Four reasons why Israel must be recognized as a Jewish state

Ex-Mossad head Meir Dagan says demanding recognition as a Jewish state is nonsense. Here’s why he’s wrong.

By Ari Shavit Feb. 13. 2014

http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.574000

Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan thinks the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state is nonsense. But it is not nonsense - it is the most natural and justified demand imaginable. For four different reasons we must support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who are placing the demand at the top of the diplomatic agenda.

The first reason: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not start in 1967 and does not revolve around the occupation and the settlements. It is a deep national-religious-cultural-social conflict, whose foundation is blindness. For decades Zionism refused to see the Palestinian people and in doing so refused to recognize its right to establish a Palestinian state. To this day the Palestinian national movement refuses to see the Jewish people and recognize in this way its right to a Jewish state. This double and continuing blindness is what ignited the 100-year war between us and them. That is why, in order to end this war, we must recognize their nationalism and their state, and they must recognize our nationalism and our state. Just as peace is impossible without a Palestinian state, peace is impossible without a Jewish state.

The second reason: The great achievement of the Oslo Accords was in their bringing the Israelis to recognize the fact that there is a Palestinian people in the land of Israel with legitimate rights. The great achievement of the Camp David peace summit was in Israel recognizing the need to establish a Palestinian state. The cumulative result of Oslo and Camp David was a revolution in Israel. The people living in Zion finally saw that there is another people in this land and admitted that it is entitled to a different state, which will express its right to self determination. Thus, there is no reason that the people residing in Palestine cannot open its eyes finally and see that there is another people in the land, and that it is entitled to a different country that will express its right to self determination. Reciprocity is not a sin. Symmetry is not a war crime. Those who believe the Israelis and Palestinians are equal have a moral obligation to demand from the Palestinians exactly what they demand from the Israelis.

The third reason: The Palestinians will not give up on the demand for the right of return. The trauma of the Nakba is their foundational trauma, and the experience of the refugees is the experience that molded them, and there is no Palestinian leader who will declare that the Palestinians will never return to the cities and villages they lost in 1948. If there is any solution at all to the refugee problem, it will be a superficial and insignificant one. But because it is actually impossible to demand from the Palestinians that they change their spots and convert their identity, it is required to demand they recognize this: that the Jewish people is a people of this land, and it did not arrive here from Mars. It is necessary to demand of them to admit that the Jewish people has a history of its own and a tragedy of its own and its own justification. The Palestinians must concede that the Jews are not colonialists but legal neighbors. There will not be peace if the children growing up in the Deheisheh refugee camp will not know that the country across the border is a legitimate Jewish state of a true Jewish people, whom they are decreed to live with. It is those who give up on the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state who are actually giving up on peace.

The fourth reason: An Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement is to a great extent a one-sided agreement in which Israel gives and the Palestinians receive. Only the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state would turn the longed-for agreement into a two-sided one. While Israel will transfer concrete assets to its neighbor, territory and rights, the Palestinians will give the only gift they are capable of giving: legitimacy.

Meir Dagan is an Israeli due a great amount of respect. His biography is a heroic one of “by the rights of power.” But peace is not made by the right of power but by the power of right. Without the Palestinians’ explicit recognition of our name, identity and rights, there will not be peace.

Palestinian red line

Ephraim Inbar 16.12.2013

 http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6685

The media reported that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected the peace proposals submitted by U.S. Secretary John Kerry. The Palestinians leaked that Abbas sent a letter to Kerry reiterating his complete opposition to the demand to recognize "Israel as a Jewish state." This was declared a "red line" the Palestinians would not cross.

This "red line" is not just about semantics, but the essence of the conflict. The Palestinian position amounts to denying the Jews the right to establish their state in their homeland. It also indicates without any doubt that the Palestinians, despite the conventional wisdom, are not ripe for reaching a historic compromise with Zionism, the Jewish national revival movement. A stable peace based on mutual recognition and ending all demands is not in the cards. The weak PA seems to accept partition of Mandatory Palestine into two states (perhaps in accordance with the stages approach championed by the Palestine Liberation Organization), but it still refrains from accepting the legitimacy of the Zionist enterprise.

