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  • Ethnic nationalism is just racism, whether practiced by white supremacist MAGA Americans or Holocaust survivors. In a liberal democracy, the government serves all people regardless of race. I'm confused by your premise that Holocaust survivors were entitled to their own ethnic state for some reason.

    Also, the Zionist movement was not a response to the Holocaust. It was a colonial enterprise that began well before the Holocaust in response to widespread persecution especially in Central Europe. Many Jews opposed the Jewish nationalism undergirding Zionism for the same reasons liberals today reject virtually all nationalist movements. Many emigrated to liberal democracies like the United States where they could live free of ethnic discrimination. Zionists instead chose to respond with their own ethnic persecution.

    It is worth recalling in this connection that at the turn of the century, Zionism's similarities to other projects of colonization were not a source of embarrassment or shame for most of the movement's adherents; indeed, they often saw them as a selling point. Zionist leaders studied and sought to learn from the experience of European colonial-settlement enterprises in places like Algeria, Rhodesia, and Kenya, and many imagined their own endeavor as similar in certain ways. Moreover, the Zionist movement readily used such terms as “colony,” “colonial,” and “colonization” to refer to its activities; thus, for example, the original name of its financial arm was the Jewish Colonial Trust. It was only later, after the First World War, that colonialism came to have strongly pejorative connotations for many Europeans. As a consequence the Zionist movement sought to dissociate itself from other European projects of colonization and settlement, began to stress the uniqueness and noncolonial character of its mission and methods, and stopped using such terms, at least in languages other than Hebrew.

    Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (University of California Press, 1996) 21-57.

  • I mean OP called Sanders anti-Zionist. He's certainly not that. Bernie has also outright stated that he supports Israel. I will admit that I may be slightly overstating the case to say that he's incontrovertibly a Zionist, but he at least may be from his public statements.

  • That has always been the meaning of the word Zionist:

    Following the establishment of the modern state of Israel, Zionism became an ideology that supports the development and protection of the State of Israel as a Jewish state.

    The key phrase is "as a Jewish state" which is what it is. It's declaration of independence states as much.

    The term Jewish state has been in common usage in the media since the establishment of Israel, and the term has also been used interchangeably with IsraelGeorge W. Bush used the term in his speeches and in an exchange of letters with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon in 2004.[5] Barack Obama has also used the phrase, for instance in a speech in September 2010 to the United Nations General Assembly.[6] The Israeli government under prime minister Ehud Olmert made the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state by the State of Palestine a pre-condition in the peace negotiations,[7] as did the government of his successor, Benjamin Netanyahu. (Wikipedia)

    On 19 July 2018, with a vote of 62 to 55 (2 abstained), the Knesset adopted a new Basic Law that defines Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. (Wikipedia)

    The concept of a national homeland for the Jewish people is enshrined in Israeli national policy and reflected in many of Israel's public and national institutions. The concept was adopted in the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948 as the objective of the establishment of modern Israel. The principle was given legal effect in the Law of Return, which was passed by the Knesset on 5 July 1950, and stated: "Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh."[17] (Wikipedia)

    A central issue in the Israel-Palestine debate is the Right of Return:

    the principle that Palestinian refugees, both first-generation refugees (c. 30,000 to 50,000 people still alive as of 2012)[3][4] and their descendants (c. 5 million people as of 2012),[3] have a right to return and a right to the property they themselves or their forebears left behind or were forced to leave in what is now Israel and the Palestinian territories (both formerly part of the British Mandate of Palestine) during the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight (a result of the 1948 Palestine war) and the 1967 Six-Day War.

    ...

    Opponents of the right of return hold that it is an unrealistic demand with no basis in international law and that if Israel were to absorb approximately five million Palestinians with an already existing large Arab population, it would lead to the demise of the Jewish state.[8]

    So yes, opponents of Zionism call for the abolition of Israel as a Jewish state and the formation of a egalitarian state for all people regardless of race, ethnicity, or creed or at the least the creation of an independent Palestinian state to exist alongside Israel. But anti-Zionists do not support the Israel of today which is explicitly a Jewish ethno-state.