Shabir Madhi

The UK Greens have adopted a motion asserting that Zionism is racism, which of course means Israel apologists are churning out hasbara arguing that Zionism is actually a perfectly lovely and normal thing that we should all support.

"Zionism is just the belief that Jews deserve a homeland and self-determination," they'll claim, often adding a suggestion that the real racists are those who would oppose such a reasonable position.

The problem with these arguments is that they have already been soundly refuted by objective reality. You don't get to just make up your own pleasant-sounding definition of Zionism when there has been a Zionist state showing us in stark terms exactly what Zionism is for eight decades. Zionism means nonstop apartheid, ethnic cleansing, war, genocide, and abuse. That is what Zionism is. The evidence is in. This is a settled matter.

There is no way to implement Zionism without implementing fundamentally racist policies. As Richard Sanders put it, "If you can work out a way to create an ethnically defined political entity in a territory that, at the start of the process, was almost entirely populated by people of a different ethnicity, without resorting to ethnic cleansing and Apartheid, then you need to tell the Israelis. Because they’ve certainly never worked it out."

The Palestinian author Mohammed El-Kurd summed it up eloquently with the following anecdote:

"At a recent closed-door meeting in London to discuss BDS with various publishers and writers, a well-intentioned, well-known author asked me if Zionism could hold a double meaning: To some, it is a settler-colonial movement motivated by expansion and racial elimination, and to others it is a movement for Jewish self-determination. 'No,' I said. 'Zionism is best defined by its material manifestations—the most recent being genocide. It is irrelevant whether it could contain multitudes.' "

In other words, Zionism is what it does. And what it does is visible to the entire world.

There is no argument to be made that Zionism doesn't necessarily entail racism, apartheid and abuse; if it did, the modern state of Israel would have existed without these things at some point.

If you think racism, apartheid and abuse are bad, then you necessarily oppose Zionism. If you support Zionism, then you necessarily support racism, apartheid and abuse. If you tell me you can have Zionism without racism, apartheid and abuse, then you are simply lying to me. And maybe to yourself as well.

International relations and co-operation minister Ronald Lamola says US ambassador Leo Brent Bozell III must “get out of the kitchen” if he no longer believes in diplomatic engagements with Pretoria tinyurl.com/58nc4uka