This is in stark contrast to Israel, which recognized the "legitimate rights of the Palestinians" back at the September 1978 Camp David Accords, and which is ready for generous territorial concessions in order to implement a partition of the Land of Israel/Palestine. The bitter truth is that the asymmetry in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not changed for over a century. In essence, this ethno-religious conflict is not about territory, although it obviously has a territorial dimension, but about securing the recognition of the other side to national rights in a given territory.

Despite the image of untrustworthiness, Palestinians give great importance to the language used in the documents they are asked to sign. Yasser Arafat, generally viewed by most Israelis as an accomplished liar, refused to sign an agreement in 2000 that included a clause about an end to all demands. For him the conflict could end only by the eventual demise of Israel. Similarly, Abbas cannot bring himself to put his signature to a document which says that the Jews have returned to their homeland. 

We know that the perception of Jews being foreign invaders of Palestine is a fundamental widespread Palestinian attitude, which is instilled in the younger generations in the PA-run schools.

The entrenchment of such attitudes is clear also by the lack of a debate among the Palestinians whether to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Discussing Jewish rights to the Land of Israel is not conceivable in the current intra-Palestinian deliberations. Not even the so-called Palestinian moderates are calling for a debate among the Palestinians on whether to recognize the right of self-determination of the Jews in their historic homeland. Polls of Palestinians do not ask whether Israel should be recognized as a Jewish state. Normative language mentioning rights and international norms in Palestinian discourse is reserved for Palestinian demands only and is never applied in an attempt to understand what Israelis want.

The efforts of the Palestinian media to negate the Jewish past and historic links to the Temple Mount and even the Western Wall all indicate the ideological commitment to rewrite history. Palestinian archaeology is similarly used to erase all traces of Jewish presence from the land. Even Koranic sources mentioning the links of the Jews to the Land of Israel are ignored. Such Palestinian behavior serves only to prolong the conflict because it does not teach the Palestinians that Jews are part of the history of this land. All these acts are intolerable and must stop before Israel considers signing a comprehensive peace agreement.

It was a mistake not to insist on recognition of Israel being a Jewish state in the negotiations with the Palestinians in the 1990s. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands well the need for such recognition on the part of the Palestinians to ensure a historic peace deal and his insistence on getting it in the framework of a comprehensive settlement is right on the mark.

Moreover, Palestinians are different than Egyptians or Jordanians that were not required to accept Israel as a Jewish state. They have no claims to Palestine, while it is the Palestinians and the Israelis who fight for the same piece of land. Since the Israelis recognized Palestinian legitimate rights 35 years ago, it is high time for the Palestinians to learn about the "other" with whom they are in conflict, and reciprocate if they are serious about peacemaking.

Professor Efraim Inbar is a professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

"The Left, the Jews and Israel"

Isi Leibler - August 9, 2012

http://wordfromjerusalem.com/?p=4226

Robert Wistrich, Hebrew University professor of European and Jewish History and director of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of anti-Semitism has just published his 29th book titled "From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews and Israel" (click here for Amazon link).

It is an impressive tome of over 600 pages and follows his monumental seminal work "A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad”, published in 2010 and now recognized as the definitive work on the world's oldest hatred and an indispensable text for scholars.

In a fascinating preface to his new book, Wistrich provides a brief autobiographical sketch. His father had originally been a supporter of the illegal Polish Communist Party in pre-war Cracow but became alienated from Stalinist communism after being arrested by the NKVD. He and his wife, who had experienced bitter Polish anti-Semitism, survived the Holocaust by fleeing to Kazakhstan where Robert was born.

