Can a party be leftist and Zionist?

Ahead of Israel’s October 27 elections, Israel’s Young Democrats, the youth wing of the newly formed Democrats party, are seeking foreign allies. They recently announced a joint campaign with the Young Greens of Austria to support “progressive voices on the ground and work with them towards a sustainable peace”.

Meanwhile, another youth group described as “leftist”, Hamahanot Haolim (the Ascending Camps), is exploring plans to build a new kibbutz in the occupied West Bank, near Jericho.

When questioned about the impact on the Palestinian population, the group’s director, Ilan Gazit, explained that since Israeli settlements are being built regardless, “the left” should make sure it is Israeli “leftists”, not far-right settlers, who populate them. “We aren’t ashamed of this, and we aren’t hiding it,” he said.

These two youth movements and their foreign sympathisers appear to treat “leftist Zionism” as a coherent political identity. But can a party, a movement, or an individual be both leftist and Zionist?

The short answer, from a Palestinian and anti‑colonial perspective, is no. So why is it touted in Israel and beyond as a legitimate ideological belief? Because it is a political technology designed to shield Zionism from any critique while preserving the structures of oppression.

A question with history

The question about the viability of “leftist Zionism” is not new. Zionism emerged as an organised Jewish nationalist movement in Europe in the 19th century. At its core was the aim of establishing a Jewish national home, an idea shaped by European nationalism, European anti-Semitism, and colonial expansion.

Its early political architects advanced two connected projects: redefining Judaism as a national identity and colonising Palestine. Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jewish journalist who is seen as the founder of Zionism, was motivated not by religious zeal, as he espoused secularism, but by the growing anti-Semitism in Europe.

After Herzl’s death in 1904, leftist ideas entered the movement as various socialist factions rose to dominance within the World Zionist Organization and in early settler communities in Palestine itself.

But these leftist elements were not driven by a genuine commitment to class-based struggle and internationalism. Rather, they used a socialist vocabulary to justify a settler-colonial nation-building project, carried out through kibbutzim, labour unions, and diplomacy.

Whatever position early Zionists staked out on the political spectrum, what the movement ultimately produced — the state of Israel — was in direct contradiction with the anti-colonial, anti-racist politics the left was supposed to stand for.

In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly acknowledged this by adopting Resolution 3379, declaring that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. The resolution was revoked in 1991, after sustained pressure from Israel and its allies and in the wake of the Soviet collapse.

The debate about “leftist Zionism” continues till today. The issue is not whether individual Zionists can hold progressive views on particular social or economic questions. Some might.

The real question is whether a political project organised around building and sustaining a state premised on Jewish supremacy through ethnic cleansing, dispossession, apartheid, and now genocide can be reconciled with the left’s foundational commitments: equity, anti‑racism, decolonisation, and social justice for everyone.

It clearly cannot.

Leftist politics in Israel

When considering the historical record, it is important to note that for decades, Israel was governed by parties that would self-describe as “leftist”.

Mapai was established as a Labour Zionist party in 1930, led by David Ben-Gurion. It became the dominant force within early Zionist politics and the principal architect of the pre‑state and early institutions, including the Haganah, which carried out various terrorist attacks and massacres against the Palestinians.

Mapai governed Israel well into the 1960s, giving way to the Labour Party, which dominated Israeli politics until the 1990s.

Labour Zionism spoke the language of workers’ solidarity while building institutions that excluded Palestinians by design.

The Histadrut, Israel’s dominant trade‑union confederation, was founded in 1920 as an instrument of the Zionist “conquest of labour”: a project designed to build Jewish settlements by systematically displacing Palestinian workers from the economy and reducing dependence on Indigenous labour. After 1948, this exclusion was institutionalised: Palestinian workers were either barred from membership outright or confined to second‑class status for decades, denied voting rights and meaningful representation even as they paid union fees.

Today, even when on paper Palestinians should have the same rights as Jewish Israeli workers, in practice, they do not. Collective bargaining agreements in key sectors, such as construction, are consistently not applied to them because their employment is rendered unstable, informal, and “temporary” by design. In this way, the Histadrut functions less as a defender of workers’ rights and more as a key actor in reproducing a settler‑colonial order that segregates, exploits, and disempowers Palestinian labour.

The school system set up by early Labour governments functioned as an instrument of ideological formation: forging Jewish national consciousness while erasing Palestinian presence, and recasting settlement as national redemption rather than colonisation.

The kibbutz and moshav movements, the flagship institutions of Labour Zionism, were central to the project of land theft and displacement. Many kibbutzim, due to their location, served as staging grounds for Haganah operations in 1948, including the depopulation of nearby Palestinian villages, making the settlement map itself part of the operational infrastructure of the Nakba.

Falling into the left-right Zionist trap

Despite the long historical record of crimes committed by Mapai and Labour governments against the Palestinians, many leftists in the West continue to fall for the “leftist” label within the context of Israeli politics. They appear to believe that what is happening in Palestine could be solely blamed on Israel’s right-wing political forces led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Campaigns like that of the Young Greens of Austria and Israel’s Young Democrats seemingly reinforce this misguided belief. In the end, their ultimate aim is not to amplify “progressive voices” or deliver a “just peace” to the Palestinians, but to impose a political category – “leftist Zionist” – that is, in essence, incoherent and contradictory.

The constant reference to a “far‑right Netanyahu government” does real political work. It implies that a “Zionist left” could be a credible progressive alternative, one that is capable of changing the colonial reality Palestinians live under and one that is not to blame for Israeli crimes.

That framing lets the underlying structure – Israel’s settler colonialism – off the hook, treating it as a policy choice of the Israeli far right specifically rather than the logic of Zionism itself.

Palestinians do not need political theory to see the truth. Generations of them know, in their flesh, that there is no difference between Zionism on the left and Zionism on the right when it comes to their dispossession. The occupation did not start with Netanyahu, and a change in government will not end it.

Any leftist party in Europe or beyond that wants to remain aligned with its own values has one path. It should listen to Palestinians, follow and support forces like the Green Party of England and Wales in naming Zionism for what it is: a racist, settler-colonial ideology. Not a policy to be reformed, but an ideology to be abolished.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.