As I read the news surrounding developments in Palestine/Israel I’m astonished at how quickly the political landscape has changed and continues to change, and the future of Palestine/Israel is as unclear as ever. Making predictions about the future is risky business, and I don’t presume to know enough to do so. But one feature of this changing landscape will impact that future and it merits discussion. Israel, the primary project of the Zionist movement, is being steadily delegitimized as a political entity. More and more people are beginning to question the right of Zionist Israel to exist. In short, Zionism is becoming a dirty word.

What sort of political arrangement can possibly emerge in Palestine/Israel when the actors and ‘facts on the ground’ change and multiply so quickly? There was a time not too long ago when many reasonable people insisted that endgame meant two states for two peoples in Palestine/Israel. The Jews have a historic attachment to Palestine, they explained. The Holocaust has shown what happens to Jews among the gentiles, they argued. Furthermore, enmity between two longtime antagonists had reached levels that required ethnic partition. Implicitly, they argued that acquisition of territory through war was admissible. So, forget about international law. Forget about your right of return and the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory through war and a top-down, brutally executed ethnic cleansing program. Israel has a right to exist and that right is underlined by the near universal Western acceptance of Zionism – the principle of racially pure colonial Jewish statehood – as a credible political program for Jews and non-Jews.

It is worth pausing here for a moment to review what Zionism is. Many Jewish and non-Jewish people see justice in the idea of a Jewish state, inhabited by a demographic majority of Jewish people. That sentiment is informed by an attachment to the spiritual homeland of the Jews – Palestine. So Zionism is the fusion of tribalism and territory, which is a very common phenomenon in the world today. In many ways, Zionism is just Jewish nationalism. Zionism differs from other forms of nationalism in one important respect, however. The territory claimed by Jewish nationalists was inhabited by non-Jews. Early Zionists were confronted by the problem of wrong-raced people living in the places that they hoped to populate with Jews. For people like my maternal grandfather, Khaled Edwan, that meant loading his possessions on the back of a donkey, and trekking by foot to the tented refugee camp in the Gaza Strip with other villagers from Barbara, a Palestinian village located near where modern day Ashkelon stands today.

Early Zionists appreciated the importance of narrative in the national imagination. Ethnic cleansing and heroic redemption of the land are two incongruous themes, so for the sake of consistency, Barbara was razed to the ground by Zionist bulldozers. A national forest was planted in its place. When young American Jews in the fifties donated pennies and nickels to the Jewish National Fund to plant a tree in Israel, they were oftentimes erasing Palestine.

I had a conversation with a Zionist in New York several months ago who conceded that Palestinians had been ethnically cleansed from Israel to make room for Jews. Despite that, he couldn’t understand my attachment to Palestine – to places I’ve never been in Israel proper – that my grandfathers and their families had been forcibly removed from. It was incomprehensible to him that I should want to return to places lost sixty years ago. He insisted that Palestinians should make the best of things in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, America, Canada or wherever. I replied that the Jews lost their country thousands of years ago, and haven’t forgotten it. We lost ours only sixty years ago. He seemed to get it after that.

The Zionists were successful in ethically cleansing Palestine. But they didn’t succeed in eliminating the Palestinian nation. They refused to acknowledge the injustice that permeated the existence of their state, and instead agreed to the principle of two states for two peoples. They even managed to convince some Palestinians to accept the ‘two-state solution’ – to join the Zionist fold. Logically, any Palestinian who endorses the ‘two-state solution’ is self-identifying as a Zionist. Some of these Palestinians support two states because they believe it is the most pragmatic, or possible, solution at this time. But this approach sacrifices the rights of Palestinian refugees, and possibly the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, in exchange for an ill-defined state built on the steadily dwindling 22% of the country Palestinians lost in 1948. The quiescence of these Palestinians may win them entry into the most rarefied circles. They may publish articles in prominent magazines and visit with the American president.

Many Palestinians will bristle at the charge; in Palestine, Zionism is a dirty word. Not many people are comfortable with being called racists. White supremacists and separatists in the United States sometimes argue that their movement is misunderstood. Theirs is a quest to safeguard white culture in the face of a multicultural onslaught. White literature, music, art and soul are subordinated to, and infected, maligned and corrupted by intermixing with other races. Bernard Avishai made the same argument recently in an email exchange with Philip Weiss. In a nutshell, the Jewish state exists so that Mr. Avishai can more fully appreciate Jewish poetry. This is no coincidence. One can make a convincing analogy between white supremacists and Zionists – both are would-be saviors and protectors of the race. Both are racists.

