Anti -Zionism is Anti -Semitism

If Zionism is the modern political movement through which the Jews achieved national regeneration, then to be anti-Zionist is to begrudge Jews the basic right of self-determination. Could one have denied Italians the right to exercise sovereignty through the Risorgimento, or the Germans through unification, without being accused of national or ethnic bias? If not, then singling out the Jews as the only people not entitled to national integrity is indeed a form of bigotry, particularly considering that the only independent nation ever to have existed in the Land of Israel was Jewish, not Arab or Muslim……

Because the Jews persistently clung to their heritage throughout their exile, they were seen as strangers wherever they sojourned. As a consequence, they were subjected to relentless persecutions, including confinement in ghettos, systematic harassment, expulsions, pogroms, and genocide. They lived everywhere but belonged nowhere.

Through Zionism, however, they sought to reassert their national sovereignty and ameliorate their condition as a wandering, vulnerable minority. Therefore, rejecting their right to national sovereignty effectively constitutes a denial of their right to be free from persecution.

Anti-Zionists may disavow such intent, but the unfounded claim that Jews are alien to their homeland suggests otherwise. Those who deny Jews the right to live safely in the land of their ancestors are consigning them to perpetual harassment, persecution and, if past history is any indication, extermination. It is the refusal to assimilate that galls the most strident haters of the Jewish State.