Why It’s not Anti-Semitic for Ilhan Omar to raise the question of Dual Loyalty

Those who accuse Ilhan Omar of 'anti‑semitism' are guilty of dishonesty 

Middle East Eye today printed my article on Dual Loyalty, one of the most frequent Zionist talking points. As my article suggests, their arguments are dishonest and self-serving. I have made some slight changes to the printed version.

I have always had a problem with the concept of dual loyalty. I agree with what Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto. The interests of the working class and the oppressed crosses borders. Loyalty is not to the ruling classes of ‘their’ own countries but to their class.

Palestinians struggling against the Occupation have more in common with Black Lives Matter than with Mahmoud Abbas or his cronies. As Muhammed Ali once put it, ‘No Vietcong ever called me a nigger.’ In the words of Samuel Johnson patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Appeals to patriotism never apply to the rich and powerful who invest in the cheapest non-unionised labour regardless of country and then salt away their ill-gotten gains in offshore islands.

When Ilhan Omar, the new Congresswoman from Minnesota responded to Glenn Greenwald’s comment that “It’s stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans.” by tweeting “It’s all about the Benjamin’s baby.”all hell broke loose.

Batya Ungar-Sargon asked Ilhan who she thought was paying American politicians to support Israel. In response she got a brilliant one word answer ‘AIPAC’. The air was thick with cries of ‘anti-Semitism’

Even Donald Trump, who came to power nakedly using anti-Semitic theme tunes and for whom the neo-Nazis at Charlotteville were ‘fine people’ condemned the Democrats as the ‘anti-Jewish party’ for not condemning Ilhan’s ‘terrible comments’. This is the man who lit the fire that resulted in the worst anti-Jewish massacre in American history at Pittsburgh. The Donald does not do irony.

Ilhan then repeated much the same remarks at the Busboys and Poets Cafe: ‘I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is O.K. for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

According to Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine this statement was “much worse” than her previous statements, when she ascribed support for Israel to financial contributions from the lobby. ‘Accusing Jews of “allegiance to a foreign country” is a historically classic way of delegitimizing their participation in the political system.’ Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times accused her of waging a series of ‘microaggressions.

So is it true? Well the first problem is that nowhere did Ilhan mention Jews. She talked about a foreign country, Israel. Is Ilhan Omar anti-Semitic and even more pertinently is talk of ‘dual loyalty’ in itself anti-Semitic?

The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which Zionist groups have lobbied for strongly in Britain, a definition which conflates anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, states that ‘Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel... than to the interests of their own nations is an illustration of anti-Semitism.’ The IHRA also states that ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination’ is anti-Semitic! If Israel is the embodiment of Jewish self-determination then why is it anti-Semitic to accuse Jews of being more loyal to Israel? Would it be anti-German to accuse Germans of being loyal to Germany?

Others such as Philip Weiss in Mondoweiss have argued that far from Ilhan being anti-Semitic even many Jewish writers agree that the question of dual loyalty is no myth. Palestinian American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib made similar comments when she said in January that Senate supporters of anti-boycott legislation “forgot what country they represent.”

So are accusations of dual loyalty, in respect of Israel, anti-Semitic? The first and most obvious point to make is that it is fundamental to Zionism that Jews form a single nation. If the concept of dual loyalty is anti-Semitic then that is because Zionism rests on the anti-Semitic canard that Jews, wherever they live, are aliens and not part of the nations among whom they live. In 2015 after the supermarket killings Netanyahu told French Jews that their ‘real home’ was in Israel. A call repeated by Israeli Labour Party leader Avi Gabbay after the Pittsburgh murders.

Jewish nationality

Israel is unique among states in not having its own nationality. It has hundreds of nationalities but only one, the Jewish nationality, is of any importance. That is why Israel is an apartheid state. This issue was settled in 1972 in the case of Tamarin v State of Israel. George Tamarin wanted to change his nationality from “Jewish” to “Israeli” but the Court refused. Chief Justice Agranat ruled that:

‘the desire to create an Israeli nation separate from the Jewish nation is not a legitimate aspiration. A division of the population into Israeli and Jewish nations would … negate the foundation on which the State of Israel was established.’