Wistrich was educated in England, and to use his words, was “radicalized” in grammar school and later at Stanford University. He first visited Israel in 1961, returning in 1969 when he was appointed editor of the left wing Israeli journal, New Outlook. However his passion for the Jewish State led to a parting of the ways with the Israeli far left. Robert became increasingly engaged in academic scholarship related to anti-Semitism, received a senior appointment at the Hebrew University, and is now recognized as the world’s foremost scholar in the field.

From Ambivalence to Betrayal is an historic review and analysis of the abandonment of the Jewish people by the left from the early 19th century until the present. It also relates to the extraordinarily disproportionate number of socialist thinkers and leaders who were of Jewish origin and seeks to explain what motivated so many of them, in the course of their utopian and futile efforts to ‘repair the world’, to abandon their people and their heritage and frenetically seek to deny their kinsmen the right to self-determination.

The introductory essay is a brilliant overview of the contemporary Jewish political arena viewed in the context of the concurrent rise of Zionism, Communism, anti-Semitism and Nazism. It focuses strongly on the hypocrisy of the existing left which has become obsessed with demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state. Wistrich demonstrates the extent to which today’s radical anti-Zionists, despite purporting to represent the left, often share the identical obsessions and delusions concerning the alleged malignant influence of the Jews in the modern world as classical fascist anti-Semites.

Wistrich provides fascinating and innovative insights on left-wing revolutionaries. He skillfully relates the connection of “the prefigured 19th century seabed of anti-Semitic socialism found in Marx, Fourier and Proudhon, extending through to the orthodox Communists and “non-conformist” Trotskyites to the Islamo-Leftist hybrids of today who systematically vilify the so called racist essence of the Jewish State”.

His analysis of the linkage of these revolutionaries with the left's contemporary abandonment of Israel is a major intellectual and scholastic achievement and provides an intriguing insight into the sources of the far left’s current application of double standards and anti-Israel venom.

Wistrich reviews in depth the attitude towards the Jews adopted by many of the great socialist revolutionaries of Jewish origin like Karl Marx, Bernard Lazare, Moses Hess, Ferdinand LaSalle, Karl Kautsky, Victor Adler, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, Bruno Kreisky, Isaac Deutscher and others.

His chapter on Leon Trotsky, entitled ‘A Bolshevik’s Tragedy’, is a masterly essay which breaks new ground on this extraordinary charismatic Jewish revolutionary who desperately sought to repudiate his Jewish origins. Yet, despite achieving the reputation of being “the most intransigent of revolutionary Bolsheviks”, Trotsky was ultimately forced by Stalin into assuming the traditional Jewish role in society and became reviled as the scapegoat for the failures of the Revolution.

Wistrich highlights the fact that many of today’s anti-Jewish Jews inherited the mantle of the 19th and early 20th century anti-Semitic Jewish radical revolutionaries. Yet he stresses that these renegade Jews have vastly exceeded the anti-Semitic tirades of their predecessors and even to the extent of allying themselves with reactionary clerical zealots and Jihadists, who represent the antithesis of their purported world outlook.

He points to their public support and endorsement of terrorists and religious fanatics, noting that even the most extreme early anti-Jewish revolutionaries like Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg or Trotsky “would never have remained silent about sharia law, censorship, female genital mutilation, honor killings, suicide bombings, or making the world safe for Allah’s rule” and rarely resorted to outright racist outbursts like their current successors”. Nor would they have gone to the extreme of allying themselves with those explicitly committed to our physical destruction.

Wistrich asserts that Holocaust inversion, now a major component of the Left’s effort to besmirch Israel, whilst initially introduced by British historian Arnold Toynbee who referred to Zionists as "disciples of the Nazis”, was in fact institutionalized as the “Zionist-Nazi” nexus at the Prague Trials orchestrated from Moscow.

He reminds us that it was post war Jewish Marxists who encouraged the left’s current paranoia and “anti-racist” racism against Israel. As an example he quotes the Polish born Jewish biographer of Trotsky, Isaac Deutscher, who already in 1967 described Israel as the "Prussia of the Middle East" and a bastion of “racial Talmudic exclusiveness and superiority".