The difference is that Zionism has been legitimized by Western leaders. Western culture embraced the Zionist cause and narrative in the post-War period. I wonder how many American youths were captivated by Paul Newman’s brave and hale Zionist in the Hollywood film Exodus. How many baby boomers today subconsciously associate Paul Newman’s brand of salad dressing, whose profits are donated to philanthropic causes, with Zionism? Marilyn Monroe famously celebrated Israel’s eighth anniversary in 1956 alongside John F. Kennedy in Yankee Stadium. One can imagine how the image of America’s premier starlet and handsome young politician must have appeared to many ordinary Americans. Today, the American actress Natalie Portman helps Alan Dershowitz write ‘The Case for Israel’ while performers Madonna and Lady Gaga parade around the Holy Land singing Zionist praises. The end result is that many non-Jews in America identify with Jewish supremacy; there are many non-Jewish Zionists. The process of inuring gentiles to Jewish racism has resulted in some glaring contradictions and confused sentiments. President Jimmy Carter – whose integrity is unimpeachable, and who deservedly won the Nobel Peace Prize for his prodigious humanitarian undertakings – still writes in his books that Israel must remain the Jewish state, and that Jewish apartheid is restricted to the occupied West Bank. As someone who greatly admires President Carter – I hesitate to levy the criticism, but humanitarianism and ethnic cleansing are mutually exclusive. And apartheid exists within Israel proper as well.

The truth about the legacies and consequences of Zionism is emerging in America. I outlined in a previous essay some of the reasons why Zionism is becoming a dirty word. Student BDS movements are proliferating on American campuses and gaining greater ground in their struggle for equal rights in Palestine/Israel. Indeed, the recent BDS conference that took place at Hampshire College is a heartening sign of things to come. But while it was once enough to oppose the occupation of Palestine, the bar must be raised. It is clear that the ‘two-state solution’ is not a solution. Besides, it is unworkable and impossible – Mr. Obama cannot transfer 500,000 Jewish settlers from the West Bank. The reality of an apartheid state in all of Palestine/Israel has raised the bar. Practically, what does it mean to end the occupation? What about the security of settlers? Who will enforce the Jew-only road rules? Ending the occupation of Palestine doesn’t mean anything; the egg is scrambled.

Reality requires that we reevaluate our goals. The aim should be to discredit the entire system of inequality in Palestine/Israel. Boycotting Israeli goods manufactured in the settlements is an important first step, but the Zionist colonial settlement program is engineered by the Zionist government of Israel. Jewish supremacists do not only inhabit Ariel and Kiryat Arba. They live in Tel Aviv and Netanya. The brilliant Zionist technician working for Intel Israel also partakes in the systemic suppression of another peoples’ human rights. His economic activity strengthens a repressive political regime, while his democratic vote empowers chauvinists. It is a fact that more than 90% of the voting Israeli public supported the recent Gaza massacre. I should clarify that not all Israelis are Zionists. There are Israelis who recognize that something is rotten in the state of Israel.

The project to undermine Zionism cannot be motivated by vindictive, retributive impulses. On the contrary, the project to undo Zionist Israel must be inspired by an overarching commitment to humanity and equal rights. While Zionists ought to be challenged anywhere, it must be clearly understood and forcefully declared that Jews have a right to live in the Holy Land, but only as equals, and not cloaked in a Master Race theology. This is not a new idea. Once accepted by a majority of the people – Palestine/Israel, or Israel/Palestine, or whatever it may be called – will enact normal immigration and naturalization laws. That process will begin with an unbending commitment to the nonviolent pursuit of justice at all costs. This may seem like a radical position to take, but justice is a radical principle.

I will not venture to predict the future. But I can outline my hopes for the future. I look forward to a time when academics, policy makers and analysts, pundits, and ordinary people are unencumbered by a poorly considered attachment to Zionism. I hope that I will see the day when Zionists will be forced into the closet alongside all the other racial supremacists who share their pathology. Zionism is a dirty word. I look forward to the day humanity reacts to it that way.