The court went on to state that

‘There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish People. The Jewish People is composed not only of those residing in Israel but also of Diaspora Jewry.’

This decision was upheld in 2013 in Uzi Ornan v Ministry of the Interior.  The Jewish Nation State Law passed last summer makes it explicit that Israel is the nation state of the Jews, all Jews, wherever they live. That is why Netanyahu has described himself as the ‘Prime Minister of the Jewish people.’

Last Sunday popular Israeli actress Rotem Sala asserted that “the Arabs are also human beings’, in response to an accusation from Culture Minister Miri Regev that the opposition in the current general election wants to form a government with the support of the Arab parties. In Israel such an accusation is almost like accusing someone of being a child molester. Netanyahu immediately wrote in response that ‘Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish nation – and it alone’.

Strategic interest

Half of the world’s Jews live outside Israel and are nationals of the country they live in yet Israel claims that they are part of the same nation as its own Jewish citizens. It is this claim, not what Ilhan Omar said, which lies behind the belief that Jews have a dual loyalty to both Israel and the country they live in. Clearly it is not possible to be a member of two nations simultaneously (although legally one can be a dual national).

So when Ilhan Omar accused members of the Senate of spending time defending a foreign nation by attacking its own nationals’ right to free speech she is correct. There is nothing whatsoever anti-Semitic in such an assertion. The reason isn’t so much ‘the Benjamins’ i.e. money but because support for Israel is seen as in the United States’s strategic interests. Hence why some of the most vociferous supporters of Israel are not Jewish but fundamentalist Christians and many, such as Trump, are also anti-Semitic.

Guilty of dishonesty

Ilhan was attacking all those Senators, regardless of religion, who voted for a Bill that prioritised the defence of America’s racist Rottweiler in the Middle East over the democratic rights of Americans.

Those who accuse Ilhan of ‘anti-Semitism’ are guilty of dishonesty. They are arguing in bad faith. It is inherent to Zionism that the first loyalty of any Jew is to Israel because their stay in the Diaspora is temporary. ‘The negation of the diaspora’ is fundamental to Zionist ideology. The accursed Galut (diaspora) needs to be wound up, although it is convenient having a large community in the United States that can lobby on its behalf.

The wrong sort of Jews

This is not an academic argument. Like most anti-Zionist Jews I receive my full quota of abuse from Zionists. One of the most frequently used terms of abuse is to call us a ‘traitor’ to which I respond by asking who it is that I am disloyal to?. What lies behind this accusation is the belief that a Jew’s first loyalty is to the State of Israel not the country they live in.

That was why the Israeli Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Absorption distributed in 2013 a survey asking American Jews ‘where their allegiance would lie in the case of a crisis between the two countries.’ Netanyahu had the survey stopped in its tracks but what is interesting is that this survey was ever thought of. It would have been interesting to see the results!

Phillip Weiss cites a number of Jewish writers such as Joe Klein who wrote about the push to go to war in Iraq by the neocons:

The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives – people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary – plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

When you support AIPAC you support the interests of a foreign state, Israel. As the former Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren tweeted ‘AIPAC is Israel’s national strategic asset.’ If anyone is questioning American Jewish loyalty it isn’t Ilhan Omar it people like Israeli government minister, Michael Oren.

Tony Greenstein

Palestinian Children are Caged like Animals with the support of Labour's Despicable MPs Louise Ellman and Joan Ryan

 Is it anti-Semitic to describe Ellman & Ryan as Israeli MPs? Zionism & Dual Loyalty

Palestinian children are caged like animals - Gary Lineker didn't understand the 'context' according to Israeli apologists like Louise Ellman and Joan Ryan

In a debate in Parliament over the treatment of Palestinian children in January 2016, the Zionist MP for Liverpool Riverside, Louise Ellman, intervened three times in order to defend Israel's military.

