The flight or expulsion of 850,000 Jews from countries across the Middle East is a story that still too often rests in silence, but even when it is told, the ideology that caused it is seldom named.…

Continues here. Adam Louis-Klein is an adjunct fellow at the Z3 Institute and founder of the Movement Against Antizionism.