The most prominent Jewish critics of Orientalism were anti-Zionists.

Evidence

Interestingly, among the examples of personalities critical to European Orientalist discourse analyzed by the contributors to The Jewish Discovery of Islam, the most obvious ones are anti-Zionists. These include Jews who left Judaism (like Leopold Weiss, who converted to Islam and was later known as Muhammad Assad), and scholars like Maxim Rodinson. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 1259

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why would anti-Zionism correlate with being most critical of Orientalist discourse among Jewish scholars — worth chasing the underlying relationship between Zionism and Orientalism.
• XREF: Connects to Edward Said’s Orientalism and the broader postcolonial critique of how Zionism adopted colonial/Orientalist framings of Mizrahi Jews and Arabs.