The pretext was that the children were throwing stones at the army.  Even were this true it would be no excuse.  Clearly Ellman hasn't heard of the story of David and Goliath.  Palestinian children live under a permanent military occupation.  They have the right to physically resist their occupiers.

According to the Jewish Chronicle’s Marcus Dysch, it was my ‘repeated attacks’ on Louise Ellman MP that “were the tipping point which prompted the party to suspend him.”  My offences included describing Ellman as ‘the MP for “Tel Aviv South” and a “racist supporter of the child abuse of Palestinian children”.   My response was published this week.

Letter to Jewish Chronicle 15.9.17.

 According to Dysch Tony Greenstein ‘now awaits his fate at the hands of Labour’s disciplinary team’.  Living up to the JC's reputation as an impartial reporter of the news, I am described as ‘a noxious Jewish anti-Zionist ‘.

Dysch states that I have ‘racially abused’ Ellman.  What, you might ask, have I called her?  A poisonous witch?  An anti-Semitic term of abuse such as yid or kike or Jew boy (I assume the latter is used about women) for which I should rightly be condemned?  Not at all.  I called Ellman the MP for South Tel Aviv.  Perhaps I got the wrong constituency someone wrote to me?  It should have been North Tel Aviv.  If so I apologise.

Pity poor Louise Ellman under attack for her support for the Israeli military

The Delightful Louise Ellman

What, you might wonder is anti-Semitic about that?  Perhaps I am implying that Ellman has a dual loyalty to Britain and Israel?  Well the evidence suggests that Ms Ellman does indeed feel a deep loyalty to the ‘Jewish’ State.  Is stating that fact anti-Semitic?

Yes the concept of ‘dual loyalty’ is anti-Semitic.  Those who propagate the idea that Jews owe a ‘dual loyalty’ to the states they live in and the Israeli state are indeed propagating an anti-Semitic idea.  But I'm not making a generalisation but a specific criticism and who, in any case, is responsible for this accusation if not the Zionist movement and the Israeli state themselves?

At the moment there is wending its way through Israel’s Knesset a Jewish Nation State Bill. In an article What does the Jewish 'nation-state' bill mean for Israel?  the Jerusalem Post of 5.11.17. explained that ‘The basic idea behind the proposed Basic Law is to declare that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.’ 

bravery unsurpassed

Indeed Israel already describes itself as a Jewish State and this means that it is the State of Jews everywhere, not just those living in Israel. That is why Israel does not have an Israeli nationality.

In the 1972 case of George Tamarin v The State of Israel in which Tamarin wanted his nationality to be changed from “Jewish” to “Israeli.” Chief Justice Agranat ruled that:

‘the desire to create an Israeli nation separate from the Jewish nation is not a legitimate aspiration. A division of the population into Israeli and Jewish nations would … negate the foundation on which the State of Israel was established.’ The court ruled that ‘There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish People. The Jewish People is composed not only of those residing in Israel but also of Diaspora Jewry.’

When taken to court children have their legs shackled

Israel declares itself to be the State of all Jews, not just those living in Israel.  In other words it is the Zionist movement and Israel which asserts that Jews have a dual loyalty.  In October 2013 the Israeli American Council, with the support of the Israeli Embassy distributed a Questionnaire to American Jews asking what they would do in the event of a clash of interests between Israel and the USA.  When a furore developed Netanyahu ordered the plug to be pulled.  Israel Asks U.S. Jews, Israelis: Where Do Your Loyalties Lie?

Another dangerous terrorist

The mere fact that Zionist organisations, including Ministries of the Israeli state distributed and sanctioned such a questionnaire demonstrates their way of thinking.  In fact what Zionist organisations really believe is that in the event of a conflict between the state they live in and Israel, Jews owe their first loyalty to Israel.

