I think it’s important to take note of the large number of Jewish anti-Zionists who devote their lives to opposing Zionism: the Jewish Voice for Peace, Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pape, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, etc. I have great respect for these people. They need to be protected.

I completely agree with your first point. It is absolutely crucial to acknowledge, respect, and protect Jewish anti-Zionists like Norman Finkelstein, Ilan Pappé, Max Blumenthal, and organizations like JVP who dedicate their lives to opposing this.

But I think it’s a little dishonest to say that Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism. Zionism is Jewish nationalism

I have to push back hard on your second point. It is actually historically inaccurate to claim that Zionism is simply “Jewish nationalism” or that it is intrinsically tied to Judaism as a whole. If we look at the actual historical foundations and the writings of early Zionists, the movement wasn’t built on uniting or uplifting the Jewish people. It was actually built on a deep, eugenic-driven disdain for the vast majority of Diaspora Jews.

Early Zionism was heavily rooted in Shlilat Ha’Golah (Negation of the Diaspora). The founders didn’t view their project as a home for all Jews; they viewed the traditional “ghetto Jew” with absolute revulsion and operated on a framework of psychological essentialism and social dominance orientation.

Here is what the actual founders of the movement said and did regarding the Jewish masses:

• Chaim Weizmann (First President of Israel): Weizmann didn’t want the Jewish masses saved; he viewed them as an inferior caste. In 1937, reflecting on the fate of Europe’s Jews, he literally said: “Millions of Jews are dust on the wheels of history that will have to be blown away. They must accept their fate. We do not want them crowding into our Tel Aviv, turning it into a low-grade ghetto.”
• Ze’ev Jabotinsky (Founder of Revisionist Zionism): Jabotinsky built his movement on collective narcissism, violently contrasting his ideal new “Hebrew” with the traditional Diaspora Jew (whom he derisively called the “Yid”). He wrote: "Because the Yid is ugly, sickly, and lacks decorum, we shall endow the ideal image of the Hebrew with masculine beauty. The Yid is trodden upon and easily frightened… The Yid is despised by all.
• Arthur Ruppin (Father of Zionist Sociology): Ruppin openly embraced eugenics and racial hygiene, treating the Jewish diaspora as raw “human material” to be filtered. He argued for strict selection policies to keep the mentally ill, physically weak, or socially “undesirable” Jews out of Palestine so they wouldn’t pollute the new nationalist project.
• David Ben-Gurion (First Prime Minister of Israel): He frequently and dismissively referred to Diaspora Jews, including Holocaust survivors arriving in Israel, as “human dust” that had no roots and needed to be entirely forged into something else.

This wasn’t just rhetoric; it dictated real-world actions where the masses were sacrificed for a “chosen few.” Look at Rudolf Kasztner, the Zionist leader in Hungary during WWII. He negotiated directly with Adolf Eichmann to secure a rescue train for a few hundred prominent Zionists and wealthy individuals. Meanwhile, he intentionally kept quiet as over 430,000 Hungarian Jews were systematically deported to Auschwitz. During the 1954 Kasztner trial in Israel, the presiding judge literally ruled that Kasztner had “sold his soul to the devil” because his silence prevented mass panic and resistance, effectively sacrificing the Jewish masses to secure his specific, elite group.

The fact that modern organizations like the ADL, AIPAC, or the American Jewish Committee have successfully conflated Zionism with Judaism today is a massive modern PR victory, but it ignores history. Zionism wasn’t founded as broad “Jewish nationalism” to protect all Jews. It was founded by men who viewed the diaspora existence as a parasitic disease, embraced eugenics, and actively discarded the masses they deemed unworthy of their new ethnostate.