Is Zionism Racist? | Trending Ep432

Green Party leader Zach Polanski, who many of you will have seen videos and clips and so on from, not a person I would support, not a person I would trust in any way, shape or form.

But when it comes to the subject of Israel and Zionism, the Green Party are one of the further left parties that tend to have more members that are openly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and therefore question Israel and Israel's involvement in various global events and in particular what we've seen happen in Gaza.

So it's conference season here in the UK where all the major parties have their various different conferences where they lay out their plans for the next election, the next manifesto and so on.

Now in the Green Party, conference, they spoke about labelling Zionism as a form of racism.

Now obviously the backlash to that has been enormous and there's been calls for various different things to happen, but the main thing that has happened is Zach Polanski has been banned from entering Israel.

Now, I'm not sure he'd have gone there anyway, given his stance or parents' stance.

So it's kind of a bit of a posturing by Israel to try and assert some authority, I should say.

But let's just dive into exactly what this means.

Because By labelling Zionism as racism, it's obviously caused a backlash.

It's caused the Green Party to be labelled the first anti-Semitic or openly anti-Semitic party in British politics.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry have called it a stain on the United Kingdom.

The rest of the parties have obviously condemned this stance and so on.

But let's just actually have a look at the definition of Zionism.

And then I'll let you make your own mind up whether you think there's some validity or any point to this claim.

So we're going to use Wikipedia because everyone uses Wikipedia and we know it doesn't lie.

Now, the reason I'm gonna use Wikipedia, obviously it's not the most accurate thing in the world, necessarily, but the reason I'm gonna use it is because it's a reference point that everyone that's watching this can use.

If I was to jump on a site that was a slightly alternative site, let's say, people would say, well, you know, they've obviously got a lens they're viewing that from, so their definition of Zionism is obviously going to be skewed against Israel.

Well, Wikipedia, they can't really claim that, because you look at who owns Wikipedia, it's funded by people, and it's also editable by anybody.

And now I've gone on to edit various things over the years, and if it's something the system doesn't want, it very quickly changes back within minutes.

So the fact that this is the definition on Wikipedia... for me, holds some validity.

Zionism is an ethnic nationalist movement that emerged in the late 19th century in Europe to establish support for a Jewish homeland through colonization in the region of Palestine, which roughly corresponds to the land of Israel in Judaism.

Okay, so let's carry on next.

And let's just go through this next sentence.

Zionism wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Arabs as possible.

Zionism is the main force behind the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and remains the country's dominant ideology.