There is a long article on this subject by a Peter Beinart in The Guardian today, not open to comments. Zionism is a philosophy of Jewish nationalism originating at the end of the nineteenth century as a response to widespread persecution in Europe, particularly in the Russian Empire, though it was the Dreyfus trial in France which gave the movement its impetus. It was originally opposed by many, if not the majority of Jews, who had not the slightest interest in trying to set up a Jewish state in a country consisting mostly of sand dunes, swamp, semi-desert, and eroded rocky hillsides. The USA, the Golden State, was the goal.
It was the events of the 1930s and the aftermath of the Second World War which caused Zionism to gather momentum. Even then, the land of the then Palestine was a last choice, or Hobson’s choice, for the majority of those who went to live there. As late as the nineteen-fifties, in countries where Jews felt safe and comfortable, Zionists were regarded by other Jews as slightly cracked. There were also, and still are, religious groups who consider the notion of a Jewish state as contrary to the will of God, and this is in fact an old tradition.
The author of the article, himself a Jew, draws much the same conclusion when he says that to be opposed to Zionism cannot in itself be anti-Semitic. What he neglects to mention is that it has become an obsession among non-Jews – especially on the left – to the point that they are silent about all the other evils in the word; the most recent example is the imprisonment of a million or two Muslims in Chinese concentration camps. It then has to be concluded that the anti-Zionism is driven by anti-Semitic emotion.
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