It is therefore quite reasonable to call Louise Ellman, who is a sincere and devoted Zionist, the MP for Tel Aviv.  In just the same way as people called John Carlisle & Julian Amery MPs for South Africa.  There is nothing racist about this, it is just an indication of where her political loyalty lies.

If anything I should be criticised for having gone easy on this despicable specimen of New Labour and the Jewish Labour Movement/Labour Friends of Israel, of which she is a Vice-President. 

Below we see Israeli and Zionist commentators attacking Gary Lineker.  Lineker, who has already attracted the wrath of the Scum and the Tory press over his support for asylum seekers has now incurred the wrath of Zionist bigots too!

Gary Lineker criticised for sharing video of Israeli soldiers abusing Palestinian children

The video that Gary Lineker found sickening

Commentator and ex-England footballer Gary Lineker has been roundly criticised by Israel supporters after sharing a harrowing video which shows Palestinian children being shouted at, dragged around and detained by Israeli soldiers.

Eighteen youths, most under the age of 18, were arrested in total for throwing stones at soldiers in the 13 October incident, the footage of which was recently released by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. 

They were blindfolded during interrogations and not allowed access to their families or lawyers until their release that night.

A banner on a Tel Aviv demonstration in support of Elor Azaria - a soldier who killed a wounded Palestinian in cold blood

Mr Lineker, who is vocal in his support for the Palestinian cause,  retweeted a clip of the incident posted by prominent pro-Palestinian activist Ben White with the word “sickening”.

While it was retweeted thousands of times by people sympathetic towards the detained children, many others were critical of Mr Lineker -  including the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) former spokesperson Peter Lerner replied to tell the footballer he had “completely missed the point”.

”When kids throw stones they are a public menace. They need to be stopped. Yes, the video is unpleasant but it conveniently shares only a glimpse of what happened, the aftermath of their actions. You should be wiser than this,” he posted.

The argument continued after Mr Lineker replied, “They should be stuffed into a small cage? You should be wiser.”

In the back and forth Mr Lerner said the video “lacked context”. The former Leicester City player replied that the context was clear. 

Soldiers drag 8-year-old from house to house in Hebron for over an hour

“Sometimes detention is required,” the ex IDF official responded.

Lineker was also embroiled in a Twitter row in 2015 after posting a video which showed Israeli soldiers shooting at a Palestinian who had been throwing stones.

B’Tselem themselves replied to Mr Lineker: “Unfortunately, this is routine all through the West Bank. Palestinian minors' rights are violated systematically by Israeli authorities.”

The IDF and Cogat, the Israeli military administration in the West Bank, did not immediately respond to The Independent’s requests for comment.

Why ZIONISM is as relevant now as it ever was

A Response to Didi Herman’s ‘Zionisms’

Didi Herman - Believes We Should Vacate Zionism & Use Israeli Nationalism

In an article 'Zionisms' in Critical Thinking of 29^th April 2016 Didi Herman argues that the left should drop the use of the term ‘Zionism’.  I disagree.  The term Zionism is as relevant now as it has ever been.

Zionism red in tooth & claw

This argument is not taking place in a vacuum but in the context of a concerted attempt to depict the anti-Zionist left, including Black and ethnic minority members of the Labour Party, as anti-Semites.  Part of the narrative of the defamers is that Zionism has become a dirty word, a term of abuse.  There are those on the left who have been seduced by this special pleading.  Not only Didi Herman but Jon Lansman of Momentum.  [Why the Left must stop talking about ‘Zionism’]

Graffitti on walls of Hebron - is this a result of Zionism?

There is, as always, when dealing with the Zionist hasbara [propaganda] a certain amount of disingenuousness.  On the one hand we have the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis asserting that ‘One can no more separate it [Zionism] from Judaism than separate the City of London from Great Britain.’ and then Didi writes that ‘scholars replace Jews and Judiasm with Zionists and Zionism, and label Zionism ‘racist’ or part of a ‘racial contract’ or ‘apartheid’.]  I’m sorry Didi, but it’s not left-wing scholars but right-wing Zionists who conflate Zionism and being Jewish.  It hardly takes a logician to work out that if Judaism and Zionism are one and the same, then Jews must indeed be responsible for the actions of the Israeli state.

