Quite often people ask me what I think of Zionism being Jewish and an Israeli national.
I'll try and define this here, because all too often I find myself having to defend dubious values, which I disagree with, but which I also understand the merits of.

My late grandmother, a polish Jew, a socialist, and a Zionist had to flee Poland in her early teens she received a visa to study Hebrew at the Jerusalem University.
She often used to tell me stories about her home town, Kalish. She did so with such emotions that I suspect she never would of moved to Palestine if she didn't have to.
but circumstances left her no choice, and she had to flea.
On her journey, she had several very close calls, she had to avoid German soldiers, and her fate was all too often hanging on a very thin line.
On the way, she spent some time in Russia, being a socialist she was very disillusioned when she saw the Stalin regime.
She wasn't a Zionist because she believed that we are 'the chosen people' she was one, because living the discrimination, she believed a Jewish state was the only solution.
I had great respect for her, along side very many criticisms, not least of which the short sightedness, and a fair amount of racism.
She was short sighted because she didn't consider the fact that a Jewish state is inherently a discriminatory concept, and she was racist, because she believed that the 'primitive' Palestinians will benefit from a western life, she did use to speak of them as a nation of untrustworthy people, and did so for the rest of her days.
although I've argued plenty with her about this, in the end of the day, she was born in Europe, and had those values ingrained in her.
Now you might be thinking, wait a minute, how can she be a socialist and racist? This is a fair point, I have no answer to that, she just was, I guess that while developing her socialist values, the racist values were too deeply ingrained in her mind to overcome. maybe that was the only way she could justify being a socialist Zionist. None the less, she had little choice but to move to Palestine at the time.
My grandfather, is an even more complicated story, he died when I was a little kid, so I never had the chance to have a proper conversation with him about this, but what stayed was a family legend. He was a communist Zionist, at the time there was a massive argument about weather Israel should be a communist or a capitalist state. Since Zionist as an ideology, have one thing in common with all it's believers, that is a Jewish state, everything else is superimposed on it, the occupation, the discrimination, even it's location (The land now known as Israel) are all but unnatural additions to it.
My grandfather never had to flea persecution, my guess is that he became a Zionist because his parents were, and because he have seen all the other Jews being persecuted.
as a compromise between those who wanted Israel capitalist, and those that wanted it to be communist, the Kibutz movement was established.
In retrospect, i think it was a foolish compromise on the communists side, you cannot have a compromise with capitalists. none the less, they both had great aspirations for Israel, I think they believed that since the Jews were oppressed, and since this is a Jewish state, it will inherently be a non-discriminatory state. this is another short sightedness, but it's easy for me to say so now, it was a lot harder for them to. And so it was, that with complete disregard to the Palestinians and their will, Israel was founded, partially on very racist values, and partially on very progressive values. For the Palestinians, this seemed like nothing new, they were used to being occupied by foreign forces, and resisting those as they come and go. I'm sure some red lights went on, when half a million were forced to leave, this did not happen when the British, or the Turkish empires ruled them, but occupation wasn't all together a new concept.
A few generations later, came I. now I had to suffer all the short sightedness and failures of Zionism. I had to live I a war zone for most of my life, I had to see first hand what a state with 'higher' and 'lower' being is like. They say that the oppressor is also oppressed, and this is more than true for me, and for anyone who considers himself conscientious. Although I never had to witness the worst of the war, I never had to face my house being demolished, my family being killed by a missile, or tanks roaming around my back yard. I understand that some will be furious when they hear me claiming myself a victim of the occupation too, but this is how I feel. It's still not very nice living in a war zone, even if you are on the stronger side of the coin. the constant 'vigilance', the fear that any bus I'll go on might blow up, the soldiers and guns everywhere, and the general atmosphere of unease are not nice things to live with. inevitably, some people I know will and have died, some of my friends have been killed serving in the army, and others got injured. by all means, they shouldn't have been there in the first place, but none the less they have, none the less the price of Zionism meant compulsorily recruitment and a militarized society. Schools and even nurseries which are geared towards promoting this, justifying it, and brainwashing young children, to the extent that they want to go serve the army, and are even eager to kill or die for it. This is what Zionism meant for me on the ground. With all that, with the knowledge that Zionism was wrong then, and is even more so now, I find it very difficult to altogether denounce Zionism.
