Talk:Anti-Zionism

The quote I added to this article does not represent my own opinion; I added it only so that readers can see how anti-Zionists, particularly Arabs, view Zionism. It is likely that the author of the quoted remark misunderstands Zionism or is deliberately slandering it for ulterior motives, but that is hard to judge.

For example, Hassan Tahsin writes: "Thus, Nazism in Germany, Imperial Japan (until 1945) the Ku Klux Klan in the US, apartheid in South Africa and Zionism in Palestine are considered the worst types of racism in modern history. Zionism, in fact, is 'a racist, religious and occupational movement connected from its inception by international colonialism'." [1]

--Ed Poor

Here is another view from The Department for Jewish Zionist Education:

Among the most harmful UN anti-Israel resolutions was the notorious General Assembly #3379 resolution equating Zionism with racism, passed in November 1975 by 72 to 35. It stated that Zionism "is a form of racism and racial discrimination... [and] is a threat to world peace and security." [2]

The article says:

This issue is made more confusing by differing uses of the terms "racism" and "racial discrimination". Formally, racism is the belief that one race is superior to another; but many people use it as a synonym for racial discrimination. Furthermore, many people use "racial discrimination" broadly, to include discrimination on the basis of both ethnicity and race. Many Zionists have interpreted anti-Zionists who call Zionism racist or racially discriminatory as believing that Jews are a distinct race from non-Jews -- some may do so (particularly those inspired by racial anti-semitism) -- but others may merely be using sloppy terminology, and are really talking about ethnicity.

It seems that "race" and "ethnicity" are being equated, at least informally, here -- possibly as part of an argument:

premise: ethnic discrimination is equivalent to racial discrimination
premise: racial discrimination is racism
Hence, ethnic discrimination is racism
premise: Israel practices ethnic discrimination
Hence, Israel practices racial discrimination
And thus, Israel practices racism

Some advocates further add:

premise: countries which practice racism should be condemned.
Hence, Israel should be condemned

I myself neither agree nor disagree with the above reasoning: I am just trying to figure out how various people see things, so I can describe their points of view in the articles. --Ed Poor 16:14 Sep 6, 2002 (UCT)

Ed: My point is that, correctly or not, a lot of people do equate "race" and "ethnicity", and some people equate "racism" and "racial discrimination"; and hence at least some people who call Israel or Zionism "racist" are actually talking about discrimination on the basis of ethnicity. I think its important to point this out, since Zionists will say they are mistakenly viewing Jews as a race, or point out that Jews are racially diverse (e.g. the Falashas)--some anti-Zionists may well be making this mistake, and for them this criticism of the Zionists would be correct, but for others they may just be using sloppy language, and really mean the different claim that "Zionism, in practice, inevitably involves ethnic discrimination". I think we should try to describe what people really mean (when this can be discovered), not just take everything they say literally to the point of creating a strawman argument against them. -- SJK, 2002-09-07, 0033 UTC.

Thanks for inserting words like "claim", "argue" & "consider". Such words help the article attribute a point of view to its advocate. --Ed Poor

Thanks Ed for the compliment. At the moment the article contains the following sentence (which I have changed from a statement to a claim, but kept the same point):

In addition, they claim that anti-Zionists fail to distinguish between Israel the state, and Israelis and Jews as individuals, and argue this is a form of anti-Semitic demonization and hatred.

I would like to ask whoever was originally responsible for this comment, what exactly are they talking about? Can we have a specific example of where they claim an anti-Zionist fails to make this distinction? (I agree that maybe some or even many anti-Zionists might fail to make this distinction, but I can't see any necessary logical connection between anti-Zionism and the failure) -- SJK