Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Out of context: Reply #161
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- Nairn0
Zionism - "Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews"
This is not exactly comparable to the state of being British or French, which are established countries, with coherent populations established in the same location for well over a thousand years.
As far as I recall, Zionism as modern movement came from Eastern Europe at the end of the 19th century, a part of the world where, welcome or not, modern day Jews had a home to live in and call their own - witness, at least, Russia, which had a sizable and assimilated Jewish population (you can mention pogroms, but many people had a shitty time of it back then - later on, Jews were a significant element of Russian political circles and the intelligentsia).
During the last nearly 2500 years, the vast bulk of the Jewish population grew outside of old Israel, that country being taken over by other Semite tribes of different religions, but the same original stock. Times, places and people change. Significantly so, in the case of your homeland.
The move to return in the first half of the last century, after over 2000 years, was purely politically motivated - a land grab by an established middle class - it's your version of colonialism, as I see it - more rich white westerners taking more slices of the third world.
In that regard, I suppose you are correct - Zionist Israel was similar to Britain and France - they were all colonial forces.
In the modern, non-discriminatory world though, extending one ideology's sovereignty over another's land and people (no matter how few Palestinian farmers were claimed to be there originally) isn't seen as positively as it once was.
You'll notice I've not mentioned any Biblical claims to whatever rights you claim - they're utterly spurious and irrelevant.