Discussion on Zionism and Racism

Do you think Zionism is racism, James?

I think in its actual form within the state of Israel,

it is clearly racist. Let me tell you two, there are two laws from 1950

which show this perfectly. First one says that the 750,000

Palestinians who were driven out their homes,

out of their farms, out of their

villages, out of their towns, were not allowed to go back.

But me, a British Jewish person, has a right to go

and live on that land, to flourish on that land, and to be a citizen of

that land.

Now, that is obviously, on the face of it, racist.

That does not mean that wanting, as a Jewish person, to live in your

ancestral homeland is racist. Of course it is not.

Jews have a right to live in our ancestral homeland.

Israel has a right to exist.

Jews have a right to live in our ancestral homeland.

An apartheid state that denies rights for another group of

people-

But this is what everyone always says.

So does Israel have a right to exist?

In its current form as an apartheid state, no.

Where should they go?

As I said, we have a right to live in our historic

homeland,

just as every other people have a right to live in their historic homeland.

The Palestinians have a right to live in their historic homeland.

We have a right to live in our historic homeland.

But not Is-

If you know the history of Zionism, there was a movement within it called

cultural

Zionism, which did not seek to have a Jewish

supremacist state in the land. It sought to have what was called

a binational state. One state which was going to be

a, a after colonialism, after British rule, for all of the

people who lived in it. My rights as a Jewish person,

which have been... Oh, or my ancestors were greatly abused by

different European states over many years, over hundreds of, uh, of years.

Does that mean that another group of people can be

dispossessed from their land, removed and replaced?

The answer, most plainly, has to be no.

I think it's the right thing to stand on the side of the oppressed and

colonized people. That's in the greatest traditions of

basically every

belief system, including, uh, Judaism, is to stand on the side

of the oppressed, not the oppressor.