I ended my first blog with: "As long as Jews and Israel are held by different standards than other peoples and countries I feel a special need to defend Zionism."
Someone commented on it: "There is a question of why this double standard exists both in the minds of some and in the actions of nations (e.g. UN resolutions)."

Good question, that puzzled me for some time. The pre-occupation with Israel and the occupation is striking.

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Zionism has become an ugly word for a lot of people, not only in the Arab world and not only among right-wing extremists but also to a lot of people in Europe who advocate human rights and peace. If opponents want to delegitimize you, they call you a Zionist. I wrote some critical comments on the AUT boycott on a discussion site of the Dutch socialist party, and someone explained that this is how 'the Zionist lobby' works. So, I didn't voice my opinion because of humanitarian considerations and a feeling of justice, but because I would be part of an obscure lobby that has a secret agenda.

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Europe wants to play a major role in the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, and during the Oslo peace process it did real efforts to this purpose and facilitated secret negotiations between Israel and the PLO. Both Arafat and Rabin and Peres were given the Nobel peace price for their historic approach. Lots of money was spent to build up the Palestinian Authority, and Palestinian police was trained with European help. I think these were genuine efforts inspirited by a genuine interest in Middle East peace. After the peace process collapsed and the second intifada started, Europe put this mainly at the door of Israel however, and kept confidence in Arafat's will to peace, against all evidence like his double-speaking and his role in the intifada.

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"Why defend Zionism? Zionism, as a historical movement, has fulfilled its mission by the creation of Israel. If you want to promote peace, isn't it more important to defend the right of the Palestinians to statehood? Israel is all powerful, whereas the Palestinians have nothing. Isn't Zionism moreover responsible for the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians? So why defend Zionism?"

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