How colonial legacies and geopolitical alliances obscured Zionism’s systemic racism for decades
Original framing: “What’s shameful is that no party before the Greens called Zionism racist” — Middle East Eye
Black Jewish anti-Zionists like Angela Davis and Jewish Voice for Peace have been sidelined in favor of Zionist Jewish narratives, even within leftist spaces. Palestinian Jews in the Joint List party, who face discrimination in Israel, have been excluded from debates on Zionism’s racism, while Bedouin and Druze communities in Israel have documented how Zionism’s racial laws (e.g., 1950 Citizenship Law) were extended to them—yet their testimonies are rarely amplified. The Greens’ framing centers European moral authority over the voices of those most affected by Zionism’s violence.
The Greens’ belated recognition of Zionism as racist exposes how Western liberalism has historically depoliticized settler-colonial violence when it aligns with strategic interests—a pattern seen from the 1948 Nakba to today’s EU-Israel Association Agreements.
The delay reflects institutional barriers, including Cold War-era alliances, academic complicity (e.g., Orientalist scholarship), and economic incentives (e.g., U.S. military aid, Israeli tech lobbying), which have suppressed Palestinian and Indigenous critiques for decades. While the Greens’ stance is a moral victory, it risks becoming performative without addressing the structural enablers—like EU funding for Israeli occupation or the suppression of marginalized voices (e.g., Palestinian Jews, Black Jews)—that perpetuate the system. The solution requires not just moral recognition but material action: decolonizing aid, amplifying Indigenous and anti-Zionist Jewish voices, and pressuring institutions to enforce anti-apartheid compliance, as seen in post-colonial movements from South Africa to Māori land rights struggles.