For decades, Joe Biden has proudly declared that he is a Zionist, and he has repeated that claim since Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel. But for the student anti-war protests gripping the US, the words “Zionist” and “Zionism” have become a watchword – pejorative and emblematic of the violent state policies driving the war on Gaza.
On social media and in the streets, critics no longer call out supporters of the state of Israel as “pro-Israel”: they call them Zionist. Some university encampments have posted signs saying: “Zionists not allowed.”
Student protesters say that their criticisms of Zionism are rooted in the state of Israel’s displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Pro-Israel activists have responded by defending the term. “If the last six months on campus have taught us anything, it is that a large and vocal population of the Columbia community does not understand the meaning of Zionism,” a group of more than 500 Columbia University students recently wrote. “We are proud to be Zionists.”
“and about just as many view it as a belief in Israel as a Jewish and democratic state (72%),”
This, right here, is a big part of the problem. The notion of an ethnostate is antithetical to a democracy. You cannot be both. It’s definitionally impossible. A state practicing some of the mechanics of democracy does not make it a democracy. If the supremacy of one ethnic cohort is a fundamental tenet of your state, there is no amount of ‘liberalism’ or rhetoric that will turn you into a democracy. If you are part of this 72%, I implore you to examine the cognitive dissonance you are practicing. I strongly suspect that many of this 72% have not critically examined the fallacy of people’s claims of Israeli democracy. Of those that have, I suspect that many are intentionally misrepresenting the situation since afterall, actively supporting a violently oppressive ethnostate isn’t a great look.
Edit: spelling
*tenet
Zionism is by definition a nationalist ideology, there’s no attempt to hide it, this just says that 72% of respondents don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.