Theodor Herzl - founder of Political Zionism -  saw in anti-Semitism the 'divine will to good' (Diaries)

Didi Herman believes that the way to cut the Gordian knot is to agree not to use the term ‘Zionist’ as if that will remove the confusion between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism.  It will not because Zionists will cry ‘anti-Semitism’ for as long as Israel is under attack from BDS or any other civil movement.  Didi Herman’s article merely furthers the confusion.

Didi says that ‘zionism is first and foremost a state of mind’ and that ‘some forms of it do not require (indeed, are opposed to taking) actual land’.  I’m sorry but this is nonsense.  Zionism is not some kind of spiritual experience, a psychedelic trip to the unknown.  It involved the colonisation and settling of land and the forcible eviction of the Palestinian peasants from its earliest days.  In 1948 it involved the massacre of thousands of Palestinian peasants and the forcible expulsion of ¾ million refugees.  This was no state of mind.

Didi Herman - Professor of Law but a Mistress of Vacuity

And let us deal with this ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ version of Zionism.  Virtually all wings of Zionism – from Political to Practical to Socialist to Cultural agreed on the need for the colonisation of land.  The only real debate, between Zionism and the Territorialists, was over which land.  The history of Zionism is the collapse of the binationalist Zionists and the left Zionists into the colonialist wing of Zionism.  As Ben-Gurion once remarked to Martin Buber, ‘was it with the permission or against the wishes of the Arabs that you came to this country?’

Perhaps Didi does indeed believe that she was once an anti-Zionist.  I can’t ever recall her name cropping up as an Jewish anti-Zionist activist.  Perhaps she kept the secret closely hidden.  Maybe, in a vague and unformulated way she was, but clearly she didn’t understand the specific nature of the Israeli state and why it is different to other states, still less the dynamics of Zionism itself. 

I don’t refer to the Zionist movement because I wish to demonise anyone, still less to summon the ghosts of anti-Semitism past, but because I want a precise and scientific term with which to understand the trajectory of the modern state of Israel and where it came from.  Without understanding what Zionism is and was you cannot understand why Israel is what it is.  The subjective prose that Didi wishes me to use by way of a substitute clouds rather than clarifies.

Didi writes that ‘‘Israeli nationalism = apartheid’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it.’  That is true.  A false equation rarely does have the same impact.  Israel is quite unique as an ethno-religious state.  Many states for example Ireland have immigration laws based on patriality, whereby those who have some family link to the country can immigrate and claim citizenship.  But no state that I know accords such a ‘right of return’ to people who have never been there and who have a mythical attachment going back 2,000 years in preference to those who have always lived there.

I would expect someone who is a Professor Law to at least take the time out to study the basic constitutional framework of Israel, the legal position of the individual and the jurisprudence of the state they are pontificating about.  Indeed I would expect Didi to have at least some idea of what it means for Israel to declare itself a ‘Jewish state’.

The socialist Zionist stockade & watchtower settlements

Let me help her.  There is no Israeli nationalism for the very simple reason that there is no Israeli nationality.  There is a Jewish nationality and a Christian, Muslim and many more ‘nationalities’ but there is no Israeli nationality, for the simple reason that Israel is a Jewish state.  It is a state of the Jewish ‘nation’, as the Jerusalem Program of the World Zionist Organisation prescribes.  That means it is a state, not of its own citizens, but of all Jews throughout the world.  That is why Israel is unique.  That is what makes Israel an apartheid state.  It is the Zionist movement, a settler colonial movement, which sought from the start to create a Jewish state which excluded non-Jews from its borders or, if they continued to live in it, from any notion of equality. 

