I don't see how having a single Jewish State is racist, but having dozens of countries in the world that identify themselves as Muslim states is somehow not racist. Or are you proposing that all such characterizations be eliminated from all states?
Jews are currently forbidden from entering settling in Saudi Arabia, or living outside of "foreign national" zones where non-Muslim aliens are relegated. Is that also not racist?
After the war of Israeli independence in 1948, virtually every Arab country in the Middle East drove out its Jewish population, whether they had been Zionists or not, whether they had even heard of Zionism or not. Was that also not racist?
Throwing base accusations is not particularly useful in discussions about Israel. We can all pull out occasions when the other side acted unfairly. Are we going to harp on them or move on?
"Hebrew" is an identity: it is the identity of being a Jew. Jews are Hebrews. No one else are Hebrews. The identity is at one with the religion. Abraham was the original Hebrew. Everything that God promised him, the covenant that they made together, the blessing of inheriting the land of Canaan-- all those things were passed from Abraham to his son Isaac, and by Isaac to Jacob, and by Jacob to his twelve sons, from whose households the Jewish People descend.
No. Ishmael was disinherited. God agreed, for Abraham's sake, to bless Ishmael with prosperity, and to make of him a great nation. But the covenant went to Isaac, as did the name of Hebrew.
The Jewish People never gave up their claim to the land. They were driven into exile, and were mostly unable to return until the European emancipations of the 19th century. But there was always a Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, even if small, and Jews worldwide prayed daily for over 1500 years that the day would come when we would be free to go back to our ancestral land.
The Zionists attempted to seek for Great Britain to divide the land between Jews and Arabs, as the British government had promised to do in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The British dragged their heels. The Zionists went to the newly formed UN, and asked to establish both a Jewish State and an Arab state in the territory that had been British Palestine. This partition would have greatly favored the Arabs. The Arabs rejected it. All of the attempts to divide the land peacefully had failed, the British were not allowing in enough refugees from the aftermath of the Shoah. We couldn't wait any longer. The State of Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948. On May 15, 1948, all five of the surrounding Arab nations attacked, and sought to crush the new Jewish State from existence.
Israel should not have to apologize for its existence, or for defending itself. If the Arab nations had sought a peaceful solution at the start, this could have been avoided. If they had not kept attacking Israel-- in 1948, in 1952, in 1956, in 1959, in 1962, in 1967, in 1973-- this might have been solvable earlier. If they had not turned to terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s, and again at the start of the millennium, this might have been over and done with. If the Palestinians hadn't refused a peace deal in 1999 that offered them 98.5% of all their land demands, as well as monetary reparations and aid, and instead started another intifada, this could have been over and done with. If the nations of Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt had absorbed Palestinian refugees into their population, instead of forcing them to live in squalid refugee camps permanently, as an anti-Israel political and media showpiece, this could have been resolved with far less suffering.
Israel is here. It's not going anywhere. Jews have every right to live in their ancestral homeland. Arabs, who control the entire Middle East, surrounding Israel with far larger and richer Muslim nations, are going to end up carving off half of Israel to create yet another country. That's also a fait accompli. Now are we going to move forward, or stay stuck in a pointless grudge match?
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