Rob Rinder

My dad & grandad were London cabbies. Dad is no longer here but I know exactly where he would have been today, on Westminster Bridge waiting to take our veterans home. Two generations of my family belonged to this trade. I have never been prouder of either of them. There are some debts a nation can never repay but it can always remember whom it owes.

A radical solution to the prisons crisis spectator.com/article/a-radi…

Zionism is both historic and spiritual; the ancient connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel and their right to self-determination in their historic homeland.

I am British by birth, belonging and love; Jewish by inheritance, memory and faith. Britain is my country. Israel is not a competing loyalty, it is the homeland of the Jewish people to which I am bound by ancestry, memory and identity.

For millions of Jews, that is the heart of Zionism. Not supremacy, dispossession or the killing of Palestinians and not a colonial claim to a foreign land but the self-determination of a people with an ancient and continuous connection to it. In practice, it must mean two peoples entitled to self-determination both living in security and freedom with neither people’s future purchased with the lives, rights or humanity of the other.

That is why declaring “Zionism is racism” is not merely wrong, it tells most Jews that their understanding of their own history, identity and collective freedom is itself morally suspect. The Greens should ask themselves whom they are trying to please by adopting a slogan that turns Jewish self-determination into a moral stain. If your politics of inclusion requires millions of Jews to renounce a central part of their history and identity before they qualify for your solidarity, it isn’t inclusion. You are telling Jews: you may belong here but only if you disown Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. That is not anti-racism. It is imposing a political test on Jews that no genuinely progressive movement would dream of imposing on any other minority.

Whatever your politics this is what cultural democracy looks like. Opera, theatre, music & art shouldn’t be inherited privileges but part of our common life; doors through which anyone can walk, whatever their income, postcode or background. Access to culture is access to possibility, to imagination, confidence & belonging. We should be doing this here. 👇🏻