It was the Soviets who, in 1975, succeeded in passing a UN resolution bracketing Zionism and racism. Whilst this was ultimately rescinded in December 1991, it remains today the central plank in the Arab-Leftist efforts to criminalize Israel and brand it as a state engaging in war crimes.

The concluding chapters review the anti-Zionist myths, many of which seem to have been directly replicated from Nazi propaganda and are today enthusiastically promoted by the Marxist Islamist alliance who regard Israel as the "Jew of the nations" fulfilling a dark preordained fate as an eternal scapegoat.

Wistrich relates to the quasi-religious belief of these groups that “the world will only be “liberated” by the downfall of America and the defeat of the Jews. This chiliastic fantasy has today emerged as a notable point of fusion between the radical anti-Zionist left in the West and the global jihad. Revolutionary anti-Semitism has become an increasingly important factor in cementing the anti-capitalist populism much as it was during the birth pangs of modern socialism over 150 years ago.”

This is a magisterial work, providing a comprehensive understanding of the origins of the most pernicious challenges currently facing the Jewish people, especially those originating from the enemy within. It will be especially valuable to those directly engaged in the struggle to neutralize the evil efforts against Israel by the left-Islamic alliance and its acolytes of Jewish origin.

How I went from hating to loving Israel and the Jewish people

by Kasim Hafeez


http://www.aish.com/jw/me/Muslim_Zionist_and_Proud.html


I am a Zionist, a proud Muslim Zionist, and I love Israel, but this was not always the case. In fact, for many years I was quite the extreme opposite. I experienced the high levels of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activity taking place on British university campuses, because I was the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel activist.


Growing up in the Muslim community in the UK I was exposed to materials and opinions at best condemning Israel, painting Jews as usurpers and murderers, and at worse calling for the wholesale destruction of the "Zionist Entity" and all Jews. In short, there was no accommodating a Jewish State in the Middle East.


To grow up around this constant barrage of hatred directed at Israel has a massive effect on an individual’s own opinions. More disturbingly, many of these people weren’t radical or extreme, but when it was about Israel the most vicious of rhetoric poured out, coupled with the casual anti-Semitism that seemed too prevalent, when the phrase "stop being a Jew" used as an insult.


My father, however, was much more brazen in his hatred, boasting of how Adolf Hitler was a hero, his only failing being that he didn't kill enough Jews.


By the time I had reached 18 I was completely indoctrinated to the fold of radical Islamism. My hate for Israel and for the Jews was fuelled by images of death and destruction, set to the backdrop of Arabic melodies about Jihad and speeches of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah or Osama Bin Laden.


These views were reinforced when I attended Nakba Day rallies, where speakers predicted Israel's demise as Hezbollah flags were waved proudly in the centre of London.


The Case for Israel


Was there a case for Israel? In my mind, of course not, there was no shadow of doubt. Even the most moderate clerics I came across refused to condemn terrorism against Israel as unjustified; the Jews must obviously deserve it, I believed.


So what changed? How could I go from all this hatred to the great love for and affinity with Israel and the Jewish people? I found myself in the Israel and Palestine section of a local bookstore and picked up a copy of Alan Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel. Given my worldview, the Jews and Americans controlled the media, so after brief look at the back, I scoffed thinking "vile Zionist propaganda."


I felt a crisis of conscience, and began a period of unbiased research.


I did, however, decide to buy it, content that I would shortly be deconstructing this propaganda piece, showing that Israel had no case and claiming my findings as a personal victory for the Palestinian cause.


As I read Dershowitz’s arguments and deconstruction of many lies I saw as unquestionable truths, I searched despairingly for counter arguments, but found more hollow rhetoric that I’d believed for many years. I felt a real crisis of conscience, and thus began a period of unbiased research. Up until that point I had not been exposed to anything remotely positive about Israel.


