To me, this is pretty similar to "he's far from Parenti when discussing the merits of AES states, but he's also far from supporting basically any part of U.S. foreign policy." He's too willing to accept the State Department line on anti-imperialist groups, but he's also clearly opposing what the U.S. is doing.

I mean by that standard every liberal calling for a ceasefire fits the bill. The question is how people here should think of him. Is he anything more than a half-aware self-interested petite bourgeois socdem? Even they can sometimes so good things, within hard limits.

There is also an important consideration. Those who call for moderation often give the appearance of opposing a manifestation of capitalist oppression, but then through qualifying and left-punching also do work on behalf of that capitalist oppression. Such as the examples where he uncritically repeats debunked Hasbara to both sides the topic. Sometimes it's tempting to think, "well on the balance this is helping", and I think that way sometimes as well, but I increasingly think we can move more quickly past the notion of "liberal whispering", that we can push much harder and faster than we give ourselves credit for, and so the moderating influence becomes more of a detriment.

is Nathan J Robinson a Zionist?

No.

I didn't read anything there that tells me he isn't a Zionist. Liberal Zionism is a reluctant acceptance of Israel's "right to exist", a bias for a "two-state solution", that kind of thing. The implicit acceptance that the Zionist entity is and should be here to stay.

I think NJR suggests the Hasan Piker line of thinking which is to just suggest Israel should become a multiethnic democracy through unstated means. I guess we could split that hair and call it antizionist because it denies the ethnostate, but to me it always reads as more liberal whispering propaganda, a softened stance intended to make them think (just a little) rather than stating a concrete political position.