In 2013 Israel’s Supreme Court in Uzzi Ornan v the State of Israel ruled that there was no such thing as an Israeli nationality. [‘Supreme Court rejects citizens' request to change nationalityfrom 'Jewish' to 'Israeli' - Court rules against change in identity cardregistration, citing that there is no proof of the existence of a uniquely' Israeli' people’, Ha’aretz, 3.10.13. 

Zionism or merely Israeli nationalism?

This followed a similar decision in 1972 in Tamarin v State of Israel. George Tamarin wanted his nationality to be changed from ‘Jewish’ to ‘Israeli.’  Justice Agranat ruled that ‘the desire to create an Israeli nation separate from the Jewish nation is not a legitimate aspiration. A division of the population into Israeli and Jewish nations would … negate the foundation on which the State of Israel was established.’ The court ruled that “There is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish People. The Jewish People is composed not only of those residing in Israel but also of Diaspora Jewry.” O. Kraines, The Impossible Dilemma: Who Is a Jew in the State of Israel? (Bloch Publishing Company, 1976), p.67.  Tamarin v State of Israel (1970). 

Didi’s article is one long concession to the Zionists’ cynical weaponising of ‘anti-Semitism’.  What is happening today has nothing to do with historical and largely dead Christian anti-Semitism.  By disavowing the use of the term ‘Zionism’ Didi is left in a sea of subjectivity, wittering on about homelands of the mind.

It’s not Israeli nationalism that explains why mobs marching in Israel today chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’.  Does this not remind her of another time and another place and another people?  National Socialism was not merely a form of German nationalism but a particular political creed which used (volkish) concepts of the German nation in order to pursue imperialist aims in Eastern Europe.  Both Zionism and Nazism took the form of blood and soil racial nationalism.

Does not the assumption to power in Israel of the fascist Defence Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who promptly announces that the death penalty he is introducing will only be for Arabs, suggest other countries in other times.  And what does the plurality of Israeli Jewish voters who support expelling Israel’s Palestinian citizens suggest?

Britain is a Christian state but Christianity is a constitutional adornment.  The Prime Minister appoints the Bishops of the Church of England and the Queen is the head of the CoE.  But there is no Christian National Fund which declares that Jews cannot rent or lease 93% of British land.  Nor are there hundreds of Christian priests ruling that it is a mortal sin for anyone to rent a Jew a room or flat.  But in Israel the Jewish National Fund controls 93% of the land from which Arabs are barred.  In Israel there is a situation where hundreds of rabbis support commanding Jews not to rent to Arabs, all of them paid state officials. Dozens of Top Israeli Rabbis Sign Ruling to Forbid Rental of Homes to Arabs

In Islamic states such as Iran and Saudi Arabia Muslims don’t receive any benefits.  Quite the contrary, an Islamic state is a heavy burden on Muslims.  It legitimises the most terrible forms of repression in the name of Islam.

In Israel being Jewish entitles you to privileges in the same way as being Aryan in Nazi Germany entitled non-Jews to privileges.  If you are a Jewish child then your school will receive about 30% more funding than if you are an Arab child.  Jewish local authorities get far more state aid than Arab equivalents.  Indeed half of Israel’s Arab villages are unrecognised, meaning they can be demolished at any time and they do not receive basic services such as electricity and running water.  Al Arakabh in the Negev has been demolished nearly 100 times as part of the Prawer Plan for Judaisation of the Negev.  As Meirav Arlosoroff observed ‘Israel is a country of national separation − or to put it more starkly, of segregation.’    

This isn’t accidental.  It is Zionist institutions that have been used by successive Israeli governments, Labour and Likud alike, to implement apartheid in Israel.  Organisations like the JNF and the Jewish Agency.  Israel isn’t ‘post-colonial’ as Didi imagines, it is an active settler-colonial state which is still throwing Arabs off the land, even within Israel. 