It feels like betraying my family roots, like I am altogether throwing away their ideals and aspirations. They were, with all their failing, wishing to have what is essentially a state for the discriminated. Living in Israel, I never once have defended it, nor did i ever think of myself as a 'Jew', I bundled both these concepts into Nationalism, and saw no reason or justification for neither.
Only when I moved to England, I found myself having to defend those values, I only defined myself as Jewish because have been discriminated against on these grounds, and while I will never really define myself as Zionist, I only had to defend it because it all to often being equated with Nazism. While it has got some fundamental flaws, and some common elements of fascism, comparing it to actual Nazism is naïve, dangerous, and more often than not unhelpful.
My position on it is as follows:
First, weather it was right or wrong at the time, weather or not there should have been a 'Jewish state' is missing the point, all too often people just didn't have a choice. As a state of the 'discriminated', it should of, right after being declared a Jewish state, being declared a 'state for the dispossessed'.
Right now, having an exclusively Jewish state is the worst thing that could possibly be, but I am aware that there is still a possibility of a new Nazi regime starting up anywhere, and having a place that will accept me, will the need to flea ever come about is a small comfort, but a comfort none the less.
It is a flawed Ideology, It is flawed because the only common merit, the only thing shared between all Zionists is the racist concept of a Jewish state, but 60 years ago, this was the foundation of a broad range of ideologies, so diverse, that few could be blamed for not seeing the one problem with it, its foundation.
This is also the one thing that will have to change if it was to regain it's legitimacy, It can no longer be a 'Jewish' state, there is no longer enough discrimination to justify it, not against Jews.
There may well be again in the future, two world wars and thousands of years of discrimination have thought me not to be surprised if it does come about, but right now there isn't. I would like Israel to be a place where everyone with no home, everyone who had to flea can make his new home, but I would also like every other nation in the world to be the same, Immigration controls make this very difficult. in fact one can postulate that without immigration controls, there would not be a state of Israel. Nothing, nothing at all, can justify what is being done in the name of Zionism, dispossessing others of their homes or livelihood is wrong, and is especially wrong when it's those things that brought about it's legitimacy in the first place.
The Palestinians were there first, all too often this is being ignored by Zionists, and the solution that is acceptable by most people is the two countries solution, I don't know if that will work, Palestine being a tiny fragmented country, but if that will stop the bloodshed, it's more than I can hope for.
A country of all it's people is my ideal solution, but as long as the fundamental concept of Zionism is a 'Jewish state' this could not work, and not enough people agree with me about changing this to make it viable.
Maybe when the smoke clears, and the victims are laid to rest in everyone's mind, there will be dialogue on the ground, people will start reconciling their differences, not as politicians, but as people, living side by side, and maybe than the concept of 'Zionism' will fade into irrelevancy, but until then, the horrors of this never ending war will continue, at least until there is a Palestinian state. Than again, if that will happen everywhere we could abolish borders altogether.

To conclude, I will only feel the need to define myself as Jewish, as long as there is discrimination against Jews, and will only feel some vague sympathy for Zionism as long as I believe that there is a prospect for another holocaust sometimes in the future. But if there is another holocaust, everyone who is being targeted, not just Jews should have a safe haven. I don't for a moment think that Jews rule the world, and I am offended by this very notion. There are some powerful Zionist sympathizers, but they do not represent me, there are even more powerful Christians, Muslims, and even Scientologists, but Jews have always been the target of conspiracy theories. If America seems biased towards Israel, it's to serve their own interests, not because of some powerful Zionist banker.