> I agree that nationalism should be an issue, but Zionism is
> different from other kinds of nationalism in that the claims
> of membership in the nation are different from most. How is
> it that someone born in Brooklyn can claim a piece of
> subsidized land in Israel based merely on being Jewish?
It does not strike me as being much different from what other countries are doing when they grant citizenship by "jus sanguinis" or "blood lineage" i.e. children born outside the country can acquire citizenship if one of the parents was a citizen. See for example:
Ireland http://www.irelandemb.org/fbr.html
Germany (where obtaining citizenship by blood was even easier before 1999) http://www.germany-info.org/relaunch/info/consular_services/citizenship.html
Poland http://www.polishembassy.ca/news_details.asp?nid=58
US http://uscis.gov/graphics/services/natz/citizen.htm
Israel might be a bit more liberal on this account, given its peculiar history, but not fundamentally different.
I also think equating the state of Israel with Zionism is as unjustified as equating the United States of America with Christian fundamentalism - both ideologies were highly influential in forming the respective national mythologies, and there is plenty of that mythological symbolism in public rituals, yet in both cases there is a meaningful separation between the essentially secular state and religiously inspired mythology.
Wojtek