What is zionism and is it like fascism?

Well I think it's very like fascism though I've even been ticked off by anti-zionists for saying so. The link above is to a review (over a week old now) of Jacqueline Rose's new book The Question of Zion. I actually found the link on Sue Blackwell's "controversial" (read: she pisses the zionists off) website. Here's how reviewer, Raphael Behr, opens the review:

Likening the Israelis' treatment of Palestinians with the Holocaust is outrageous to most Jews. But Jacqueline Rose has dared to do just that.

But what is zionism?

It is a story beset with contradiction. Zionism was secular, a case of 19th-century national self-discovery in reaction to repressive empire. Zionism was religious; it took its mandate from God's covenant with Abraham.

Zionism looked forward; many of its early followers despised the legacy of the European ghetto, which they saw as craven and weak. They changed their names and their language from Yiddish to Hebrew; they scorned the old culture of bookish urbanity and embraced a cult of labour and soil. Zionism looked backwards; the Jews seeking return to the land of their forefathers.

It then takes the reviewer a while to get to this:

The Palestinians, in Rose's analysis, are scapegoat for Israel's tortured memory of the Holocaust. They represent not just the threat of arbitrary destruction (of which each suicide bombing is a constant reminder) but they are made also to pay for the suppressed shame that Europe's Jewry felt at having bowed to its fate at Hitler's hands.

These little snippets don't do the review justice so please read it in full. Also you might also consider buying the book or ordering it from your library.