Another thought about 'Zionists'

It's a thought to follow this one from four days ago, and it is prompted by a remark at the bottom of Michele Hanson's column in Tuesday's Guardian. We are told that she attended the launch of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, and then we get this:

Which shows that not all Jews are Zionists. And about time too.

Now, this is plainly not the usage of 'Zionists' I was referring to the other day in which it is a prejudicial code word for 'Jews'. The context makes that clear. But note two things about it. First, anyone who knows anything about this subject will know that it is nothing new for there to be Jews who aren't Zionists; it is a very old distinction within the Jewish diaspora. Hanson suggests it might be news. Second, and worse, the remark suggests that a Zionist is a bad thing for a Jew to be. But why so? A Zionist is someone who supports the existence of an autonomous Jewish homeland in Israel - so a Jewish nationalist if you like. We do not know why Hanson thinks that it's bad for Jews to be nationalists; it's just an offhand remark of hers without explanation or elaboration. Yet it indicates how, far beyond the ranks of the out-and-out Jew-haters, comfortably esconced now within any average assembly of well-meaning liberals, there are expectations on Jews that aren't placed upon others - who may, for their part, legitimately be nationalists and attached to the self-determination of their peoples. And it also indicates how 'Zionist', even when not deployed with clear anti-Semitic intent, has come to hold a pejorative connotation, as if the very existence of the Jewish state - not the occupation, not the settlements, not Israeli policies towards the West Bank and Gaza, but the Jewish state itself - was a rank illegitimacy.

That it should be the Guardian that serves as the site for Hanson's casual ignorance and expression of lightminded prejudice is, of course, no surprise at all.