Zionism isn’t some warm dream of a homeland.  In its origins it was a reaction to anti-Semitism in Europe but it was a reaction that accepted anti-Semitism as the normal reaction of non-Jews to the abnormal situation of Jews in their midst.  In the words of the founder of Political Zionism Theodor Herzl 

‘In Paris..., I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism.’ [Diaries, ed. Patai, p.6]  

Whilst Zionism accepted anti-Semitism most Jews rejected it.

The founders of Zionism constituted the most reactionary segment of Jewish society.  They teamed up with people like Edouard Drumont, the leader of the anti-Dreyfussards in France.  Both the Zionists and anti-Semites accepted that Jews did not belong in the countries they had made their home.  Zionism consisted of the believers in eugenics and the racial sciences.  They were the movement that welcomed Hitler to power because, in the words of Berl Katznelson, a founder of Mapai and editor of its daily paper, Davar, the rise of Hitler was “an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have”. [Francis Nicosia, Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany p.91]

The sneering reference to Ken Livingstone, that he has been  making stupid remarks about Jews for years is just that, an unmerited sneer devoid of substance.  Because Ken is right.  Zionism is a movement whose leader David Ben-Gurion could declare, in response to the Kindertransport that saved 10,000 Jewish children after Krystalnacht that:

‘If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel’. Tom Segev, The 7^th Million, p.28.

Zionism was seen by most Jews in the pre-war period as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism.

Zionism wasn’t a movement consisting of ‘homeland’ dreamers.  It was a settler colonial movement that took its inspiration from Cecil Rhodes in southern Africa.  It colonised the land and dispossessed the indigenous population.  Unlike in South Africa, it did not reintegrate them in the economy as exploited labour but sought to expel them first from the economy and then from the land altogether.  It followed the Australian and American colonial models.

So yes Zionism has become a dirty word and quite rightly so.  Just as ‘segregation’ and ‘apartheid’ were also considered dirty words.  We didn’t use the term ‘separate development’ when the meaning of ‘apartheid’ was perfectly clear.  Nor should we use Israeli nationalism when it is ‘Zionism’ that we really mean.

The suggestion that ‘Judaism is zionism’s parent’ is simply nonsense.  If anyone was Zionism’s parent it was the Russian Czar Nicholas II and his Interior Minister, the instigator of the pogroms von-Plehve.  British Evangelical Christians and anti-Semites like Arthur James Balfour and William Evans-Gordon came a close second.  They supported Zionist colonisation of Palestine because they didn’t want Jews to come here.  

Anti-Semitism in Britain today is minute.  I don’t fear being physically attacked walking down the street.  I am not only Jewish I am White.  I don’t suffer from police raids, stop and search or being asked for my passport like Black and Asian people.  The ‘Anti-Semitism’ of Zionism is a ruse, a device to deflect attention from the actions of Israel.  That unfortunately is the effect of Didi’s article.

Yes Jews in Europe had a legitimate desire for a homeland.  When fleeing the Czarist pogroms they found one – in Britain and the United States.  That’s why Palestine was a racial dream that has turned sour.  

In Israel Zionism means the demographic question, the fear that in the night more Arab babies were produced than Jewish babies.  It is the fear of racists throughout the ages.  When the issue of African refugees who had entered Israel illegally first raised its head, the question was posed in Zionist terms - the threat to Israel's Jewish identity.  The refugees became 'infiltrators' a term first used for Palestinian refugees trying to make their way back into their own country.

Netanyahu exclaimed that "If we don't stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state," [Guardian, 20.5.12.].  

Israel's then Interior Minister, Eli Yeshai, was even more blunt:

"I want everyone to be able to walk the streets without fear or trepidation ... The migrants are giving birth to hundreds of thousands, and the Zionist dream is dying,"

But I make a promises.  If Zionists stop referring to their Zionist dreams and the World Zionist Organisation and all similar organisations abolish themselves then I will stop referring to Zionism!

And finally Didi, if there's one thing I detest it is when an academic deliberately uses obscure words for the general public, like autochthonous instead of the more normal word indigenous.  This is just obscurantism.  At least you have now corrected the spelling!

Tony Greenstein