‘Zionism achieved its goal in 1948’: Simon Sebag Montefiore and Anthony Julius debate whether term still matters

Historian Simon Sebag-Montefiore and leading lawyer Anthony Julius have debated whether it is time to move beyond the term Zionism, as the meaning of the word faces renewed debate both within and outside the Jewish community.

Sebag-Montefiore argued that Zionism’s original goal was realised with the creation of Israel in 1948, while Julius said the word remains useful in describing Jewish self-determination and should not be surrendered because opponents have appropriated it.

The pair were speaking at an event organised by Jewish News and West London Synagogue and chaired by Sunday Times columnist Hadley Freeman, exploring what Zionism means today and its place in Jewish life in the 21st century.

The discussion comes days after Green Party members voted at the party’s conference in Brighton to adopt a policy formally establishing it as anti-Zionist. The motion, passed by 1,022 votes to 813, says Zionism should be treated as a form of racism and backs a single democratic state across Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

Introducing the speakers, Jewish News news editor and co-publisher Justin Cohen said: “Despite all the Greens would have us believe, to be a Zionist is a badge the vast majority of us in this room wear with pride.”

“It is a word whose real meaning we know and refuse to relinquish to the mob.”

But Cohen said Zionism was also “widely misunderstood, both through ignorance and, without doubt, often deliberately and maliciously”.

For Sebag-Montefiore, Zionism was a political project with a defined objective: the creation of a Jewish state in the Jewish homeland.

“In my history books, I just don’t use the word Zionism after 1948 because the project is complete,” he said.

“This isn’t retiring the phrase. It retains all its power.”

Sebag-Montefiore argued that continuing to use the term could imply that Israel’s existence remains an unresolved question.

“What I believe Israel is doesn’t need to explain itself, doesn’t need to offer its existence,” he said.

Julius took a different position, describing Zionism as a belief in Israel as “an enterprise in Jewish self-determination”.

That, he stressed, “doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be equal rights for the Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel”.

“As a matter of principle, I don’t think we should surrender or retreat from the language that we feel accurately describes our views, merely because people have appropriated some of those terms and use them against us,” he said.

Despite their different positions, both argued that Jewish debate should not become consumed by responding to those hostile to Israel.

“The fights that we have with our enemies are mostly pointless,” Julius said, arguing that more attention should instead be paid to conversations within the Jewish community about its own future.

The discussion also turned to contested language surrounding Jews and Israel, including “antisemitism”, “blood libel”, “genocide” and “apartheid”, and whether words with specific historical or legal meanings were increasingly being used without sufficient precision.

Sebag-Montefiore linked this to what he sees as a wider deterioration in historical understanding, saying misconceptions about Zionism, Israel’s creation, the Nakba and 1948 were among the reasons he wrote his latest book, The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East.

He said that after 7 October he encountered numerous “calumnies” and historical quotations circulating online without their proper context.

“That’s why I wrote this book,” he said.

The impact of these debates on younger British Jews was brought into focus when Freeman invited younger audience members to describe the conversations they were encountering.

A recent graduate of a UK university said the past few years had been “really challenging for Jewish students”.

“It was really tiring. It was really tiring to always start with, ‘Have you justified this? Well, how can you defend that?’”

The graduate, who said he had headed his university’s Israel society for three years, said his most productive discussions were with people with whom he could “agree on certain realities”, allowing them to have an ”informed and polite conversation” despite different opinions.

Sebag-Montefiore said Jews ultimately needed to determine their own identity and language rather than allowing opponents to dictate the terms of debate.

“We presumed that all these battles had been won forever. They haven’t been,” he said.

His closing argument was that Jews should decide which language they want to use, stand up for their identity and choose which battles are worth fighting.