Yes, Zionism is racism

And there is nothing radical about declaring it. It is a fact of history. Save Share On Sunday, at its annual conference in Brighton, the BritishGreen Party voted to recogniseZionism as racism. The motion, which describes Zionism as “an ethnonationalist political project”, passed with 1,022 votes to 813, despite opposition from several of the party’s MPs as well as former party leaderCaroline Lucas. The vote caused uproar in the British mainstream, with many commentators taking to the airwaves and social media to condemn it, accuse the party of anti-Semitism and even claim it is endangering Jewish people. Yet, the Green Party’s resolution does not declare anything radical or extraordinary. Zionism was and continues to be a settler-colonial ideology, and settler colonialism is fundamentally racist. Zionism is centred on the belief that Jewish people from anywhere in the world have a right to a homeland in historic Palestine – a right that outweighs any other people’s. It is a conviction that is based on biblical claims to a land and an ahistorical understanding of history. Crucially, its fulfilment requires the usurping and dispossession of the indigenous Palestinian population. It should not be particularly controversial to define Zionism as a settler colonial ideology, particularly as the Zionist founding fathers themselves proudly described it as such. Vladimir Jabotinsky, a leading Revisionist Zionist thinker of the early 20th century,wrotethat “Zionist colonization … must be carried out in defiance of the will of the native population”. Theodor Herzl, often cited as the founding father of political Zionism, hoped to establish contact with Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist who led British colonisation in Zimbabwe. In an infamous draft letter, which Herzl never sent, he invited Rhodes to “help make history”. “It doesn’t involve Africa but a piece of Asia Minor … How then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out the way matter for you? … Because it is something colonial,” he wrote. Zionism’s early institutions also reflected the same colonial self-identification through their names: the Jewish Colonial Trust, the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, the Jewish Agency’s Colonization Department. Zionism is also not particularly exceptional as an ideology....