For Normal People

I don't 'defend' Israel or Zionism to antizionists. Facts and logic don't work against antizionists because antizionism is not a product of facts or logic. Attempting to defend against abuse by 'de-bunking' antizionist claims does not work. Name the abuse. Reveal that we are dealing with libels and conspiracies designed not to clarify, but to stigmatise. Get full access to For Normal People at fornormalpeople.substack.com/subscribe

New York spoken word artist Vanessa Hidary took me on an incredibly nuanced, open, and fulfilling walk through the word “zionism”.I’m in awe of Vanessa’s fierceness and eloquence, and encourage you to check her out:Vanessa Hidary on InstagramVanessa Hidary on YouTubeMany thanks to producer Ben Levitt. Get full access to For Normal People at fornormalpeople.substack.com/subscribe

For Normal People is a reader-funded initiative. Please consider supporting the work here. It’s cheap, quick, and guaranteed to make a difference.Adam Louis-Klein is a writer, anthropologist, and musician, currently completing a PhD in Anthropology at McGill University. His work explores Jewish peoplehood, Jewish sovereignty, and contemporary forms of anti-Jewish hate.Adam started the Movement Against Antizionism (MAAZ) in late 2025. MAAZ is a non-partisan, emergency-response initiative confronting a rapidly escalating antizionist hate movement that is actively endangering Jewish communities worldwide.MAAZ has been a breath of fresh air, providing the research, language, energy, and educational resources that so many of us need. If you’re serious about Jewish advocacy, you cannot afford to sleep on this. MAAZ is the single most important development in Jewish advocacy and education in my lifetime. Stumbling across Adam’s work last year felt like a release valve had opened in the back of my head. If you’d like to understand a little more about why that is, consider backtracking to this brief explainer. Why MAAZ mattersThe long and short of it is pretty simple: antisemitism does not have a monopoly on harming Jews. Antizionism is no less libellous, conspiratorial, bigoted, and violent. The Bondi Massacre was incubated by antizionist rhetoric. The killers announced that their goal was to kill ‘zionists’, before opening fire on Jews celebrating Hannukah. Calls to ‘globalise the intifada’ have been met with violence against Jews worldwide. In the last two years alone, Synagogues have been torched on five continents. Jews have been set on fire in Colorado, shot dead in Washington, stabbed to death in Manchester, and mowed down in Sydney. Meanwhile, antizionists claim (and quite rightly) that everything from the purging of Jews from the arts and academia, to the murdering of Jewish children in a petting zoo on Hannukah, are not examples of traditional antisemitism, but antizionism. Leader of the Australian Greens Larissa Waters framed the murdering of Jews in Manchester as a product Israel’s war machine. This is common antizionist logic, whereby dead Jews are framed as collateral damage in a war to eliminate ‘the zionist entity’. Over and over, Jews are told that the vilification they experience is blowback — akin to some pundits justification of 9/11 as a jihadi resistance to US imperialism. This logic made a lot of sense to me between ages 17 and 25. Unfortunately, many do not grow out of conspiracies and resentment, but continue only to wade further into the muck.Antizionists tell us that modern anti-Jewish vilification and violence is a product of antizionism. We say, “no it isn’t, it’s antisemitism”. Why? Why would we legitimise antizionism by capitulating to a confected moral boundary separating it from antisemitism? Why would antizionism-inspired Jew-hunting be somehow more palatable than antisemitic jew-hunting? MAAZ says: it isn’t. The most honest path forward is also the most strategically sound one: to confront antizionism itself, and identify it as its own bigoted, libellous, violence-inspiring mechanism for harming Jews.When every form of anti-Jewish hostility is collapsed into antisemitism, we lose the ability to recognise and confront other forms of anti-Jewish prejudice as they operate in the present. Too often, those harming Jews get off the hook because their incitement isn’t technically race-based, but a product of the eliminationist obsession of the antizionist. To call for the elimination of a state is no less bigoted, bizarre, and dangerous as calling for the elimination of a people. Antizionism is not antisemitism. And in 2026, it’s worse. Hope you enjoy our chat.Adam Louis-Klein’s substack Movement Against Antizionism’s substackMovement Against Antizionism Get full access to For Normal People at fornormalpeople.substack.com/subscribe