The crucial point is that Zionism’s colonization of the Jew himself, a notion at the core of early Zionist discourse, is now enabled by its focus on the distinction between “Jews” and “Arabs,” a binary which makes (Ashkenazi) Jews seem modern and secular.

The “Palestinian cause/question” and the “Jewish question” are both expressions of European modernity, whether in the form of their currency of nationalism or genocidal practices, neither of which are acknowledged in Israel.