Within this book, it is true, there is a narrative about a people, Am Yisrael (the people of Israel) in a land, Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel) or Tzion (Zion), from which they are exiled and to which they will eventually return. But traditionally, this was regarded as a sacred story, not as a political blueprint. Mainstream Zionism set out to modernize Judaism by politicizing it, nationalizing it, turning the Jewish people into the Jewish nation, in the nineteenth-century sense of that word. The idea was to put Israel, a political entity in the here and now, at the center of Jewish identity. This was a radical departure from the "old" Jewish idea of a Jew. The concept of "new anti-Semitism," to the extent that it is based on mainstream Zionist ideology, is just the other side of the coin, the obverse of this new idea of a Jew, the national Jew. Zuckerman and others of this cast of mind are arguing in a circle; for it is only anti-Semitic to reject his argument if you have already accepted it.

However, political Zionism is larger than its mainstream ideology. In the first place, there are other ideologies that have motivated people in the movement. In the second place, people in the movement have been motivated by considerations that have nothing to do with ideology. Many Jews, as well as non-Jewish sympathizers, were drawn to the Zionist goal of creating a Jewish state in Palestine for reasons that were purely humanitarian or practical. This motive was reinforced by the catastrophic consequences of the Second World War: the extermination of one-third of the world's Jewish population, the wholesale destruction of Jewish communities in much of Europe and the plight of masses of Jewish refugees with nowhere to go. In these circumstances, the State of Israel was seen by many Jews as a lifeline. Such people did not necessarily see the state in romantic ethnic terms as "the collective expression of the Jewish people." They saw it simply as a safe haven for Jews, a refuge, a place in the sun.

On this basis, the following argument can be made: "It is one thing to argue about the existence of Israel in 1917, another to do so after 1948, when the state was founded. History has overtaken the question. Israel is no longer an idea in someone's head. It exists. And for millions of Jews, Israel is their home. They have nowhere else to go. To oppose the existence of the Jewish state at this point means nothing less than wanting to deprive these Jews of their homeland and perhaps their very lives. It also means depriving millions of other Jews, Jews around the world, of their protector and their safeguard. For who will come to the defense of Jews, and who will offer persecuted Jews a place of refuge, if not Israel, the Jewish state? Only an antiSemite would want to destroy this state."

The argument, understandable though it is, makes several questionable assumptions. For one thing, the alternatives are not black and white: either preserving the status quo or annihilation. There are a variety of constitutional arrangements in between. For example, Israel could continue to exist as a sovereign state but cease to define itself, in its basic laws and state institutions, as specifically Jewish. Or there is the so-called one-state solution: a binational homeland for Palestinians and Jews. The tragic impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has renewed interest in this proposal among some Arab and Jewish intellectuals. And although this view lacks a significant constituency in either community at present, attitudes may well change. At any rate, while Jews might have embraced Israel as a safe place to be Jewish, Israel today is hardly a place of safety for Jews. And you don't have to be an anti-Semite to envisage a future for Israel, or for Israel's Jewish population, that is not based on the principle of a Jewish state. As for Jews around the world, whether they are safer because of the existence of Israel, or whether Israel is putting them at greater risk than they would otherwise be, is debatable.

I turn now to anti-Zionism in the broader sense: criticism of Israel that is unbalanced or intemperate. It is true that some critics judge Israel by harsher criteria than they use to judge other countries, that they misrepresent the facts so as to put Israel in a bad light, that they even vilify the Jewish state, none of which is fair. But is it necessarily anti-Semitic? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a bitter struggle. The issues are complex, passions are inflamed and the suffering in both communities is immense. In such circumstances, partisans on both sides are liable to "cross the line from fair to foul." Moreover, just as there are those on the outside who support the Palestinians, so there are those whose sympathies lie with Israel. When the latter cross the line, they are not ipso facto racist or Islamophobic. By the same token, when others cross the line on behalf of the Palestinian cause, this does not make them anti-Semites. It cuts both ways.

A simple thought experiment reinforces this argument. Imagine if Israel were the same in every essential respect as the state that exists today, including its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, except in its religious identity. Suppose it were Catholic, like the Crusader states that Europeans created in the Middle East in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Let us call this imaginary state "Christiania" instead of "Israel." Would Christiania be accepted into the bosom of the region more readily than Israel has been? I doubt it. Would the animosity felt toward Christiania be qualitatively different from, or significantly less than, the hostility now directed at Israel? Again, I think not. Any differences would be a matter of nuance. In fact, Israel is often called a "crusader state" in Arab and Muslim circles. In a way, this says everything about the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. Crusader states, like the imaginary Christiania, were Christian; the State of Israel is Jewish. But the underlying hostility toward it in the region is not hostility toward the state as Jewish but as a European interloper or as an American client or as a non-Arab and non-Muslim entity; moreover, as an oppressive occupying force. Some people see this disposition toward Israel as anti-imperialist or anticolonialist, others as chauvinist or xenophobic. But in and of itself, it is not anti-Semitic.

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