Ari Shavit

Oren and Shavit have it wrong about Israel. It is not a Jewish state. Rather it is a Zionist state. For 93 years the Zionists have sought to make the two synonymous. But they are not the same. Judaism is a religion that, at its best, demands tolerance and acceptance of the other. Zionism is a political ideology the ethnic exclusiveness of which leads, almost inevitably, to apartheid. More and more Jews are coming to understand this. In the end it is the practice of Zionism, and not lack of recognition of its alleged Jewishness, that is causing Israel’s legitimacy crisis. Demanding that the Palestinians, or indeed the whole world, call Israel the Jewish state cannot mask its real nature.