"There are two ways to accuse a foreign state of wrongdoing.

One is plain nouns...

The other is the spectral villain. You name a force that feels powerful, hidden, and unaccountable. You imply it is everywhere. You let the public fill in the gaps. ‘#Zionism’ plays that role very well because it can slide between meanings without ever declaring which one it is using.

Sometimes it is meant as ‘the #Israeli government’. Sometimes it is meant as ‘the #proIsraellobby’. Sometimes it is meant as ‘Israel’s intelligence services’. Sometimes it is simply a hiss-word for ‘the West’, ‘the rich’, ‘the press’, ‘global finance’, ‘people who run things’. The flexibility is the feature.

That flexibility is also why it so easily aligns to older #antisemitic patterns. A word that can mean ‘a state’ one moment and ‘a secret global force’ the next will predictably pull people toward the oldest shortcut of all: there is a hidden hand, and it is #Jewish."

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/when-zionist-becomes-a-political-bogeyman/