Zionism and Antisemitism Discussion

Without Judaism, Zionism is a colonial project.

That is what it is. Zionism needs the religion.

Judaism is an ancient religion. Zionism takes land from the

people already living on it. The religion gives it an ancient claim to

it. It speaks as the Jewish people.

It calls its state the Jewish State.

Once the state is the Jewish people, an attack on the state is an attack on

Jews. The charge of antisemitism becomes the

defense.

That charge got a text. It came from the International Holocaust

Remembrance Alliance, IHRA, a definition

of antisemitism with eleven examples.

Israel is in seven of them. The first four are about attacks on

Jews, conspiracy myths, collective blame, holocaust denial.

At example five, Israel enters. It never

leaves. Palestinians cannot say what was done without saying

Israel, their home, their land, their dead.

That is the trap.

Ten days out of prison, a man in the occupied West Bank

was taken again.

Soldiers wrote a number on his forehead:

forty-four.

The Nazis numbered Jews too. Saying that is antisemitic.

Example ten:

Israel was built by taking a country from the people living in it, a

racist endeavor, antisemitic.

Example seven:

Palestinians want to be free from the river to the sea,

antisemitic. The House of Representatives voted it

three hundred and seventy-seven to forty-four.

There is famine in Gaza. A modern blood libel, said

Israel's government.

Four sentences, four stamps.

What was done can go unanswered.

The argument moves to the one who said it.

If the state is the religion, anything and everything against that state

becomes antisemitism.