Take a look at the short video that the liberal Zionist organization Ameinu recently posted on its Facebook page. Entitled, “Why Israel’s survival as a Jewish state is now in danger,” the clip essentially makes the familiar argument for maintaining a Jewish demographic majority in order to ensure Israel’s status as a “Jewish and democratic state.”

While there’s nothing particularly new in the video that hasn’t been argued by liberal Zionists for the past twenty years, I was intrigued by the following quote from the opening narrative:

What makes Britain British? Is it the London Bridge? Or the people driving over it? And Italy: is it the pizza, or the people eating it? What about Israel? What makes it a Jewish state? Is it its geographical shape? Its landmarks? Like any country, what makes Israel a Jewish state, and what guarantees that it will remain one, is that the overwhelming majority of its residents are Jewish.

It’s a fascinating way to frame the issue. It also betrays the inherent contradiction at the heart of  liberal Zionism.

From a national identity point of view, Israel simply isn’t comparable to Britain or Italy (or the US for that matter). The latter countries have civic national identities; that is to say, they are defined by a sense of common citizenship. Britain is not British because it maintains a demographic majority of one specific religious or ethnic identity.  It sounds obvious, but it bears noting in this context: one can belong to the British nation and be Christian, Jewish, Muslim or Hindu as well. That is because the British people are bound together as citizens of the British nation.

Israel, on the other hand, is not a state of all its citizens. It is rather, a state for only some of its citizens – namely Jews. This is because the purpose of the Zionist enterprise is to create a state for the Jewish people.

In fact, there is actually no such thing as an Israeli “nationality” according to Israeli law. Unlike Britain and Italy and other Western democracies, Israel actually maintains a legal distinction between citizens (ezrachim in Hebrew) and nationals (le’umim). In theory at least, all Israeli citizens have equal rights – but only Jewish citizens can be considered nationals.

There are indeed non-Jewish citizens of Israel – they make up roughly 20% of the population. But because these citizens are not nationals, they are subjected to extensive discrimination within Israeli society. (According to Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, there are more than 50 Israeli laws that “directly or indirectly discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in all areas of life.”)

The liberal Zionist trope advocated by the Ameinu clip claims that the demographic threat posed by Palestinians began in 1967, when Israel “conquered several areas of land” and was faced with a “rapidly growing Arab population that never wanted to live in a Jewish state.”

The real problem, however, is not the Palestinian birth rate in the West Bank. The problem lies with the very notion of a state predicated on the identity of one particular people in a land that has always been multi-religious and multi-ethnic.

This is why the concept of liberal Zionism is ultimately an oxymoron. There is nothing liberal about a nation state that predicates its national character upon – and grants full citizenship to – one particular group of people.

In other words, the problem is not “the Occupation.” The problem, quite simply, is Zionism.