The tide is turning as anti-Zionism reaches the mainstream - Judith Treanor in @MichaelWestBiz 'For three years we have watched in horror as Gaza has been decimated in the name of Zionism. We have watched children pulled from rubble. Children burned alive in tents. Children losing multiple limbs. Entire families wiped out. Doctors tortured to death. We learned from released detainees of dogs trained to rape in torture camps. We heard Hind Rajab’s cries for help before she was killed. In the past week alone, we’ve watched the horror in the West Bank, during the olive harvest, at the hands of violent masked Israeli terrorists who the media and political class still call “settlers”. That is horror.Yet, the backlash to the motion has gone on and on..' 'Judaism has existed for 3,000 years. The State of Israel has existed only since 1948. Jews managed to be Jews for a very long time before Israel or Zionism existed, demolishing the idea that Zionism and Jewishness are somehow interchangeable. Not all Jews are Zionists, and not all Zionists are Jews.' 'Zionism’s defenders consistently try to convince us that Zionism means different things to different people, that it is nuanced, that it simply means belief in a Jewish homeland. That being a Zionist doesn’t mean supporting Netanyahu, the settlements or Israel’s far-right government. Lovely sentiments. But Zionist leaders have never been so coy about what Zionism means. Let’s ask Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. He was remarkably clear about the political project he was proposing. In The Jewish State in 1896, Theodor Herzl referred to “experiments in colonisation” and warned that gradual Jewish “infiltration” would eventually reach the point where “the native population feels itself threatened”. In his diary, he wrote: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country.' michaelwest.com.au/the-tide-…