Zionism is a loaded term

Zionism is largely irrelevant to the current situation in Israel and Gaza, insists Palestinian American activist and blogger Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib. He was speaking at the African Global Dialogues Conference in Johannesburg on 19 September.

Alkhatib said that Zionism is central to Palestinian politics, but today’s demonisation of Zionism as the root of all evil is a crude simplification when considering the landscape of Palestinian politics.

“Zionism was very central to the Palestinian story, to the Palestinian narrative, to the Palestinian perception of injustice and grievance,” Alkhatib – who grew up in Gaza and has lost 31 family members in this current war – told the conference (organised by the New South Institute and its director, local academic and activist Ivor Chipkin).

Alkhatib said that since the atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel on 7 October and the ensuing war, “Zionism has taken on an oversized role. You see the use of the word ‘Zionist’ as a slur from the pro-Palestinian point of view, as it has become more mainstream. It is used this way by large segments of both the Palestinian and pro-Palestine communities, Western allies, and people in the global south.”

Alkhatib said that it’s easy for academics to claim that Zionism is the reason the war continues and so many people have been killed. However, this point of view is way too simplistic as it ignores Palestinian involvement in the situation.

Similarly, David Hirsh – the academic director and chief executive officer of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism – explained that the idea of people conflating Zionism and evil comes from the idea of Jewish exceptionalism.

“To refer to Israel as the Zionist entity, or to Israeli policy as Zionist policy, or to Israelis as Zionists, is to make Israelis exceptional. Because we don’t talk about people like that. We don’t talk about the French or the Germans or the Uruguayans or anybody by reference to their nationalism, we talk about them by referring to where they come from.”

More importantly, this makes it “possible to think of Zionists as being a political movement, based on ideas that we disagree with, and therefore a political movement that is wrong, and that we would like to defeat, and then would like to disappear”.

For Hirsh, discussing Zionism like this is avoiding accusations of antisemitism because antisemitism in certain circles has become disgraceful, but not Zionism.

“It’s challenging to talk about antisemitism because the left, in general, teaches young people to recognise those who claim antisemitism as Zionists who are doing so in bad faith to delegitimise the left and Palestine solidarity,” he said.

“Jews quite often get accused of being like Nazis, like genociders, like people who support and facilitate the deliberate murder of children,” said Hirsh. “Of course, it’s not new for Jews to be accused of facilitating and carrying out the deliberate murder of children, so in the end everything comes down to whether it’s true or not.”

Hirsh said that, “The problem arises if it’s not true. If it’s not true that Israel is exceptional; if it’s not true that it is a settler colonial state, an apartheid state, a genocidal state, an evil state. If it’s not true, then we are teaching people to relate to Jews around the world as though they were Nazis, and that has a particular landing place for Jews, to be accused of being genocidal and Nazis.”

Alkhatib added that, “Zionism means different things to different people, and there are a lot of people in the Jewish diaspora that, out of love for the Jewish people in Israel, will identify as Zionists. But for some, Zionism has become the main face of Israeli policy. We have reached a point now where Zionism has become a distraction in the way in which we can try and move forward to a path for peace.”

Agreeing with Alkhatib, Israeli historian and professor emerita of history at the University of Haifa Fania Oz-Salzberger explained that global perspectives on Zionism, particularly in the intellectual spheres, are creating a greater chasm.

She said that what she considers to be her Zionism – the Zionism of Herzl, Ben Gurion, and Yitzhak Rabin – is being opposed by the current extremist right-wing government in Israel.

“My kind of Zionism – my parents’, my grandparents’, and my children’s Zionism – says that full compatibility is possible in the two-state solution, with a free, sovereign, independent Palestine next to a free, independent, and secure Israel,” she said.

“If we have a fully Jewish state from the river to the sea, this to me is anti-Zionist, and many people like me won’t stick around,” she said. “Also, if we have an Arab state, once Israeli society leaves, there will be little sustainability in the region. A one-state solution is not doable in this day and age, and it will not be safe for me and my children. The only hope we have is for a two-state solution that is in line with the Zionism of Herzl, Ben Gurion, and Rabin.

“We were stateless for two millennia, and it didn’t end well for us, to put it mildly,” she said, “I want my nation state, which must be a liberal democracy, embracing all its citizens, Jews and non-Jews, and then next door, the Palestinian nation state, hopefully also embracing the same principles.”