Now, I didn't know what to believe. I'd blindly followed others for so long, yet here I was questioning whether I had been wrong. I reached a point where I felt I had no other choice but to see Israel for myself; only that way I’d really know the truth. At the risk of sounding cliché, it was a life-changing visit.


No Apartheid State


I did not encounter an apartheid racist state, but rather, quite the opposite. I was confronted by synagogues, mosques and churches, by Jews and Arabs living together, by minorities playing huge parts in all areas of Israeli life, from the military to the judiciary. It was shocking and eye-opening. This wasn't the evil Zionist Israel that I had been told about.


After much soul searching, I knew what I had once believed was wrong. I had been confronted with the truth and had to accept it. But I had a bigger question to confront, what now? I’d for years campaigned against Israel, but now I knew the truth.


Israel is not just a Jewish issue ― it’s about freedom, human rights and all the values that the West cherishes.


The choice was obvious: I had to stand with Israel, with this tiny nation, free, democratic, making huge strides in medicine, research and development, yet the victim of the same lies and hatred that nearly consumed me.


Doing this is not easy and that’s something that has become very obvious. I have faced hostility from my own community and even some within the Jewish community in the UK, but that’s the reality of standing up for Israel in Europe today. It is not easy, and that’s what makes it so necessary.


This isn’t about religion and politics; it’s about the truth.


When it comes to Israel, the truth is not being heard, the ranks of those filled with blind hatred continue to swell, yet many have not been exposed to the reality, away from the empty rhetoric and politically charged slogans they are so fond of.


We can change this situation but we need to be strong and united. Israel is not just a Jewish issue ― it’s about freedom, human rights and democracy, all the values that Western nations cherish. It’s also about trying to be a light among nations.


Israel’s international humanitarian aid work speaks for itself, but if we don’t get the message out there, no one will. We don’t have to be head-bowed apologists leading with :Israel’s not perfect…" ― we should never be afraid to say: I am a Zionist and I’m proud. I stand with Israel. Now I ask, will you do that?

The "Jewish" President

Don't believe Obama when he says he has Israel's back.
By Bret Stephens March 6th 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/global_view.html

Should Israelis and pro-Israel Americans take President Obama at his word when he says—as he did at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference in Washington, D.C., on Sunday—"I have Israel's back"?

No.

Here is a president who fought tooth-and-nail against the very sanctions on Iran for which he now seeks to reap political credit. He inherited from the Bush administration the security assistance to Israel he now advertises as proof of his "unprecedented" commitment to the Jewish state. His defense secretary has repeatedly cast doubt on the efficacy of a U.S. military option against Iran even as the president insists it remains "on the table." His top national security advisers keep warning Israel not to attack Iran even as he claims not to "presume to tell [Israeli leaders] what is best for them."

Oh, and his secretary of state answers a question from a Tunisian student about U.S. politicians courting the "Zionist lobbies" by saying that "a lot of things are said in political campaigns that should not bear a lot of attention." It seems it didn't occur to her to challenge the premise of the question.

Still, if you're looking for evidence of Mr. Obama's disingenuousness when it comes to Israel, it's worth referring to what his supporters say about him.

Consider Peter Beinart, the one-time Iraq War advocate who has reinvented himself as a liberal scourge of present-day Israel and mainstream Zionism. Mr. Beinart has a book coming out next month called "The Crisis of Zionism." Chapter five, on "The Jewish President," fully justifies the cover price.

Mr. Beinart's case is that Mr. Obama came to his views about Israel not so much from people like his friend Rashid Khalidi or his pastor Jeremiah Wright. Instead, says Mr. Beinart, Mr. Obama got his education about Israel from a coterie of far-left Chicago Jews who "bred in Obama a specific, and subversive, vision of American Jewish identity and of the Jewish state."

At the center of this coterie, Mr. Beinart explains, was a Chicago rabbi named Arnold Jacob Wolf. In 1969, Wolf staged a synagogue protest in favor of Black Panther Bobby Seale. In the early 1970s, he founded an organization that met with Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization—this being some 20 years before Arafat officially renounced terrorism. In the early 1990s, Wolf denounced the construction of the Holocaust Museum in Washington.

