Joshua Scheer
This conversation strikes close to home. My grandmother was part of the Bundist tradition discussed here, a movement that offered a radically different vision of Jewish life—one rooted in solidarity, workers’ rights, and the belief that oppression should be confronted rather than displaced onto others. While my own politics have evolved in different directions, that history remains deeply meaningful to me. It is also a reminder of how many Jewish voices, movements, and traditions have been pushed to the margins of public memory. The story of the Bund is not simply a forgotten chapter of Jewish history; it is a testament to alternative futures that once existed and to the generations of Jews whose struggles, ideals, and sacrifices have too often been erased from the dominant narrative.
For generations, the world has been told that Zionism was the inevitable answer to European anti-Semitism — the only path available to a persecuted people facing exclusion, pogroms and genocide. But history tells a far more complicated story.
In a wide-ranging conversation on Palestine Deep Dive, Palestinian historian Hazem Jamjoum and writer Molly Crabapple revisit the forgotten legacy of the Jewish Labor Bund, a mass socialist movement that rejected both assimilation and Zionism. Founded in the same year as the Zionist movement, the Bund argued that oppression should be fought where it exists — not escaped by creating a new state at another people’s expense.
Their discussion challenges one of the foundational myths of modern political history: that the displacement of Palestinians was an unavoidable consequence of Jewish survival. Instead, it uncovers an alternative tradition rooted in internationalism, labor organizing, anti-fascism and solidarity across ethnic and religious lines.
For more than a century, Zionism has presented itself as the natural, inevitable expression of Jewish history — the singular answer to antisemitism and the only authentic Jewish political project. But this narrative required something profound: the erasure of the extraordinary diversity that once defined Jewish life. Across Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, Jews built cultures, languages, and political movements that bore little resemblance to Zionism — from the socialist Bundists of Eastern Europe to Arab Jews embedded in the societies of Baghdad, Fez, and Sana’a. These traditions did not vanish by accident. They were pushed aside, overwritten, or forgotten as Zionism rose to dominance, aided by imperial power and the devastation of the Holocaust. Recovering these suppressed histories is not an academic exercise. It forces us to confront a simple, destabilizing truth: Jewish identity was never singular, and Zionism was never the only Jewish future.
At a moment when criticism of Israel is increasingly conflated with anti-Semitism, and as Gaza endures unimaginable devastation, the conversation raises uncomfortable questions about memory, identity and power. What histories have been buried? Who benefits from their erasure? And what might the world look like today if a different Jewish future had prevailed?
The Future That Was Buried
One of the most striking themes of the discussion is that Zionism was never uncontested among Jews.
In fact, some of its most determined opponents were Jews themselves.
The Bundists believed that creating a state in Palestine would inevitably require the displacement and subjugation of another people. Long before 1948, they warned that a project based on settling an already inhabited land would create new forms of oppression.
Their argument was simple and morally powerful:
If oppression is wrong when done to Jews, it is wrong when done to anyone else.
Jamjoum notes that Bundists immediately recognized what many supporters of Zionism refused to acknowledge—that establishing an ethno-national state in Palestine would come at the expense of Palestinians.
For the Bund, liberation could never be achieved through the oppression of others.
That is precisely why their history remains so threatening today.
The existence of the Bund disproves the claim that Zionism was inevitable.
History offered alternatives.
Millions of people simply forgot them.
A Cohesive Story: The Bund and the Jewish Future That Zionism Buried
Before Zionism became the dominant story of Jewish survival, another Jewish future existed—one rooted not in nationalism or territorial conquest, but in socialism, diaspora life, and the refusal to abandon the struggle against oppression. This was the world of the Bund, the largest Jewish political movement in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust, a secular, socialist, Yiddish‑speaking force that insisted Jews could live fully, beautifully, and safely where they already were.
The Bund was born in 1897 in the Tsarist Empire, a place where Jews faced brutal discrimination, pogroms, and legal segregation. Yet instead of accepting the idea that safety required flight, the Bund articulated a radically different vision: “Here where we live is our country.” Their philosophy was simple and defiant—don’t run away from oppression; fight it where you stand.
