Religious anti-Zionism

While anti-Zionism usually utilizes ethnic and political arguments against the existence or policies of the state of Israel, anti-Zionism has also been expressed within religious contexts which have, at times, colluded and collided with the ethnopolitical arguments over Israel's legitimacy. Outside of the liberal and socialist fields of anti-Zionist currents, the religious (and often ethnoreligious) arguments tend to predominate as the driving ideological power within the incumbent movements and organizations, and usually target the Israeli state's relationship with Judaism.

Within Judaism

In the early history of Zionism many traditional religious Jews opposed ideas of nationalism (Jewish or otherwise) which they regarded as a secular ideology, and because of an inherent suspicion of change. Key traditionalist opponents of Zionism included

Catholic anti-Zionism, the opposition of Catholics to a Jewish state in the Holy Land, grounded in a religious justification for obstructing such an effort, has been the position of the Catholic Church for most of its existence. While the Catholic Church has had diplomatic relations with Israel since 1993, it does not endorse a theological basis for the support of the state.^[14][15][16] Many Catholics are themselves divided over political support of Israel.^[17][18][19]

Theodor Herzl, the secular Jewish founder of modern political Zionism, met with Pope Pius X in the Vatican in 1904, arranged by the Austrian Count Berthold Dominik Lippay, to ascertain the Catholic Church's position on Herzl's prospective project for a Jewish state in Palestine. "We cannot prevent Jews from going to Jerusalem—but we can never sanction it," said Pope Pius X. He continued, “If Jerusalem's land was not always hallowed, it has been sanctified by Jesus Christ's life. I cannot tell you otherwise as the leader of the Church. Because the Jews have not recognized our Lord, we cannot recognize the Jewish people."^[20] This laid down some of the key religious components of the Catholic Church’s anti-Zionism which would take on more of a political character as the planning of Jewish state in the Holy Land took place beginning in 1917. The Holy See was a strong opponent of the League of Nation’s plans for a Jewish state based in the Holy Land.^[21][22] The Vatican opposed the concept of Judaism having preponderance in a land which they saw as extremely sacred not only to the Catholic faith but also to the other sects and religions of the world, also stating how it would hurt the native inhabitants if this preponderance was achieved.

During the

After the election of Pope John XXIII the Catholic Church moderated its political position in regards to Zionism. At the coronation of Pope John XXIII the Israeli Ambassador Eliahu Sasson was in attendance, and was appointed as 'Special Delegate of the Government of Israel.'^[26] In 1993 the Vatican state recognized the State of Israel as a result of the signing of the Oslo Accords.^[27][28]

In 2010, in a synod chaired by Pope Benedict XVI a statement denouncing Israel's control in the West Bank and Golan Heights as an occupation calling for "the necessary legal steps to put an end to the occupation of the different Arab territories", furthermore the synod's statement condemned religious Zionism, "Recourse to theological and biblical positions which use the word of God to wrongly justify injustices is not acceptable".^[29] In 2015, the Vatican state recognzied Palestine.^[30] Furthermore, in 2018, noted Catholic theologian and former pontiff Pope emeritus Benedict XVI stated that "a theologically-understood acquisition of land (in the sense of new political messianism) was unacceptable...a strictly theologically-understood [Jewish] state—a Jewish faith-state that would view itself as the theological and political fulfillment of the promises—is unthinkable within history according to Christian faith and contrary to the Christian understanding of the promises."^[31]

Practicing Catholics such as