A Brief Guide for the Perplexed 7
antisemitism erupted and threatened Israeli and Jewish NGOs in attendance . This time , many nations understood that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is , and has always been , political , not racial .
Incidentally , this recurring attempt to brand Zionism as racism is a telling example of the pot calling the kettle black . The Arab nations formally define themselves by their ethnicity , i . e ., Arab , thus excluding non-Arab ethnic groups , such as Berbers and Kurds . The same is true for religion . Islam is the official religion in all but one of the Arab countries ( Lebanon ), thus perforce marginalizing non- Islamic faiths , particularly Christian minorities .
In this vein , it ’ s well worth remembering the comments of the Reverend Martin Luther King , Jr ., on anti-Zionism :
And what is anti-Zionism ? It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and all other nations of the Globe . It is discrimination against Jews , my friends , because they are Jews . In short , it is antisemitism .… Let my words echo in the depths of your soul : When people criticize Zionism , they mean Jews — make no mistake about it .
It is also important to stress that non-Jews have not been excluded from Israel ’ s nation-building . To the contrary . Today , one-fifth of Israel ’ s citizens are non-Jews , including nearly two million Arabs , and Arabic has special status as a national language .
Moreover , Israel ’ s Jewish population has always reflected enormous national , ethnic , cultural , and linguistic diversity , which became even more pronounced in the 1980s , when Israel began rescuing tens of thousands of Black Jews from drought-stricken Ethiopia . They had been dreaming for millennia of resettlement in the biblical homeland of Israel . The eloquent comments at the time of Julius Chambers , the director-general of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund , bear repeating :
Were the victims of Ethiopian famine white , countless nations might have offered them refuge . But the people dying every day of starvation in Ethiopia and the Sudan are black , and in