> ----------
> From: Nathan Newman[SMTP:nathan at newman.org]
> Reply To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Sent: Thursday, July 12, 2001 12:10 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: zionism
>
> One thing I have never understand (or may understand well) is why
> opponents
> of Israeli repression insist on referring to it simply as Zionism, as in
> "Zionism equals racism" when it would be simple enough, less inflamatory
> and
> more accurate just to say the Israeli state practices racism and
> oppression.
>
> Zionism is a broad theory and ideology of population migration that had
> many
> strains, some of which worked closely with Palestinian groups in the early
> part of the century. All sorts of groups over the millenium have seen the
> need to leave their present residence to escape repression and seek a new
> home. The world is hardly a place where every person is in the same place
> their ancestors lived and the world map is shaped by mass migrations of
> peoples.
>
> To single out the migration ideology of the Jews as uniquely racist is not
> anti-Israel but anti-Jewish. It is the specific end-product of that
> migration, the Israeli state that deserves the criticism, so casual
> attacks
> on "Zionism" rather than the Israeli state just melds anti-semitism into
> the
> criticism.
>
> As well, of course, the history of this century has such propaganda as the
> "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" which gives attacks on "Zionism" in
> criticisms hands an extra taint of the antisemitic propagandists.
>
> So I wonder why people insist on attacking "Zionism" rather than attacking
> the Israeli state?
.
Nathan, it might be interesting to talk about those early strands of
Zionism. But you're straining to give "Zionism" a meaning it hasn't had in
80 years. You ask why people attack "Zionism" instead of the Israeli state?
Because the vast majority of Zionists and the vast majority of Israelis
believe the two are identical. In fact, they believe that anyone who rejects
a Jewish-only state in most or all of Palestine is *not* a Zionist. You're
trying to claim membership in a club that won't have you. As Noam Chomsky
says of these early non-nationalist Zionisms, they comprise an ideology that
today would be called anti-Zionism.
Seth