Speaking to the Jewish Chronicle newspaper recently, UK Labour Party
leader Ed Miliband reportedly claimed to be a Zionist. The article in the JC read: ‘Ed Miliband: “I’m a Zionist and
oppose boycotts of Israel”.’
However, Miliband’s self-identification as
a Zionist lasted less than 24 hours. He has since clarified that he was
responding in the affirmative to the question ‘Are you a Zionist?’ with the
answer ‘Yes, I am a supporter of Israel’. He would not actually describe
himself as a Zionist,
though, he now says.
It seems Miliband is prepared to proclaim
his support for Israel as a Jewish state. He supports the idea of that state as
a homeland for the Jews. Yet the ideology that is associated with the creation
of the state and with the larger project of creating a permanent Jewish
homeland - Zionism - is something he is reluctant to sign up to.
The reason for Miliband’s reluctance is
pretty obvious: Zionism is no longer simply a term denoting a particular
ideology. A Zionist is no longer just someone who supports the creation of a
Jewish homeland. Rather, Zionism has become a term of abuse, the worst term of
abuse there is in modern, right-thinking circles; the word Zionism is now used
to denote something deeply sinister, something beyond the pale of bien pensant civilisation. A Zionist is now
imagined as an evil shadowy figure, eating babies while playing puppetmaster of
world politics.
It is no longer publicly acceptable to
call yourself a Zionist. This wasn’t always the case. In the postwar era, it
was often claimed that the further left-wing you were within the Labour Party,
the more of a Zionist you were (1). Former Labour minister Tony Benn, who you
are likely to see at demonstrations denouncing Israel and/or Zionism these
days, used to write for the Labour Zionist magazine, Jewish Vanguard.
Since then, however, the view of Zionism
has changed. Zionism is now likened to Nazism. It is apparently a genocidal,
fascistic ideology. Zionism is described as European-style colonialism, the
ideology of a ‘colonial-settler state’. Zionism is no longer viewed as one
nationalism among many, but rather, in the words of John Pilger, as an
‘expansionist, lawless and racist ideology’. Zionism is viewed as peculiarly
evil and particularly racist; so much so, in fact, that many Western nation
states (which are obviously so morally upstanding…) are called upon to put
pressure on the state of Israel to clean up its act.
Everything that is disagreeable and
connected to Israel is alleged to be an outgrowth of the perniciously evil
ideology of Zionism. Anti-Arab racism among Israeli football-club ultras is
viewed as part of Zionist ideology. The recent opposition to African migrants
in Tel Aviv was viewed as the result of racist Zionists wishing to retain
Israel’s Jewish character, despite the fact that many modern European,
distinctly non-Zionist states also have unfounded fears and loathing of
migrants.
In the same way that, to European
anti-Semites in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ‘the Jew’ came to
symbolise something more than simply a Jewish person, so a ‘Zionist’ is no
longer simply a person who believes in Zionism - he’s an evil menace to the
world, to peace, to Western values. Just as ‘the Jew’ became a demonic
abstraction upon which the simple-minded could blame the ills of the world, so
‘the Zionist’ plays a similar role today.
To call oneself a Zionist now is to invite
a torrent of abuse. While Ed Miliband supports Israel, he realised quickly that
calling oneself a Zionist is akin to calling oneself a racist or an enemy of
civilisation. The Zionist is now the imagined source of every problem in the
Middle East, and a great many of the problems around the world.
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