Honor guard standing next to Herzel's coffin in Israel. Unknown. Public Domain.
Debates over Zionism and its progeny, the State of Israel, often have a Manichaean quality to them. Critics of Jewish nationalism view it as synonymous with racism and colonialism, while advocates see it as a national liberation movement for an oppressed population. Rarely does either side concede much to the other.
Emotion plays its part here. But so too does the politics of the moment. The recent controversies over anti-Semitism in the UK Labour Party, for example, demonstrated clearly enough—as if demonstration were needed—how politics impinges on debate over the Jewish state and its founding ideology. It showed how easily conflict in the eastern Mediterranean can become a terrain where unrelated political questions are fought out.
