Is it time to retire the word ‘Zionism’? |
Am Yisrael Chai’ (Israel lives) is the rallying call of many of the world’s Jews. As a British Christian and advocate for Israel, I often join the chorus.
Because Israel lives, I have no need to call myself a Zionist. Zionism was a 19th- and 20th-century movement that led to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, which promptly received de jure recognition by several nations, including crucially the USA.
Of course, Israel faces border and territorial disputes, as we do here in the UK, and as do around 150 other nations of the 193 nations of the UN. Israel has tried to resolve territorial disputes through negotiation and unilateral withdrawal, only to see the vacated areas become terrorist enclaves whose regimes’ explicit goal is to destroy Israel (see, for instance, the Hamas Charter).
Today, Israel is recognized – albeit generally despised – as a sovereign state by all nations of the UN apart from about 30 nations, mainly Islamic. It is because these nations do not recognize Israel that they refer to it not as a nation but ‘the Zionist regime’. Iran, Pakistan, Qatar, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Malaysia and others will never recognize Israel, due to their ideological commitment that Israel must be eradicated.
In 2020, I wrote a joint essay with my friend the Jerusalemite historian Dr Richard Landes: Genocidal Anti-Israelism – The Ticking Time Bomb. The time bomb went off in October 2023, and today the world is reeling from the consequences as the USA acts to prevent Iran’s acquiring nuclear bombs.
For years, the elder statesman of the Islamic bloc – the 57 nations of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – was the........