Applicants for German citizenship will be required to explicitly affirm Israel’s right to exist under a new citizenship law which came into effect on Tuesday.
The new law shortened the number of years that a person must have lived in Germany in order to obtain a passport, from eight to five years. It will also allow first-generation migrants to be dual citizens.
As part of the shake-up, new questions were added to the country’s citizenship test, including about Judaism and Israel’s right to exist.
The definition used by German authorities subsumes
antizionism, i.e.denying Israel’s right to exist as a special form of antisemitism.It is quite reductive to say anti-zionism is just denying the right of Israel to exist. Yes, the state of Israel is a deeply zionist project but you can accept the reality of this state existing and still be opposed to the idea of zionism in general.
I am opposed to the idea of colonialism in general but still accept the existence of states with a colonial history.
That’s a good point. I’ve always thought antizionism and denying Israel’s right to exist where somehow identical.