Reply #14: Zionism

[Jack Rabbit]

When I moderated this forum and enforced rules against making loose use of loaded words like Zionism, I suggested that an acceptable definition was: The belief in the establishment and maintenance of a Jewish state as a positive goal. Benny Elon is a Zionist. So is Uri Avnery.

Again, this can be consistent with democracy only in an area where Jews are a majority, preferably a large majority. For whatever reason they came about -- you and Mr. Galos can dispute it until the cows come home -- the conditions under which a state that is at once Jewish and democratic exist within Israel's recognized borders, the Green Line; were Israel to annex the West Bank and Gaza (or merely claim that those territories are in "integral part of Israel" and begin treating them as such), those conditions would cease to exist. Either Israel would become a bi-national democracy (not a Jewish state) or would have to undertake repressive measures against Arab residents of the land that contradict democratic principles and would be met with wide, popular resistance.