George Orwell understood something that every totalitarian movement eventually discovers: if you control language, you control thought.

In 1984, war becomes peace. Freedom becomes slavery. Ignorance becomes strength. Today, we are asked to accept another inversion.

Zionism—the national liberation movement of the Jewish people—has been described by some as “Canada’s most successful hate movement.”

The proposition would be laughable were it not so dangerous.

What is Zionism? It is the belief that the Jewish people, like every other people, have the right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland.

Nothing more, nothing less.

One may disagree with Israeli governments. One may oppose settlements. One may criticize military operations, judicial reforms, or coalition politics. Israelis and Jews around the world do so every single day.

But Zionism itself is simply the affirmation that Jews, after two thousand years of exile, persecution, expulsions, pogroms, and ultimately the Holocaust, are entitled to political sovereignty in the land where Jewish civilization was born.

The extraordinary claim made by antizionists is not that nationalism is wrong. It is that Jewish nationalism alone is wrong.

This is not universalism. It is discrimination.

No one demands that the French abandon........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)