Then, in , those two Afrikaner states merged with two states dominated by English-speaking white people to become the Union of South Africa later the Republic of South Africa , which offered a kind of national self-determination to white South Africans. The problem, of course, was that the versions of self-determination upheld by the Transvaal, the Orange Free State and apartheid South Africa excluded millions of black people living within their borders.
This changed in By ending apartheid, South Africa replaced an Afrikaner ethnic nationalism and a white racial nationalism with a civic nationalism that encompassed people of all ethnicities and races. But its ethnic nationalism excludes many of the people under its control. Stephens notes that Israel contains almost 9 million citizens. For them, Zionism represents a form of political dispossession. Because they live in a state that privileges Jews, they must endure an immigration policy that allows any Jew in the world to gain instant Israeli citizenship yet makes Palestinian immigration to Israel virtually impossible.
So long as Israel remains a Jewish state, no Palestinian citizen can credibly tell her son or daughter that they can become prime minister of the country in which they live. My preferred solution would be for the West Bank and Gaza to become a Palestinian state, thus giving Palestinians in those territories citizenship in an ethnically nationalist though hopefully democratic country of their own.
But, in a post-Holocaust world where antisemitism remains frighteningly prevalent, I want Israel to remain a state with a special obligation to protect Jews. We are simply saying that we want to base the existence of the state not on the preference of Jews, but on the basics of equality … The state should exist in the framework of equality, and not in the framework of preference and superiority.
These are reasonable criticisms. But are Zahalka and his colleagues — who face structural discrimination in a Jewish state — antisemites because they want to replace Zionism with a civic nationalism that promises equality to people of all ethnic and religious groups?
T here is, finally, a third argument for why anti-Zionism equals antisemitism. It is that, as a practical matter, the two animosities simply go together. Just as virtually all segregationists are also racists, he suggests, virtually all anti-Zionists are also antisemites. You rarely find one without the other. But that claim is empirically false. It is easy to find antisemitism among people who, far from opposing Zionism, enthusiastically embrace it.
In the s, the Polish government adopted a similar tack. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. There is plenty to criticize in Zionism or Israeli policy — and I have done a lot of it over several decades in a number of forums. I will demonstrate this is ahistorical and rests on cherry-picking his sources.
Sultany employs a monolithic conceptualization of Zionism that is severely flawed from the outset, and proceeds to compound it by relying primarily on the writings of two Jewish but avowedly anti-Zionist commentators — Morris Cohen and Hannah Arendt and It was improbable and unlikely — until it happened.
The only thing that saved his reputation for posterity was that he conveniently died the next year , thus sparing himself further humiliation. So taking Herzl down says little or nothing about Zionism. The answer is unequivocally no. There were indeed some very rich Jews, but few of them supported Zionism, with the exception of Edmond de Rothschild, whose financial contribution was crucial in the early years but who had little or no ideological influence.
Nor did Lord Rothschild, the addressee of the Balfour Declaration. Most rich Jews, in fact, opposed Zionism. Sultany resurrects the old claim that Zionism was inherently imperialistic and colonialist.
Nor do I assert that there was an original Zionism that was pure — and that it has been corrupted by 40 years of largely rightwing governance. Rather, Zionism was never a monolithic ideology at any point from the First Zionist Congress on. There were Marxists like Ber Borochov, who envisioned Jewish and Arab workers uniting against feudal sheikhs and plutocrats — something actually attempted by groups in the s. They are following in the footsteps of many Zionists at different points in the 20th century, who tried heroically to combine the quest for a Jewish State with universalist rights.
There is no doubt that there is difficulty in marrying a particularistic ideology like Zionism — even in its many different liberal forms — with democracy; and the rightwing ideologies currently governing Israel are no help.
But the effort has been made many times in many ways — including today — and Sultany is simply wrong when he denies the existence of a liberal and democratic tradition in Zionism. Paul Scham Washington, D. Sultany is stuck, at the latest, somewhere in the late s but with an orientation based on the late s, rehashing the paradigms of the then Arab propagandists and Jewish anti-Zionists such as Antonius, Mattuck as well as Protestants.
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Admin on 2 September at am. Comments on this article will close on 4 September 12 pm BST. Paul Scham on 4 September at am. Yisrael Medad on 4 September at am. To Paul: Precisely. Reasonably priced paperbacks. Pay-what-you-can Ebooks. Some anti-Zionists say Zionism itself is a racist ideology, because of how, in their view, the Palestinian people have been treated by the Israeli state.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign says it opposes all racism, including anti-Jewish prejudice and the "the apartheid and Zionist nature of the Israeli state" - although the PSC has itself been accused of racism for its anti-Zionist stance. Bouattia said she rejected claims of prejudice, adding that "for me to take issue with Zionist politics is not me taking issue with being Jewish" and that "Zionist politics are held by people from a variety of different faiths, as are anti-Zionist politics".
Accusations of anti-Semitism continue to dog Labour. Vicki Kirby was forced to stand down as a parliamentary candidate after tweeting that Hitler was a "Zionist God".
She was re-instated and then suspended again. Gerry Downing, who was expelled from the party, described "Zionist politicians within the ruling classes of America and Europe". Few would deny there are anti-Semites who call themselves anti-Zionists, or that it's possible to criticise Israel without being a racist or a bigot. But agreement on how exactly the two relate appears elusive. Image source, Getty Images. Among Jews, too, opinion is often divided. But it is increasingly difficult to have a proper discussion about 'Zionism' or a normal, critical debate about Israel.
Positions have hardened. Emotions run high. Look around on the internet or on social media: Israel is frequently compared to Nazi Germany.
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