And, in 1996, the rabbi "was one of [Mr. Obama's] earliest and most prominent supporters" when he ran for the Illinois state Senate. Wolf later described Mr. Obama's views on Israel as "on the line of Peace Now"—an organization with a long history of blaming Israel for the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Mr. Obama had other Jewish mentors, too, according to Mr. Beinart. One was Bettylu Saltzman, whose father, developer Philip Klutznick, had joined Wolf in "his break with the Israeli government in the 1970s." Ms. Saltzman, writes Mr. Beinart, "still seethes with hostility toward the mainstream Jewish groups" and later became active in left-wing Jewish political groups like J Street. Among other things, it was she who "organized the rally against the Iraq War where Obama proclaimed his opposition to an American invasion."

Ms. Saltzman also introduced Mr. Obama to David Axelrod, himself a longtime donor to a group called the New Israel Fund. For a flavor of the NIF's world view, a WikiLeaks cable from 2010 noted that an NIF associate director told U.S. embassy officials in Tel Aviv that "the disappearance of a Jewish state would not be the tragedy that Israelis fear since it would become more democratic."

Other things that we learn about Mr. Obama's intellectual pedigree from Mr. Beinart: As a student at Columbia, he honed his interests in colonialism by studying with the late pro-Palestinian agit-Prof. Edward Said. In 2004, Mr. Obama "criticized the barrier built to separate Israel and its major settlements from the rest of the West Bank"—the "barrier" meaning the security fence that all-but eliminated the wave of suicide bombings that took 1,000 lives in Israel.

We also learn that, according to one of Mr. Beinart's sources, longtime diplomat Dennis Ross was brought aboard the Obama campaign as part of what Mr. Beinart calls "Obama's inoculation strategy" to mollify Jewish voters apprehensive about the sincerity of his commitments to Israel. Not surprisingly, Mr. Ross was a marginal figure in the administration before leaving last year.

In Mr. Beinart's telling, all this is evidence that Mr. Obama is in tune with the authentic views of the American Jewish community when it comes to Israel, but that he's out of step with Jewish organizational leadership. Maybe. Still, one wonders why organizations more in tune with those "real" views rarely seem to find much of a base.

But the important question here isn't about American-Jewish attitudes toward Israel. It's about the president's honesty. Is he being truthful when he represents himself as a mainstream friend of Israel—or is he just holding his tongue and biding his time? On the evidence of Mr. Beinart's sympathetic book, Mr. Obama's speech at Aipac was one long exercise in political cynicism.

The Z-word

The Z-WordBy Jay Nordlinger, January 11, 2012, The National Review

(With thanks to Tom Gross who posted this in his blog http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001252.html )

A few weeks ago, a Labour MP in Britain, Paul Flynn, expressed displeasure with his country's ambassador to Israel. "I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories," he said, "but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist." What Britain needs in Israel, according to Flynn, is "someone with roots in the U.K." who "can't be accused of having Jewish loyalty.

"Britain's ambassador to Israel, as you may have surmised, is a Jew, the first to serve in that capacity. He previously served in Pakistan and Iran (not Jewish states). As for Matthew Gould's "roots in the U.K.," they may not be as deep as Flynn's, but they are semi-respectable: On one side, his great-grandparents were immigrants, and on the other, his grandparents. Speaking of respectability, Gould is a graduate of St. Paul's School and Peterhouse, Cambridge.

Not bad for a Semitic upstart.In his widely publicized remarks, Flynn worried about "neocons and warmongers," now itching to invade Iran. "Warmongers" is a word we can easily understand. But what about two other words Flynn used, "neocons" and "Zionist"? These are very slippery terms. If you want to paralyze someone who denounces neocons, say, "What's a neocon?" If you want to paralyze someone who denounces Zionists, or even refers to them, say, "What's a Zionist?" People use these words cavalierly and ignorantly.