This worldview placed them in direct conflict with Zionism, which emerged at the same moment but offered the opposite prescription: leave Europe, build a Jewish state, and seek safety through sovereignty. For Bundists, this was not only a political error but a moral catastrophe. They understood early—and said openly—that Zionism’s project in Palestine would require the displacement and oppression of another people. As one Bundist critique put it, Zionism meant “oppressing people somewhere else,” a prediction that history would tragically confirm.
The conflict between the two movements was fierce. Bundists called Zionism “the most evil enemy of the organized Jewish proletariat,” while Zionist leaders like Chaim Weizmann admitted that their hardest battles were against the Bund. This was not a polite ideological disagreement; it was a struggle over the soul of Jewish identity. Would Jewish liberation come through solidarity with other oppressed peoples, or through the creation of an exclusivist nation‑state?
The Bund also saw something Zionists preferred to ignore: Zionist leaders were willing to collaborate with antisemites if it advanced their project. Theodor Herzl’s meeting with the violently antisemitic Russian minister von Plehve—seeking support for Jewish emigration to Palestine in exchange for suppressing the Bund—is only one example. For Bundists, this was betrayal: a willingness to sacrifice Jewish workers in Europe to build a colonial foothold elsewhere.
Christian Zionism added another layer of danger. Long before political Zionism, Christian Zionists argued that Jews must return to Palestine to fulfill biblical prophecy—after which they would either convert or perish. As Hazem Jamjoum notes, this theology reduces Jews to instruments in someone else’s apocalypse. The Bund recognized Christian Zionism not as support, but as a new form of European antisemitism dressed in religious language.
So why did Zionism win? Not because it was morally superior or more popular among Jews. It triumphed because it aligned with imperial interests—first British, then American—and because the Holocaust annihilated the very communities where the Bund was strongest. After the war, the Zionist movement had a state, an army, and the backing of global powers. The Bund had mass graves.
Cold War politics finished the job. A socialist, anti‑nationalist Jewish movement was inconvenient for both the United States and the new State of Israel. The Bund was written out of mainstream memory, replaced by a single narrative: Zionism was inevitable, natural, the only answer to antisemitism.
But history is returning. As the question “Was Zionism inevitable?” resurfaces, the Bund’s legacy matters more than ever. It reminds us that:
- Jewish identity does not require nationalism
- Jewish safety does not require a state
- Jewish futures once existed that did not involve Palestinian dispossession
- Anti‑Zionism is not antisemitism
- Diaspora life is legitimate, rich, and historically normal
And it offers a political ethic rooted in solidarity rather than supremacy.
Today, Bundist organizations still exist in New York, Melbourne, Toronto, Buenos Aires, and London. Their ideas are resurging among young Jewish anti‑Zionists searching for a Jewish identity not built on domination or displacement. They are rediscovering what the Bund insisted all along: that Jewish dignity comes not from a flag or a fortress, but from standing with the oppressed, not above them.
The Bund’s story is not a relic. It is a reminder that history could have gone another way—and still can.
Molly Crabapple is an extraordinary writer, artist, and journalist whose work has consistently challenged power and recovered forgotten histories. You can explore more of her writing and artwork here.
For readers interested in learning more about the Jewish Labor Bund—the socialist, anti-Zionist movement that once represented a very different vision of Jewish political life—I highly recommend Molly’s book Here Where We Live Is Our Country. It is a powerful and deeply researched account of a movement whose history remains as relevant today as ever.
Readers may also want to revisit Molly Crabapple’s excellent essay, “They tried to smear him as an antisemite – but Mayor Zohran Mamdani walks in a rich Jewish tradition”
Which inspired ScheerPost publisher Robert Scheer to reflect on his own ties to New York’s rich Jewish socialist traditions. The piece explores a largely forgotten political heritage—one rooted in labor organizing, anti-fascism, immigrant struggles, and social justice—that continues to shape political debates today.“A New Mayor, an Old Tradition: Yiddish Socialism Reawakens“
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