Shlomo Ben Ami
The Korea Times, May 12, 2024
“… it is hard to see how Chen’s essay, which includes no trace of Israeli nationalist fervor, counts as an “exercise of colonial power.” If figures like Chen are being demonized, one can only wonder who these supposedly peace-loving people expect the Palestinians to be able to make peace with someday.”
There is a Jewish joke, often attributed to the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, that an antisemite is someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary. One could say the same about anti-Zionists. After all, Zionism is an old concept, which was central to Jewish liberation long before it became synonymous with Palestinian subjugation.
Examples of more-than-necessary hatred of Zionists abound. In 1975 – when there were hardly any Israeli settlements in Palestinian lands and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had not yet accepted the two-state solution – the United Nations General Assembly passed a now-infamous resolution declaring Zionism to be a “form of racism.” The late British historian Arnold Toynbee condemned Zionism so vehemently that even he eventually acknowledged that his animus was “disproportionate,” and that he had over-applied to Zionism his contempt for Western colonialism.
Such sentiment has persisted and even intensified, particularly since Israel launched its war in Gaza last year, in response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas. For example, in March, the editors of the progressive magazine Guernica retracted an essay in which Israeli writer Joanna Chen described the conflicting emotions she experienced in the aftermath of the October 7 attack. … [To read the full article, click here]