Andrew Levine: Who's Afraid of the Israel Lobby?

Andrew Levine: Who's Afraid of the Israel Lobby?

"It is important to remember that, from the time of the French Revolution, right-wing politics and anti-Semitism have enjoyed a close and symbiotic relationship. It is important to remember too that modern Zionism emerged in reaction to an up-tick in European anti-Semitism – to the Dreyfus Affair and to pogroms in the east -- and therefore that before the movement became immersed in identity politics or (later still) took on a theological coloration, anti-Semites and Zionists implicitly agreed that assimilation was impossible or undesirable and therefore that Jews would do well to have a country of their own. On the Jewish side, the further idea that this solution to the Jewish Question implies the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine soon followed."