What Good is "[Anti-]Zionism"?

For the Third Narrative blog, I was asked to answer the question "is anti-Zionism antisemitic?" But, not having a death wish, I kind of traversed the issue. The better question, I think, is "what good does the word '[Anti-]Zionism' do in most contemporary practical debates about Israel?" And the answer, I think, is "not much".

From the conclusion:

For the “Zionists,” framing contemporary controversy as questions of Zionism vs. anti-Zionism dramatically raises the stakes of basic political disputes, making anything and everything a matter of existential survival. For the “anti-Zionists,” the ambiguity behind the term “Zionism” is regularly exploited as a mechanism of exclusion; they smuggle in broad-based attacks on the Jewish community as a whole while pretending to target only a narrower band of reactionary conservatism. Neither maneuver has lent itself to salutary debate over justice in Israel and Palestine. So perhaps it’s best we find a way to move past it.