WHAT IS A ZIONIST?

Israeli flag with its distinctive star six-sided star

The t-shirt I saw the man wearing was unequivocal; ‘All Zionists are racist…every single one’.  This is pretty definite when you think about it. What this very superior judgement on others made me think about, however, was ‘Who is a Zionist?’ If it stands for someone who supports what Israel does under all circumstances, then I am not a Zionist. If it stands for someone who supports the continuing existence of Israel then I am definitely one.

 

Israel was granted recognition by the United Nations in 1948, the same year that the NHS was founded. Both the organisation and the country are celebrating their seventy fifth birthday this year. Both were founded on idealism – that health care in the UK should be ‘free at the point of care’ and the Jews should have a home of their own after suffering unimaginable horrors during the holocaust. Both have struggled to live up to that idealism.

 

My brother used to run a hospital and he indicated that the NHS could never live up to what was expected of it. Inflation in medicine is higher than elsewhere in society, medical advances are making cures viable that would have not been possible when it was founded and, related to this, life expectancy has increased by thirteen years since the NHS began. Put simply, people are living longer and older ones need a lot of taking care of – for free.

 

Israel too has failed to live up to expectations. It was once considered a left-wing country with kibbutzim a good example of socialism in practice. (I should know as I spent six weeks in one.) Food, housing and child care were provided for all in return for labour and, apart from a small amount of pocket money for individual spending, everything was communal. It persuaded me that socialism could work as an opt-in system but not as an opt-out one.

This seems a long time ago now and Israel has a nasty right-wing government led by Benjamin Netanyahu who relies on some very unpleasant characters to survive. The country has been accused by some of operating an apartheid system. I am not one of these but the Israeli government seems to be trying hard to disprove this with many of its members believing that Palestinians are effectively sub-humans. The bullied soon turn into the bullies it seems.

This is a long way from the idealism that accompanied the establishment of Israel, one that was broadly welcomed by left-wing people, many of whom have short memories. It is now the Palestinians who are everybody’s favourite underdog. Israel is losing the saloon bar in Britain and around the world, being perceived as a powerful bully that stole land from people and refuses to share it with them now, relying on bigger and better guns to survive.

 

Naturally, the Palestinians do not share this viewpoint and many support Hamas, which has openly stated that it wants to destroy Israel and murder its people. This is summed up in the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ which seems to say that Palestinians should both reclaim their land and kill those who have taken it. This in turn brings out memories of the Holocaust for Israelis who do not need much reminding of how they were slaughtered then.

 

Despite their conquests - and living in a state of more or less perpetual war - the Israelis have managed to create a democracy, still considered the only functioning one in the Middle East, and to have kept alive their left-wing traditions. However, like every country worthy of the name, they put security above justice and survival above fairness. Hence the accusations of apartheid made against them. Being anti-Zionist is now seen as punching up.

 

I have just finished reading Roddy Doyle’s novel A Star Called Henry which describes in sometimes sickening detail how the Irish republicans made British rule in their country impossible and forced a retreat from Ireland eventually. The Palestinians have learned from the Irish and are attempting to destroy Israel. The difference is that, while the British could leave Ireland to its own devices, the Israelis have nowhere to go and are staying put.

 

It is the difference between an Imperialist project and an occupying power. For what it is worth, I have long thought that the Palestinians lacked a Mahatma Gandhi or a Nelson Mandela, one who could preach the virtues of non-violence and the importance of living with your enemy. Hamas’s language of annihilation may work in the west but it has no appeal in Israel, whose citizens have nowhere to go to. To survive they must stand and fight.

 

Put simply, Israel is going nowhere and it is a hopeless pipe-dream to expect to be able to obliterate it totally and replace it with a Palestinian state. Living in a perpetual state of war is likewise impossible in the long-term for Israel. The only viable solution is a two-state one in which Palestine and Israel are uneasy neighbours. Israel needs to be shown that a Palestinian state will not simply result in their rockets moving closer to the ‘enemy’.

 

The two sides are each ranged against the other, both promising that they will destroy the other. Yet Israel cannot destroy Hamas, which feeds on anti-Israeli sentiment amongst the oppressed Palestinian people. Likewise, Hamas will never destroy Israel, which has the backing of the USA, where no-one can hope to be elected president and remain in power unless he guarantees the survival of the country. The Jewish vote there is just too strong.

 

In one sense I am a Zionist in that I believe passionately in the retention of the state of Israel. For all its faults, it is a democracy and does allow dissenting voices inside its borders. I reject the premise that this makes me a racist, as the United Nations surely would be classified as a racist organisation as it allowed the creation of Israel in the first place. And, once its enemies have destroyed Israel, who can say where they will stop next? 

Edwin Lerner My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com