International Socialists

There's no contradiction at all between opposing anti-Semitic bigotry against Jews and opposing the political project of Zionism - the construction and defence of a Jewish state on hijacked land in Palestine.

 

For one thing, a significant number of Jews - including some Israeli citizens - have criticised Israel's war on Palestinians. Obviously, the hundreds of Israeli reservists who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories aren't anti-Semites.

 

But it's no more correct to suspect anti-Semitism when Palestinians oppose Israel. This isn't to say that there's no anti-Semitism in the Arab world. There is - just as there is bigotry toward Jews elsewhere in the world, including among racists who nevertheless support Israel because they hate Arabs even more.

 

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government relies on the support of far right Israeli politicians who routinely refer to Palestinians as "vermin" and "animals" - just as the Nazis regarded Jews as subhuman. And from the 1948 war to found the Israeli state to the proposal to settle the whole of the Occupied Territories, Israel has always been associated with the policy of expelling Palestinians - frighteningly similar to the Nazi idea of clearing Jews from Europe to provide "Lebensraum" (living space) for the German people.

 

There is a tragic irony in the fact that Israel is today carrying out the same kind of racist persecution that European Jews fled from in the 1930s and 1940s. But given the historical legacy of Zionism, this isn't a surprise.

 

The Zionist movement has always believed that anti-Semitism can't be overcome - and therefore Jews need their own ethnically pure homeland. The founders of Zionism considered the rise of Nazism an opportunity - to fulfil their dream of organising a mass Jewish exodus to Palestine.

 

But in so doing, Zionism "transformed Jews from a persecuted minority into an oppressing majority," according to an article published in the 1970s by the now defunct Israeli Socialist Organisation. "Zionism merely succeeded in creating its own version of the world from which the Jews were rejected."

 

No supporter of justice for Palestinians should be defensive in the least about speaking out against Zionism and the state of Israel.