And none too nicely, either.We will concentrate on the older of the words, "Zionist." Though it may be older than "neocon," it is much, much newer than "Zion." We first encounter "Zion" in II Samuel, Chapter 5: "David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David." I am quoting King James's translators. In Psalm 48, we have one of the loveliest lines in the entire Bible: "Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion." Centuries later came a hymn that begins, "Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God!" Those words were written by the author of "Amazing Grace," John Newton.

"Zion" may refer to a hill in Jerusalem, or a section of Jerusalem, or Jerusalem itself, or all Israel. Or to the kingdom of God, period. It also may refer to the Jewish people or to all mankind. People in Illinois may know Zion as a city on the Wisconsin border."Zionism" arose in the late 19th century, and its believers and supporters were "Zionists." This was the movement to establish a Jewish state in ancient Israel - to "reestablish" that state, if you like. European Jews such as Theodor Herzl thought, or feared, that assimilation was a lost cause. The host countries would never allow it. The best answer was a return to Zion, to Israel. Other Jews held this return to be desirable in itself, regardless of whether assimilation in the broader world was possible.

Herzl wrote his pamphlet The Jewish State in 1896. The next year, he organized the first Zionist Congress, in Basel. Many Jews were Zionists, many were not. Those who were not, were free to stay where they were (as were those Jews who supported Zionism but did not wish to emigrate themselves). The ancient language, Hebrew, was revived. The movement gathered pace. After the Holocaust, and a war of independence, the Jews had their state. Zionism, i.e., Jewish nationalism, was fulfilled.

But the term hung on, particularly in the mouths of Israel's enemies. Indeed, many Arabs would not, and will not, say "Israel." They say "Zionist entity" or "Zionist presence." To say "Israel," apparently, would acknowledge statehood, which is unacknowledgeable, to some. The late Yasser Arafat was a frequent user of "Zionist aggressor," "Zionist conquest," and similar phrases.

One goal of Israel's enemies was to stigmatize "Zionism," and they had their greatest success in November 1975, when the United Nations passed its infamous Resolution 3379: Zionism equals racism. "Racism" was the severest term of the age, and it may well be that today, too. Vanessa Redgrave, a great supporter of Arafat and his PLO, said, "Zionism is a brutal, racist ideology." Other peoples could have their national expression, but not the Jews. Resolution 3379 was revoked in 1991, thanks chiefly to the work of the Bush 41 administration, and in particular to the work of one State Department official: John Bolton.

Over the years, people have denounced Zionism while proclaiming their great love of Jews. They're not anti-Jewish, you see, but merely anti-Zionist. They could just as well say "anti-Israel," but "Zionist" is somehow the word of choice.

Accepting an Academy Award in 1978, Redgrave congratulated her colleagues on standing up to "Zionist hoodlums," such as those picketing outside. Later in her remarks, she said, "I pledge to you that I will continue to fight against anti-Semitism and fascism." In 1980, Jesse Jackson called Zionism "a kind of poisonous weed that is choking Judaism." He was following the pattern of "Judaism good, Zionism bad." In 1992, he seemed to have a change of heart, hailing Zionism as a "liberation movement.

"But old habits die hard, and Jackson is still liable to use "Zionism" or "Zionist" as a term of abuse. In October 2008, Amir Taheri, an exile journalist from Iran, recorded what Jackson said at a conference in France. An Obama administration was coming, he said, and this administration would diminish the "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades." Whom did he mean, exactly? What do people ever mean when they say "Zionists"?

Louis Farrakhan talks about Zionists almost as much as Arafat did. An Associated Press report in 1984 said, "Farrakhan, who has been quoted as calling Judaism a 'gutter religion,' denied that he was against Jews. He has said that remark referred to Zionism, not Judaism." Here is an AP report from 1998: "Farrakhan suggested a Zionist plot was behind President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky." Earlier this year, Farrakhan said that "Zionists dominate the government of the United States of America and her banking system." He added, "Some of you think that I'm just somebody who's got something out for the Jewish people. You're stupid. Do you think I would waste my time if I did not think it was important for you to know Satan? My job is to pull the cover off of Satan so that he will never deceive you and the people of the world again.

