"Not that even such a tenuous link is necessary. I've seen actors, chefs, and writers pejoratively called "Zionist" by those who mean to disqualify or exclude them. To criticize someone for supporting, say, the Israeli government or its war in Gaza is one thing. But this charge is broader and vaguer, uttered sometimes in circumstances with no reference to Israel, and in many cases as little more than an anti-Semitic dog whistle."
"I jumped in to say that I didn't think Zionist should be used as a term of derision. Zionism is a nationalist movement, I insisted, and like other nationalist movements, it has a story rooted in the 19th century-one that is neither all good nor all bad. To call someone a Zionist as an insult is as strange as attacking someone for being a Ghanaian or Chinese nationalist."
A dog-park group chat erupted when a member labeled an American dog-insurance company "Zionist" because its founders were Israeli. The label was used pejoratively and often detached from any discussion of Israel, functioning at times as an anti-Semitic dog whistle. A historian intervened to argue that 'Zionist' should not be a term of derision, explaining that Zionism is a nationalist movement with roots in the 19th century and a complex, mixed history. The modern Zionist movement began in August 1897 at a Basel congress led by Theodor Herzl, which proposed that European Jews establish a new society in Ottoman lands.
Read at The Atlantic
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