The Zionism We Really Want: A Third Way to Look at the Morality of the Jewish Nationalist Project
Not ownership rights, but ties of identity and the universal right to self-determination are what support the moral justification for Zionism.
"What exactly is the difference between Ofra, a large settlement in Samaria, and Beit Dagan, a town within the Green Line, which is built on the ruins of Beit Dajan (the Arabic name of the village that preceded the current Israeli town and which existed until 1948)? Do the 19 years that passed between 1948 and 1967 render the existence of one village moral while the other one must be considered immoral?” These questions have been posed countless times. This particular quote is of the post-Zionist sociologist Yehouda Shenhav, who was interviewed for an article published in this magazine a few years ago. The subject of the article was the “surprising vision” of a binational state espoused by leading figures of the Israeli right wing.