"In Israel itself, the word "Zionist" is in bad odor, certainly on the left. Few academics, artists, and cool teens would want to be known as Zionists. This started "just after the 1967 war," says Zev Chafets, the veteran American-Israeli writer. "Zionist" came to mean superpatriot, flag-waver, jingo. The worldwide Left associates Zionism with colonialism, imperialism, and, of course, racism, and the Israeli Left does the same.

More than a few Israelis refer to themselves as "post-Zionists," which may mean any number of things. For instance, it may mean that they reject the old Zionist vision and instead welcome a "binational state," including the West Bank and Gaza and everyone in them. Jewish particularism is anathema to them. When they think "Zionist," they are apt to think "settler," and a settler, in their minds, is no good. Of course, not so long ago, just about every Israeli was a settler, and a Zionist, to boot.

There are still people who embrace the Z-word, no matter the opprobrium that comes with it. Paul Flynn, the British MP, said that Ambassador Gould "has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist." That is true. Gould has also said, "I thought long and hard about applying for the position" of ambassador to Israel. "I thought it might just be all too difficult. But then I thought to myself, 'Why should Jews rule themselves out of important positions?'" Gould has emphasized he is "the British ambassador to Israel, not the Jewish one.

"Ten years ago, Gil Troy, a history professor at McGill University, wrote a book with a totally unabashed title: "Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today." There are also many millions of Americans who support Israel and are known as "Christian Zionists." Their critics utter this term with disdain or fear or both. I suspect that these Christians themselves have no problem with it.

To me, a Zionist has always been a person who supports the idea of a Jewish homeland, or state, in the Middle East. In ancient Israel. Therefore, being a Zionist is essentially the same as supporting the right of Israel to exist. When Farrakhan says that the U.S. government, the banks, and the media are "dominated by Zionists," I'm apt to say, "Sure: Most Americans support Israel, both as idea and as reality." But I am being too clever, no doubt - because when people say "Zionist," they really mean .

. . Well, what do they mean? One clue comes from John J. Mearsheimer, the University of Chicago professor who, with Stephen M. Walt, wrote The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a notorious book published in 2007. Mearsheimer has just written a blurb for a book by Gilad Atzmon, an ex-Israeli who hates Israel and hates himself, for that matter. He has described himself as a "proud self-hating Jew." In his blurb, Mearsheimer writes, "Panicked Jewish leaders, [Atzmon] argues, have turned to Zionism (blind loyalty to Israel) and scaremongering (the threat of another Holocaust) to keep the tribe united and distinct from the surrounding goyim.

"So, there we have a definition of Zionism, from a professor of political science at one of our most distinguished universities: "blind loyalty to Israel." There is an old joke, told by Jews, that goes, "What's the definition of an anti-Semite? One who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary." Is that what a Zionist is - someone who supports Israel more than is absolutely necessary? Someone who is too enthusiastic or unyielding in his support?

In my observation, people say "Zionist" when they don't want to say "Jew" or "Israeli." As Gil Troy wrote last year, "intellectuals have camouflaged modern anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism." There are certainly people who are anti-Zionist or anti-Israel - is there a difference? - without being anti-Jewish. Some of them are Jews. But, as Paul Johnson, the historian, once said to me in an interview, "Scratch the fellow who is anti-Israel, and you won't have to dig very far before you find the anti-Semite within." Another historian, Bernard Lewis, says that talk of Zionism "sometimes provides a useful cover": a cover to those who harbor the old, enduring hatred.

As you go about life, you may encounter someone who says "Zionism" or "Zionist," with an edge in his voice. Ask him what he means. The answer, or non-answer, you get is likely to be revealing.