Last week the BBC World Service published its annual poll on the popularity of some 25 countries. Popularity was defined as how positively the actions of a country impact the world. Israel, once again, was perceived as one of the least popular countries with only North Korea, Pakistan and Iran rated as less popular than Israel.

Germany was found to be the most popular country with 59 per cent votes for its contributions to the world.

Israel was viewed positively by only 21 per cent while 52 per cent of respondents had an unfavourable view. This, as usual, led to the inevitable question: Why? And more specifically, as the Israeli press loudly put it: ‘It’s that time of year, when that same question comes up yet again: Why do people hate Israel?’

Predictably, some readers pointed to Israeli actions of flouting the law, bullying its neighbours, and regularly violating human rights of the Palestinian people.

If you thought that these otherwise perfectly legitimate reasons for rating the country negatively are sufficient, you are wrong. Rejecting the accusations almost entirely, apologists for Israel go on the defensive making a facile equation between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

In political philosophy, the former is permissible while the latter is not. Zionism is a political philosophy, a nationalist movement, a secular reinterpretation of religious edicts; a political programme of action, which rejecting humanism, developed a strategy for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. And this by force, if necessary.

Anti-Semitism, on the other hand, is traditionally defined as “hostility towards or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group.” And this is both legally forbidden and ethically abhorrent. Hence the nefarious effect the misleading equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is most certainly likely to produce.

Although Zionism cannot be easily dismissed as a political strategy and a plan of action to wrestle Palestine from its inhabitants, it is precisely this dimension of Zionism that matters most for the Palestinians.

Neither the Zionists nor the Palestinians could afford to ignore that reality. Shortly after the Zionist Commission arrived in Palestine in 1918, its members proceeded to act, and to make demands on the British Military Administration as if the latter’s sole purpose in Palestine were to advance the Zionist project of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. This in itself contained sufficient threat for Palestine’s national existence to justify both Palestinian fear of, and opposition to, Zionism. Under the circumstances, it would have been preposterous to expect the Palestinians to espouse Zionism. This would have meant Palestinian acquiescence to their own dispossession.

The Palestinians specifically refused to do so. They forcefully expressed their opposition to the Zionist project in representations to and testimonies before the King-Crane Commission dispatched by President Wilson to the Middle East in 1919 to ascertain the wishes of the peoples of the region as to the form of government they wished to have.

The Commission found that the overwhelming majority of the peoples in the region were strongly opposed to Zionism. The Commission also found that they were opposed to English and French rule, disguised as League of nations mandates. If they must live under mandatory rule, the peoples of the region prefer that America be the mandatory power.

The King-Crane Commission prophetically concluded that the Zionist project could only be implemented by force. Unfortunately for the Palestinians, the recommendations of the Commission were not acted upon. In the absence of President Wilson who had gone back to the United States, the Peace Conference in Paris was dominated by Great Britain and France — two imperial powers little interested in Wilson’s championing of the principle of self-determination.

France and Great Britain were in effect more interested in the division of the Middle East along the lines of the secret agreements they concluded during the war. The Sykes-Picot secret agreement provided that France will be the dominant power in Syria, which it will rule through a League of Nations mandate and that Great Britain will be the dominant power in Palestine and Iraq — also under the guise of League of Nations mandates.

The peoples of the region, energised by Wilson’s defence of the principle of self-determination, rose to exercise their right to independence and self-government and to protest the imperial designs. But from Iraq to Syria and to Palestine, France and England crushed the protests, annulled proclamations of independence and proceeded to govern imperially.

Adel Safty is distinguished professor adjunct at the Siberian Academy of Public Administration, Russia. His new book, Might Over Right, is endorsed by Noam Chomsky.