from Daoud Kuttab

Dr. Audeh Quawas a member of the executive committee of the World Council of Churches spoke powerfully at WCC 11th congress in Germany regarding the wrongful equation of Zionism with antisemitism.

Quawas who is a member of the Jordanian Senate said that the two terms are often used interchangeable but have different meanings.

“Zionism is not the same as antisemitism, here are two very different terms that are regularly used interchangeably in current debates, so you might be surprised to learn that they mean entirely different things”.

Quawas who heads the Jerusalem Orthodox Patriarchate’s delegation to the congress said that to many people Zionism only affects the Jewish people.

“The conflation between the two ideas often assumes that Zionism only affects Jewish people. This approach, often repeated in current debates, erases the fact that the primary victims of the Zionist movement have been and continue to be the Palestinian people. Their rejection of Zionism, their demands for equal rights and their desire to be able to return to their homes from which they were expelled has nothing to do with Judaism or Jews in any way.”

The Palestinian WCC active member said that anti Zionism is a form of solidarity with people struggling for freedom.

” Anti-Zionism is therefore before anything else a form of solidarity with the demands of a colonized people that continues to struggle for its freedom.

There is a simple yet powerful principle which states that no one is free until we are all free. In that sense, the struggle against antisemitism and the struggle against Zionism are one and the same. They are both struggles against oppression, against racism, and ethnic supremacy. In a word against injustice – in the words of the old slogan: antisemitism is a crime, anti-Zionism; a duty, Quaswas told the WCC assembly.