I think it's useful to adhere to Thomas Suarez's distinction between spiritual Zionism and ethno-political Zionism. The former is a set of beliefs which like any others, people must have an absolute right to hold. If I want to believe there are fairies at the bottom of my garden, I should be free to do so. The problem arises if I insist you believe so too and if my belief transmogrifies into a political creed, say, those who don't believe in fairies will have their democratic rights curtailed. That ethno-political Zionism is racist is confirmed by defining it as the sum total of the policies of the Israeli State since 1948. The "identity politics" Ali refers to is really an expression of the so-called "new anti-Semitism". (See Jonathan Cook: Disappearing Palestine p 231). The essence of this is that the liberal left is in cahoots with extreme Islamism and has absorbed its anti-Semitism. The colonial European countries exported their racism to the Arabs and now the Arabs are feeding it back. Thus, the left is indisputably stained with anti-Semitism which it disguises as anti-Zionism. All people on the left are anti-Semitic, whether they know it or not. Thus, their denials of anti-Semitism are its proof. Chalk another one up for Orwell. This is extreme thought control. It goes further than Big Brother and The Ministry of Truth in that it attributes thoughtcrime and those accused have no means of escape. Of course, all that is really going on is the old Zionist nonsense that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism. The latter should be tightly defined: hatred of Jews because they are Jews. Criticism of Israel or of Zionism is not hatred; it is the rational procedure of democratic debate and freedom of thought. Hatred of people subsumed to a category is irrational. Criticism of government policy, any government policy, is eminently rational. Its contrary is totalitarianism, which is where Israel is heading.