Zionism

Chomsky on Zionism

My own views, for example, are regularly condemned as 'militant anti-Zionism' by people who are well aware of those views, clearly and repeatedly expressed: that Israel within its internationally recognised borders should be accorded the rights of any state in the international system, no more, no less, and that discriminatory institutional structures that in law and practice assign a special status to one category of citizens (Jews, Whites, Christians, etc.), granting them rights denied others, should be dismantled. I will not enter here into the question of what should properly be called 'Zionism' -- but merely note what follows from designation of these views as "militant anti-Zionism:" Zionism is the doctrine that Israel must be accorded rights beyond those of any other state; it must maintain control of occupied territories, thus barring any meaningful form of self-determination for Palestinians; and it must remain a state based on the principle of discrimination against non-Jewish citizens.

Zionist definitions of Zionism

In the runup to the Durban Anti racist conference in 2001 the Anti-Defamation League noted that Zionism 'is the Jewish national movement of rebirth and renewal in the land of Israel - the historical birthplace of the Jewish people.' In order to justify the policies of the Israeli government it is felt necessary to defend the state of Israel as if the Jewish 'people' are a 'nation' as opposed to a religion:

History has demonstrated the need to ensure Jewish security through such a homeland. The re-establishment of Jewish independence in Israel, after centuries of struggle to overcome foreign conquest and exile, is a vindication of the fundamental concepts of the equality of nations and of self-determination. To question the Jewish people's right to national existence and freedom is not only to deny to the Jewish people the right accorded to every other people on this globe, but it is also to deny the central precepts of the United Nations.

A typical marker of Zionist ideology is the notion that the Jewish 'people' are a 'people' like any other national community such as Palestinians, Britons or the French. But the Jewish people are actually the same as the Muslim 'people' or Christian or Hindu 'people', that is a religious community and not a nation. Zionism cannot bear the idea that the right of Israel to exist might be based on the right of the people of Israel-Palestine - Jew, Muslim, Christian, Atheist to self determination as opposed to the right of the Jews in general to self determination.